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The Red Sox, for all the streakiness, are proving exactly who we thought they were
We're halfway home, and it's the rare Red Sox team of the last decade that has been exactly what we expected.
COMMENTARY
The Red Sox are making this very easy. Not to watch. To decide the fate of.
Eighty-two games into the 2023 season, this is the primary lineup they have run out:
C: Connor Wong (52 starts)
1B: Triston Casas (60)
2B: Christian Arroyo (36)
3B: Rafael Devers (76)
SS: Kiké Hernández (51)
LF: Masataka Yoshida (44)
CF: Jarren Duran (46)
RF: Alex Verdugo (72)
DH: Justin Turner (51)
SP: Brayan Bello (13), Tanner Houck (13),
Chris Sale (11), Garrett Whitlock (9), Corey Kluber (9)
Scroll back to March, when they were predicted to finish not all that far from the 79 wins they’re on track for after getting swept by the Marlins. That lineup looks reasonably representative of what the plan was, doesn’t it?
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There were hopes about Adalberto Mondesi solidifying the middle infield, which he won’t, and Adam Duvall the outfield, which he did for eight games before busting his wrist. There was the potential of turn-back-the-clock contributions from Kluber and Turner, on which the DH has at least delivered reasonable production.
But that was pretty close to the lineup in all our previews, next to the quotes from Chaim Bloom — “what matters is what we do” — and from Alex Cora.
“Do we have to be on point and is there a small margin for error? I believe so,” the manager said.
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“This group knows what we can do, but the world doesn’t.”
We’re halfway home, and it’s the rare Red Sox team of the last decade that has been exactly what we expected. We can quibble about the micro, of course, but one day in baseball doesn’t mean a whole lot. Domingo Germán goes shelled by the Red Sox to shelled by the Mariners to a perfect game. Colorado drops one, 25-1, and wins the series.
Devers has underperformed, but Verdugo has overdelivered. Casas hasn’t established himself as a major leaguer, but Yoshida has. The amount of “win six straight, lose seven of eight” feels a little high, but if you end up right around .500, I suppose the fates got it right, didn’t they?
This is the sort of week where a team that wants to make you think, that wants to declare itself worthy of investment to its architects, does so. That it pointedly hasn’t, well, that makes things a little easier, doesn’t it?
Now, Miami is a rough example, whether these last three were at Fenway or not. The Marlins have been neck and neck with Atlanta as the sport’s best the last month or so, on a 24-9 heater because they’re pitching a step better than anyone else in the game. It’s hardly weird they outscored the Sox, 18-3, and extended Boston’s offensive futility to levels not seen since the Jon Lester trade.
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FEWEST RED SOX RUNS ACROSS SEVEN GAMES (SINCE 1995)
11 — June 22-29, 2023
11 — July 24-30, 2014
11 — Aug. 24-30, 2006
11 — Aug. 26-Sept. 2, 2001
Check out that company. The seven games before the selloff of the 2013 title team, a West Coast trip immediately after Boston Massacre II, and the moment when Joe Kerrigan’s managerial tenure went into its nosedive. It makes losing when Bello took a no-hitter into the eighth seem almost pleasant.
It’s the series like last weekend’s in Chicago, against a White Sox bunch that was expected to be just as middling in a division where that could mean October. They’ve underperformed that standard, but they were more than enough for the Red Sox, who only avoided getting swept because they won a game they had four hits and 17 strikeouts in.
Bello’s last start before Thursday, naturally. After which the Sox lost on an (admittedly tough) hop Casas couldn’t turn into an out, this ham-sandwich mess, and the continued failure of their offensive approach to convert into runs.
“We’re not hitting the ball hard,” Cora told reporters after Wednesday’s loss. “It’s been going on for a while. We’re putting together good at-bats, but not finishing them.”
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Debatable, frankly. In these last seven, no team has swung at a higher percentage of pitches in the zone, per Sports Info Solutions via Fangraphs. (Good!) However, only three teams have swung at a higher percentage out of the zone. (Bad!) Only two — the genuinely bad Rockies and Nationals — have swung at a higher percentage overall, and only one (San Francisco) has swung and missed at a worse rate.
Those latter three are all well out of character for this offense. An understandable result of pressing as the runs just aren’t coming, and the remaining runway just keeps shortening.
The nature of Rob Manfred’s Major League Baseball is that we still have to humor the idea of October. These flawed Red Sox are just five games out of a wild card, spots all held this morning by AL East brethren they’ll see for 23 remaining head-to-heads. World champion Atlanta was under .500 into August 2021. Washington was whatever Washington was however deep in 2019.
We know the mediocre hits because we’re forced to sing them almost every year.
The Red Sox built a fingers-crossed team for 2023, puffed out their chests, and have proven every doubter right. Sale didn’t stay healthy. The Kluber scratch ticket lost. Hernández couldn’t be an everyday shortstop.
“We’ve shown multiple times over the course of this first half how good we can be,” Bloom said on NESN before Tuesday’s game. “It seems like when we think we’re starting to escape the gravity of .500, we find a way to get ourselves back down there.”
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He offered a smile as he said yet, the degree of ruefulness within open to interpretation, and continued into how his thinking fits into that Cora-favored truism about how “the game dictates what you do.”
Mediocrity sure does. Loud and clear.
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