In a rare twist, it’s the Red Sox offense that’s not carrying its weight
COMMENTARY
The Red Sox had multiple off days this week, which meant a couple things. Most notable, there’s a grind coming — 23 games in the next 24 to get us into June, including 10 games within the AL East. But also, it was a perfect time to really dig in their run of pitching magic.
The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey did a deep dive. So did the Globe’s Alex Speier, built on an episode of his new podcast (with NESN’s Tom Caron) talking with Andrew Bailey.
It’s all worth your time. We have touched on it to a very basic degree here, with their general turn away from fastballs for fastballs’ sake, but it goes more toward a complete fresh-eyed overhaul of how the team conducts itself. (Lot of that going around.)
Amazing as the early results have been, the end result remains a team in the sport’s asteroid belt, spinning anonymously among twins in the inky darkness, a couple freak collisions away from flying out in either direction.
The computers gave the Red Sox about a one-in-four chance of making the playoffs before the season began; they still have it, 15 losses in their 19-18 start against teams with better than .500 records. They are neither under nor overrated, despite forging a largely unexpected path to it.
We better understand after this week why they’re pitching like they are. We needn’t mine that deep to see why their hitting is an aren’t.
The degree to which Chris Sale chewed through the Red Sox order on Wednesday night can scarcely be overstated. He did, as expected, throw primarily sliders at his former team.
On 37 of them, Red Sox hitters took nine for strikes, missed on 13 of 18 (!) swings, and managed two fifth-inning singles. Across the board, outside of Garrett Cooper, who ripped a single and would have had a homer in most ballparks, there just wasn’t much there.
Six singles, one double. No hits with a runner in scoring position on back-to-back nights. It’s happening a lot.
“Look at the shutouts and the percentage of games where we haven’t scored more than two runs,” manager Alex Cora told reporters in Atlanta. “We gotta be better.”
The macro is still good: 4.43 runs/game, roughly league average, and a plus-34 run differential. But you’ll probably beat me to the caveat. Two games — 17-0 over the Cubs and 12-2 at the Angels — makes up most of that edge.
The Red Sox have won six games by at least seven runs, more than the Dodgers, the Orioles, the Phillies, and everybody else. They are baseball’s kings of the blowout, outscored by two dozen runs in the rest of their games despite the sport’s best ERA numbers by a healthy margin.
Again, the puzzle isn’t why, it’s Cora trying to make a lineup card. In marker: Jarren Duran at leadoff — 35 times in 37 games. In pencil, everyone else, to the tune of 35 distinct lineups in 37 games.
Rafael Devers is usually second, but he popped to cleanup Wednesday, when Wilyer Abreu hit eighth — the last non-leadoff spot he hadn’t been tried in before the season’s quarter pole. Tyler O’Neill is usually third. Ceddanne Rafaela has generally settled at No. 9, which can happen when an eight-game hitting streak gets your season numbers up to .213/.237/.370.
The rest are just around — sometimes productive, but rarely enough when Devers is consistently grounding out to the right side with runners in scoring position and O’Neill is similarly doing almost no damage when men are on.
Their best hitters with men on base might be Rob Refsnyder, Masataka Yoshida, and Reese McGuire. Two platoon outfielders, the latter of whom is hurt, and a backup catcher.
When Bailey came in, he (among others) believed there was talent in Boston that could be coached up. “If our industry doesn’t view our pitching staff individually at higher tiers [by year’s end],” he said in January, “I just didn’t do my job.”
No one is doing that fresh-eyed look with the hitters, though the turnstile of faces necessitated by both the offseason approach and the litany of injuries makes that mildly less damning.
These things can change quickly, of course. Devers is showing more patience this season, his walk rate in the top 10 percent of the league even as his swing-and-miss and strikeout numbers rise. It’s still early enough where “that’s baseball” is a suitable explanation.
Washington is another team in their cosmic cloud. Better than expected! Fun! Getting surprise production from their kids and their pitchers — the bullpen’s carrying the freight there, though. Still, the Nats are just .500 and staring up at a runaway top two in their division.
Tanner Houck goes Friday against Patrick Corbin, an eminently gettable veteran. Brayan Bello should return Sunday. Winnable games at home.
What the pitchers are doing, the philosophical change being made and the foundational blocks being placed, is the sort of thing from which the next great Red Sox team can really sprout. I don’t think anyone believes Dom Smith and Garrett Cooper are going to be part of that.
But they and their bats can be a part of whatever this is. The offense is usually the easy part at Fenway Park.
If this group, whomever they are, can figure it out, this year could be something a little bit more than a foundation for the future.
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