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Red Sox, right where they were a year ago, making far more with their mediocrity
There'll be ups. There'll be downs. At least we're still enjoying this ride.
COMMENTARY
All mediocrity is not created equal.
Consider this factoid: Fifty games into last season, the ultimately uninspiring Red Sox were . . . 26-24. Same as they are this morning, entering a brief home trio with the first-place Milwaukee Brewers and a visit to the 30-win Orioles in Baltimore.
I’ll admit that it caught me by surprise, the memories of a year ago hardly fond. By this point, the 2023 squad already had an eight-game win streak, but also three distinct four-game skids. It was fourth in the majors in runs scored, but an established defensive disaster, with Corey Kluber and Nick Pivetta already booted from a rotation that had one starter (Brayan Bello) with an ERA south of 4.99.
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It had swept four from Toronto to climb to third place, but also been swept at Fenway by both Pittsburgh and St. Louis. In addition to what, until this week, had been the regular pounding at Tropicana Field.
“We’re versatile. We can play their game,” manager Alex Cora told reporters on Tuesday, after Jarren Duran’s swipe of home helped beat the Rays. “We can come here and play defense and run the bases and be aggressive and hit the ball out of the ballpark. And we can pitch, too.”
“We’ve been going through a great moment right now,” outfielder Wilyer Abreu said on NESN after Wednesday’s win.
His wording is artful — doubly impressive in a second language. The nature of a mediocre baseball season is swells and swales. Moments, often feeling disconnected from the ones before and after. The hope that something is happening, usually followed by the reality that it isn’t.
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A year ago, Alex Verdugo was not the ascendant All-Star he appeared after 50 games. Masataka Yoshida was not on his way to being Boston’s best hitter and a savvy addition. Jarren Duran . . . well, about him, because Fangraphs’ WAR would argue he’s a top-20 player in 2024.
AFTER 50 RED SOX GAMES, JARREN DURAN
2023: 34 G, 133 plate apps., .300/.353/.483, 7 SB, 6.8% walk rate, 27.1% K rate
2024: 50 G, 227 plate apps., .270/.339/.461, 11 SB, 8.4% walk rate, 22.0% K rate
The first Red Sox player to start the first 50 games of a season, as noted by Ian Browne, since Dustin Pedroia in 2013. What was it that I was saying about something?
Even the rosiest glasses can’t obscure the 2024 Red Sox seem destined to be perpetually swimming against the tide. In a division with two powers that aren’t them, they have spent all but one day this month — the first one — chasing the three wild-card spots. They’re a bad weekend from returning to the AL East basement, and a good week might still see them behind the Orioles.
All this is true.
So are those good vibes you’re feeling.
For all the ways the above translates to 2024, this team is solid in a way their predecessors weren’t. Resilient, in a way their ancestors proved not to be when, say, Chaim Bloom middled a couple trade deadlines.
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Fun, to put it simply. More worthy of your time and attention than those who came before.
Does that matter? Even if the end’s what we think it is.
Caring about a sports team, or anything where you have no direct hand on the wheel, means you’ll never be far from the five stages of grief. Heck, we see all of them in the various slivers of the fan base even when the times are good. Now?
Denial about what might happen if the Red Sox, who always have the resources, are still in the mix around the trade deadline.
Seems like a good point to note those comments out of the Bronx, where Hal Steinbrenner cautioned Yankee fans that “payrolls at the levels we’re at right now are simply not sustainable for us financially.” Though it gets a lot less interesting when you remember “those levels” are in excess of $300 million, with a $60M luxury tax bill.
Anger at everything other than the ketchup. Bargaining that, to crib from Dan Shaughnessy, Vaughn Grissom for Chris Sale is not “a latter-day Danny Cater for Sparky Lyle.” (The trade will be fine, but I can’t not share the most Dan simile imaginable.)
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Acceptance that this will be just be how it is here, the championship thirst of Philadelphia and New York and Los Angeles a thing of the past.
I won’t argue any of that, but take solace in those good vibes. The Red Sox changed regimes again this winter, hoping that the pitching would take root in the new soil. It has.
A bottom-10 defense in 2022 and a bottom-one defense in 2023 is, today, midpack despite losing Trevor Story thanks to a genuinely good outfield.
A bottom-10 team each of the last two years at taking the extra base — first to third, scoring from second on a single, etc. — is league average in 2024.
It is hopeful at a time when it so easily couldn’t be. Not just because of the injuries that have shredded the roster, to the point Rob Refsnyder is DHing and Connor Wong is batting third. (Yes, I know both have been good . . . that’s still where J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts used to live.)
Wong and Reese McGuire, who’ve combined to hit .320/.372/.466 at catcher, are placeholders for Kyle Teel. If Roman Anthony’s the guy in center field, one of Duran, Abreu, and Ceddanne Rafaela feels like a man too many. Story’s signed through 2027, Grissom’s team controlled through 2029, and Marcelo Mayer’s coming.
That’s a lot for whomever’s filling out the lineup card, an open question given Cora’s pending free agency.
The above has so many question marks, it looks like the keyboard got stuck. That’s how it is with the future, whether you’re cycling through potential franchise quarterbacks, planning to run it back after another playoff flop, or having far less success under a new regime than even the Red Sox have.
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The local baseball team’s in it. They’re stealing home. They’re smiling. They’re, even just barely, winning more than the lose. They haven’t looked this good since Mookie left town and the world shut down.
There’ll be ups. There’ll be downs.
At least we’re still enjoying this ride.
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