The silver linings are plentiful amid another doomed Red Sox season. But the franchise needs more than good vibes.
The Red Sox are 69-65 overall, but a bizarre and inexcusable 31-38 at home.
Oh, sure, there are scattered causes for optimism, indications of genuine progress, hopeful developments to cling to as the days dwindle on the competitive portion of the Red Sox season.
Jarren Duran, with his 42 doubles, 32 stolen bases, 20 home runs, and 13 triples — the only player ever to reach those benchmarks in a single season — is having a historic season in a very specific way. Not too shabby for a guy some of us (hi there, it’s me) thought was the quintessential Quadruple A player back in March.
Rafael Devers has casually and consistently walloped his way to a career-best OPS (.940), and he needs to two home runs (sure thing) and 20 RBIs (not out of the question) to reach 30 homers and 100 RBIs for the fourth time in his career.
Brayan Bello pitched the best and most encouraging game of his Major League career Wednesday, throwing — no, pitching, with nuance that matched his repertoire — eight shutout innings.
There’s more good stuff, and it doesn’t require a deep search. Wilyer Abreu’s rookie season (14 home runs, .834 OPS) has basically been an amalgam of Troy O’Leary’s run from 1995-99. Triston Casas now has 37 home runs and an .848 OPS in 630 career at-bats. Cedanne Rafaela practically sparks with electricity and confidence, and he strikes me as a player who will thrive in the October spotlight someday.
And yet . . . and yet . . . and yet . . .
And yet those last 10 words in that previous paragraph – “a player who will thrive in the October spotlight someday” – come accompanied by a stinging likelihood:
October baseball almost certainly won’t be played at Fenway Park this season.
Time and math are the Red Sox’ enemies now. Entering Fridays’ series opener against the Tigers, the Red Sox have won just eight of their last 21 games — and that’s with winning the first two of the three-game set versus Toronto.
They have won just 15 of 38 games since the All-Star break, which does not indicate that they are capable of making up even a 3½-game deficit in the wild-card race with 28 games to play.
The Red Sox are 69-65 overall, but a bizarre and inexcusable 31-38 at home, and those playoff odds (per baseball-reference.com) had shriveled to 17.5 percent. I don’t know about you, but I’m not believing in the equivalent of a .175 hitter.
This team has been resilient, and it has played with energy, and that has made fans want to believe in them. Maybe you even truly did for a time, perhaps when they won five in a row as June turned into July.
But there are some things resilience cannot overcome in baseball. A lack of pitching, most of all. The state of the Red Sox staff is the main reason I’m not worried about having to eat a heaping helping of crow for writing them off now.
Tanner Houck is winless in seven starts with a 5.18 ERA since returning from the All-Star Game. Kutter Crawford — who was no All-Star, but a pleasant surprise in the first half — has two wins and an 8.13 ERA in the same span. Bello has been wildly inconsistent.
Bullpen pickups Lucas Sims and Luis Garcia have left fans longing for the stability of 2007 Eric Gagne. James Paxton, as James Paxton does, got hurt. Milton’s Rich Hill is back at age 44 to possibly snap off a few curveballs and pick up a few innings, but he’s been around so long that fellow Cubs pitchers in his 2005 debut included Greg Maddux and Mike Remlinger, who is 58 years old now.
It’s easy to lament the Chris Sale trade — have you heard he’s allowed two or fewer runs in his last 14 starts? — and some among us raced to be the first to do so as soon as he picked up his first victory as a Brave.
But I think we can acknowledge, if we’re being truthful, that had he remained with the Red Sox, he would have inevitably been knocked out for the season with, oh, a previously undiagnosed allergy to circus peanuts, or something equally absurd. He’s happier, and probably safer, in his new baseball home.
If we think about the direction (maybe misdirection is more accurate) of the Red Sox over the last half-dozen years, it absolutely will put a damper on any good stuff that happened this year.
And it should. The Red Sox are going to miss the postseason for the fifth time in sixth seasons. That’s unacceptable on so many levels, and I’m convinced the fun but fluky run to the 2021 American League Championship Series convinced ownership and the front office that their reduced interest and investment would be masked by a feel-good underdog outlier every few years.
Fans aren’t buying that now, and they certainly will not be come late September after these Sox are officially eliminated.
At least this offseason should bring clarity of purpose. The Red Sox can hit. They have some fine young players, and others in the heart of their prime. Now it’s time to spend — in prospects and dollars — for difference-makers on the pitching staff.
In some ways, the 2024 Red Sox have been a feel-good story. But eventually, reality sets in, and that’s when we remember, good vibes don’t lead to parades.
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