With a quarter of the season already under wrap, let’s breakdown the Boston Red Sox campaign to date.
To begin, if it wasn’t for injuries, the pitching staff would be up to par with the high expectations it was given. At this point, the pitching staff is ranked 11th in ERA at 4.02 and fifth in strikeouts with 406. The rotation also finds itself in the top half of most important statistical metrics. The back end of the rotation however have been killing the team and forcing to have the bullpen which has been surprisingly good have a heavier workload than it should.
The fielding has been a surprise in some aspects of the game while in some case downright disgusting. Boston is ranked 3rd in SBPCT vs the catcher with .560 percent which is the best percentage in team history (dating back to 1999).
Now to the ugly part, the Red Sox have committed a whopping 33 miscues to date. In comparison, last year the team committed a total of 75 in 166 games.
Now to talk about the big elephant in the room. Yes, the Red Sox sits sixth in the league in batting AVG at .264 and first in times sruck out. That’s about the only thing the Sox have going at the plate. Boston is great at singles, but can’t manage to bring the boys home, which is shown by their 18th rank in runs scored as the Red Sox have only crossed the plate 184 times.
At the quarter mark, the team failed to score more than three runs on 13 occasions. Not to mention, the team is second in grounded double plays with 45.
The biggest issue apparent is in all this is the lack of power. The Red Sox sit dead second to last this season with 37 home runs. With David Ortiz now retired, it seems more that management failed to find a successor. The intimidation that the Red Sox once had in the middle of the order is all but gone.
Would changing the batting order make a difference? Is it just a matter of time before luck get’s on the Red Sox side and long balls starts raining. Maybe it’s just a bad stretch for the club and that once the players on the disabled list are back it would make a world of difference. But being on pace for less than 140 home runs, Boston will have to either find ways to stop with mental blunders and get players to round the bases or it could end early. In the last 10 years only two teams won a playoff series while having less than 150 dingers. The teams in question are the 2014 and 2015 Kansas City Royals whose pitching staff was out of this world. Next week we will take a look at how the Red Sox can either make or break this campaign.
