The Red Sox Needed A Big Home Stand, And Went 4-5 On Said Home Stand
I’ve got some good news, and some bad news. Which one do you want first?
I’m going to assume you said good news. The GOOD news is, the Red Sox were the best hitting team in the MLB over their nine-game home stand. As a team, the Red Sox hit .292, and led the MLB in OPS (.884), hits (92), home runs (19), runs (59), extra-base hits (39), and total bases (171). That’s great, right? A nine-game home stand, you’d figure they went at least 7-2 with numbers like that. Nope.
The BAD news is, they went 4-5. How in the FUCK do you lead the planet in every single offensive category imaginable, and still have a record below .500 to show for it? The answer to that question is because their pitching sucks, much as it has sucked for the entire season. If Boston’s pitching staff was even HALF decent, they’d be sitting comfortably in first place. Think about it — the Red Sox have lost ten games that David Price has started. You win half of those, as they should if Price is pitching like Price, and you’re up 2.5 games in the AL East. And that’s just one guy who has performed well under his capabilities.
Over Boston’s nine-game home stand, the Red Sox had an ERA of 4.89, which was the 26th worst out of 30 major league teams. They averaged 6.6 runs scored per game, but they allowed an average of 5.11 runs per game. Of the five games that they lost on the home stand, they lost three games by one run, and two games by two runs. Just the epitome of frustrating baseball. After the 4-3 loss at the hands of the Detroit Tigers to suffer their first series sweep of the season, the Red Sox dropped to 11-12 in one-run games, while also going 10-11 in two-run games.
The other thing that I’ve noticed about this team is their inability to come back late in games. I’m not talking about ninth inning rallies, either. The way that bullpens are constructed these days, you can’t expect many bullpen implosions in the ninth inning of close games. Scale it back a few more innings and cast a wider net here — the Red Sox are 6-32 when they’re trailing after six innings. That’s…horrible.
After six innings, you still have one third of the game left, and this team doesn’t have the ability to make a comeback with that much baseball remaining? They’re 18-27 when their opponents score first, and 37-17 when they don’t, so all this does is further stress the importance of having decent pitching, because some of these starters haven’t even given the Red Sox a chance to compete. Maybe Drew Pomeranz is part of that solution. Maybe Eduardo Rodriguez is, too. But I fear for this team’s future, given that they’re about to head out on an 11-game road trip, and finish their season with 41 of their final 63 games on the road.
They need David Price to figure it out. The league average ERA in 2016 is 4.18, and Price has accumulated a 4.51 ERA through 21 starts. Steven Wright stepped up and became this team’s ace when they didn’t have one. Over the past month, Wright has come back down to earth with an ERA of 6.47, and now somebody else needs to step up and be the ace. It needs to be Price, and it needs to start tonight. Expect the Red Sox to make a move at the deadline for a reliever — I’m assuming it’s going to be David Robertson from the White Sox — and you also get Craig Kimbrel returning from knee surgery as early as this upcoming road trip.
With all this talk about acquiring an ace like Chris Sale at the deadline, Price figuring it the fuck out has the same effect as acquiring an ace at the deadline, just like Kimbrel returning from injury is the equivalent to trading for a closer, only you give up nothing to “acquire” both. So much of this Red Sox season from here on out depends on the performance of those two men over the last two months of this season. But a lot of this falls on the shoulders of Price, who gets the ball in Anaheim tonight.