The Red Sox Are Five Games Into The Season, And Sandy Leon Has Game-Winning Hits In Two Of Them
We’ve got the flu bug ripping through the Red Sox clubhouse, players are dropping like flies, and all Sandy Leon is doing is ripping game-winning hits into right-center and dropping walk-off bombs into the Monster seats.
We’re five games and three wins into the 2017 season, and Leon has delivered game-winning hits in two of them. He’s also started four times and had multi-hit games in three. Can’t get too excited about four games, though, albeit being a .438 with an 1.188 OPS start. Excited isn’t the word, because the sample is too small, but fuck anybody who says you can’t feel good about it, especially when there was so much talk about whether or not 2016 was a fluke. To John Farrell’s credit, he came right out yesterday and gave Leon the vote of confidence that he deserves.
“What he did last year, that’s not a fluke, that’s a large number of at-bats last year that he was very productive, and to see what he’s doing from both sides of the plate is certainly encouraging,” the manager said.
Leon became Boston’s primary starting catcher back on June 7 last year. Since that date, Leon is hitting .317 with an .865 OPS. With a minimum of 39 games (picked that number so that Andrew Benintendi would also qualify), Leon trails only Mookie Betts for the team lead in batting average (.336), and he’s forth on the team in OPS, but technically he’s third because David Ortiz is first and he’s no longer on the team. FUCK, I hated writing that sentence.
Both Hanley Ramirez and Betts are ahead of Leon in OPS, but that’s it. He’s hit better than Dustin Pedroia, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Benintendi, you name it. And that’s all in 299 plate appearances, which isn’t quite a full season. But like Farrell said, that’s not a small sample size, either.
When he wasn’t busy driving in game-winning hits, Leon had a game to catch with reigning Cy Young award winner Rick Porcello on the mound. You can look at this one of two ways — you can look at Porcello’s line — 6 innings, 11 hits, 4 runs, 3 earned, a walk, and 8 strikeouts — and say, “Yeah, he just didn’t quite have it yesterday.” Or, you can take this approach, and recognize that even though Porcello clearly didn’t have his best stuff, he still went six-plus innings and kept the Red Sox in the game, a game that they went on to win, despite Porcello not getting the win.
The 11 hits allowed for Porcello on Sunday were the most hits he’s allowed in a start since July 4 against Texas last year, the only time he allowed double digit hits all season, and it was a start in which he also allowed four runs, three earned. So, at least we know he’s good with limiting the damage when he gives up a bunch of hits. Not a ton of hard contact, either, yesterday. Of those 11 hits, Porcello allowed a double to Andrew Romine, and the go-ahead homer to lead off the 7th inning to Nick Castellanos. The rest were all singles.
The homer to Castellanos came on Porcello’s 96th pitch of the day, and there was obviously some second-guessing of the manager, given how Porcello didn’t look his best all afternoon, but I had no problem with him still being out there. Porcello had retired eight out of the last nine batters he had faced prior to the Castellanos home run, and if there’s one thing that we learned about Porcello last year, it’s that this is a guy that wants the ball.
There are pitchers in this league who are happy to approach 100 pitches and just hand over the baseball, but Porcello wanted to be out there, probably even more so knowing that half the bullpen has spent the last week puking their brains out. Gotta love that about Pretty Ricky. So, no. I don’t blame Farrell for that. Just gotta tip your cap to Castellanos and move on.
In the fallout of the injuries to Carson Smith last year and Tyler Thornburg this year, we’re obviously going to be keeping a close eye on this Red Sox bullpen, as they try to figure out who belongs where. In the early going, it looks like Matt Barnes has climbed the highest in Farrell’s trust tree. He threw two scoreless innings, allowing just one hit and striking out three, to build the bridge to Craig Kimbrel in the ninth.
And for those who wanted to see Kimbrel for a four-out save in the eighth inning the other day, this is why that was a bad idea. The dude is wild as fuck. You really want him inheriting a situation with two runners already on base? You don’t want that. It’s always a wild ride with Kimbrel, who walked the first two batters he faced, came a couple feet away from allowing a game-tying bomb to Victor Martinez, but then ended up striking out the side for the save. It’s just never easy with him. It’s like, yeaaaah he’s the Red Sox closer because he throws 99-100 MPH and his curveball is nasty, but he has no idea where the fastball is going and Dave Portnoy has more control of his personal life than Craig Kimbrel does of his curveball.
I hate that the Red Sox have a closer that they can’t feel confident putting on the mound with inherited runners, and they can’t feel confident with him going multiple innings, and they can’t feel confident with him pitching in non-save situations, but that’s where we’re at right now. You give him a clean inning and a save situation, and by God, this man will strike out the side before he walks the bases loaded and walks in a run. That’s Craig Kimbrel in a nutshell, I guess. Enjoy the ride.
Final score: Red Sox 7, Tigers 5