The Red Sox Have Hauled Off Six Straight Wins, As Their Up And Down, Lovable/Hateable Season Rolls On
I can’t figure this team out, man. They’ve just won six straight games for the second time this season, but I don’t have a short memory. The last time the Red Sox won six straight games, they went 8-14, which was the third worst record in the American League over that span. Then they won six straight again. It’s weird, because if you’re gonna call it like you see it then the fair assessment is to say that they’re wildly inconsistent, but then you look up and see that they have the second best record in the American League. That sort of changes things and makes you question whether or not you’re being too hard on them. Not trying to get chewed out on a team plane or anything.
But what exactly has changed since the last time the Red Sox won six straight? Conspiracy theorists will try to get you to believe that David Price and Dustin Pedroia being on the disabled list have contributed. Take the tinfoil hat off, dog. The Red Sox are a better team when Price is in the rotation and Pedroia is making Gold Glove plays at second base and hitting atop the batting order. It’s not their absence that has unlocked Boston’s will to win six straight games.
However, one of the big changes between now and then has been Eduardo Nunez. Fucking guy has been playing out of his mind. And every time that he does something special, I get a bunch of people chirping me about how I compared him to Brock Holt when the Red Sox acquired him. Well, yeah. That’s not a knock on him; it’s just what he had been brought here to be. The Red Sox have Rafael Devers at third, Xander Bogaerts at short, Pedroia at second, and some combination of Hanley Ramirez, Mitch Moreland and Sam Travis at first base. The comparison to Holt was to say that the Red Sox now have another infielder who can play multiple positions and even some outfield.
Where the comparison to Holt deviates is obviously the offensive production. Holt, who has been dealing with vertigo all year, is hitting .200 with a .509 OPS in 75 plate appearances this season. Nunez, on the other hand, has come in to Boston guns blazing, hitting fucking .400 with a 1.229 OPS, 4 homers, 4 doubles and 12 RBI in nine games. Yeah, because everybody saw that coming. Nunez had four homers total in 76 games with the Giants before being dealt to the Red Sox. By the way, Nunez’s 1.229 OPS is better than Giancarlo Stanton’s over that same span (1.182).
While literally nobody on planet earth saw this coming from Nunez, there was a split opinion on Devers after his call-up. Either he was going to come up and be overwhelmed and underperform, or he was going to tread water and be meh, or he was going to set the world one fire. So far, he’s been setting the world on fire. Since his second major league game, he’s hitting .385 with an 1.109 OPS over his last 49 plate appearances. It’s also worth noting that the Red Sox have won eight of ten games over that stretch.
One of the major concerns with this team at the deadline, and technically even now that Hanley has been dealing with oblique soreness on top of an array of other injuries, is that they don’t have a true middle of the order bat. Hanley was supposed to be that, and for whatever reason — injuries, lack of effort, lack of motivation with no David Ortiz, whatever you choose to believe — he has not been that this year. Because of this, we’ve seen a bunch of non-cleanup hitters hitting cleanup like Andrew Benintendi, Moreland, Nunez, and even fuckin’ Steve Selsky. Remember him?
One wasn’t enough for @CY24_7 today! https://t.co/oQc4cteR8I pic.twitter.com/tfjLoW96us
— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 6, 2017
On Sunday, Chris Young was penciled in as Boston’s cleanup hitter for the fifth time this year, which obviously is not an ideal situation when you have your fourth outfielder hitting cleanup. It was also less ideal because Mike Pelfrey, a right-handed pitcher, got the start for the White Sox. Young’s strength, historically, has been hitting against lefties, although he has not done that very well this year to the tune of a .662 OPS. Left/right splits be damned, because Young took Pelfrey to the woodshed for two bombs, a double and 5 RBI.
That’s basically what this Red Sox team needed, though. Random guys who you wouldn’t expect to step up to start stepping up. Since their last six-game winning streak ended, there have been a TON of extremely underwhelming offensive performances. You’ve got Moreland (.165 BA, .553 OPS), Bogaerts (.182 BA, .492 OPS), Jackie Bradley Jr. (.200 BA, .543 OPS), Benintendi (.209 BA, .608 OPS), Hanley (.224 BA, .701 OPS), and Mookie Betts (.237 BA, .641 OPS) all giving this offense next to nothing, and those numbers are all including the current six-game winning streak that they’re on.
I’m gonna throw an educated guess out there — Nunez and Young probably aren’t going to keep this up for three straight months and carry the Red Sox to a World Series title single-handedly. I also don’t think Nunez will completely fall off, but he’s not hitting .400 the rest of the way. He could obviously be one hell of a contributor, as he has been since he walked through the door, but it’s going to take more than guys like Nunez and Young to achieve the ultimate goal. They’re going to need guys like Mookie, Bogaerts, Bradley, Benintendi and Hanley to wake the fuck up.
I didn’t think a blog about the Red Sox winning six straight games would end with some sort of complaint about the team, but here we are. I’m just thinking long term here. I’m thinking titles. Championships. Parades. If you like and want those things, then you should also want these aforementioned names to step their shit up because the current model of depending on role players to carry the team is not sustainable.
Final score: Red Sox 6, White Sox 3