The Red Sox Have Risen Above .500 Thanks To The Second Coming Of Xander Bogaerts
At the age of 21, Xander Bogaerts was already a World Series champion. Over two seasons, from 2015 through 2016, Bogaerts was second in the majors in hits, trailing only the reigning American League MVP Jose Altuve. Last year, Bogaerts had a little bit of a down year, which really wasn’t so much of an overall down year as much as it was a year that started off great and then trended downwards. I feel like most of us, in our heads, think that Bogaerts’ season last year was a complete failure, but he was hitting .325 with an .856 OPS as late as June 23 last summer. From there, he’d hit .226 with a .646 OPS the rest of the way.
An injury to Bogaerts’ right hand, AKA his top hand when swinging a bat, was the beginning of the end for him last season. But that didn’t stop the hot take spewers from coming out and doubting this kid’s ability. I don’t know for sure if this impacted fans’ perception — perhaps it did — but I’ve got a feeling that Bogaerts’ down year coupled by Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor both having career years might’ve played a role. Both Correa and Lindor are younger than Bogaerts and enjoyed seasons last year that Red Sox fans have long been hoping to see from Bogaerts, but are still waiting.
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Could this be the year? I mean, he’s off to a start that would indicate that it could be, but we’ve seen hot starts from him before, although I still don’t think it’s fair to criticize a player for tailing off once they’ve been injured. However, one thing that I think fans aren’t taking into account here is that while it feels like Bogaerts has been on the team forever — this is his sixth season in Boston — he’s just now entering his age-25 season. There has been extensive research done on what the peak years of a baseball player’s career are, and that peak starts at their age-25 season. He’s just now entering his prime.
And if this is year-one of his prime, then yeah. That makes a lot of sense, because he’s started the 2018 season 8-for-12 with 5 doubles and a homer, becoming the first player in Red Sox history to have multiple extra-base hits in the first three games of the season, and just the second player since 1900 to accomplish that feat for any team. Our old pal Adrian Gonzalez with the Dodgers in 2015 was the first.
Now, we’ve got Alex Cora’s first real managerial decision to make outside of his in-game decisions — do you move Bogaerts up in the batting order, or do you keep him right where he is because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? The Red Sox haven’t exactly been pouring on the runs, but if it weren’t for a Joe Kelly pants-shitting on Opening Day, they’d be 3-0. The model, to this point, has worked.
I say wait a little bit. Three games is a bit quick to start shifting the lineup around. Players don’t particularly like that, and the whole point of batting Hanley Ramirez third wasn’t because he earned it in spring training; it was to give him confidence and keep him motivated. So, that kind of defeats the purpose to drop him down after three games, although Bogaerts certainly looks like the better fit there and I think it’s only a matter of time before he ends up in that spot. Plus, it just makes more sense to have Hanley, the power hitter, hitting fifth with Bogaerts, who’s more of a pure hitter, batting third.
There’s been a lot of talk about redemption tours this year — David Price is on his, Xander Bogaerts is on his, but what about Rick Porcello? Motherfucker won the Cy Young award in 2016 and followed that up by losing more games than anybody in the league, allowing more home runs than anybody in the league, and more hits than anybody in the league. Year-to-year, you simply just do not know what you’re going to get from Porcello.
If Chris Sale and Price’s season debuts were any indication, then we now have a trend developing for how Red Sox starters will be handled early in the year. Despite the fact that he was cruising against the Rays, having only allowed one hit, Sale was pulled at 92 pitches. Price had finished seven shutout innings at 76 pitches and that was the end of his night. And in the third game of this four-game set, Porcello got the hook at 89 pitches. Although, in his case, it was because he had run into some trouble in the bottom of the sixth.
I’m sure the old school guys will pound their fists on the table and talk about the days when Nolan Ryan threw 235 pitches in a game, but then those will also be the same fans who complain when guys like Sale run out of gas in the second half or shit the bed in October. We’ve been wondering how the Red Sox planned on keeping their starters fresh, since the rotation is Boston’s greatest strength during the regular season, yet it has been their biggest Achilles heel in the postseason. Well, this is how.
Final score: Red Sox 3, Rays 2