When the Red Sox went 3-8 through their season-opening West Coast trip, the popular sentiment was that the team would figure things out after a slow start. Then they dropped their home opener to the lowly Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park and, still, there was no sense of urgency. Since then it’s been up and down, left to right, three steps forward, three steps back. Whenever they tease us with signs of picking things up (like a three-game sweep at Tampa in April or winning two of three at Minnesota in June), they come back down to Earth. They’re at the midway point of the season (44-40 through 84 games) and still have just as many (if not more) question marks than they did in April.
Has the “closer by committee” approach worked? No. Matt Barnes has six blown saves this season. Ryan Brasier, Marcus Walden and Brandon Workman have each blown three. Barnes and Brasier pitched like heroes last October when everything was going their way. This year? Not so much. Maybe that’s why Dave Dombrowski was willing to let Joe Kelly and Craig Kimbrel walk away. It hasn’t worked the way Dombrowski planned.
Have they found their “Plan A” at second base? No. When Alex Cora held his end-of-season press conference a few days after winning the World Series, he revealed that the Red Sox intended to bat Dustin Pedroia in the leadoff spot to start the 2019 season. Cora and Dombrowski were sold on Pedroia returning as their starting second baseman after missing all but three games in 2018. Pedroia’s knees had other ideas. Since then it’s been a combination of Brock Holt, Eduardo Nunez, Marco Hernandez and Tzu Wei-Lin. Even Christian Vazquez played a few innings at second base in April. When everything’s going your way, like in 2018, you can get away with platooning players at a couple positions. When things aren’t going your way, it helps to have more consistency in the batting order. Perhaps a more consistent bat at second base helps give the bullpen a little more breathing room in a one or two-run game. Holt’s batting .319 but he’s battled injuries all season long.
Have they mentally turned the page on 2018? No. In fact, they never wanted to. When CEO Sam Kennedy spoke at Salem State in April, he said “‘Turn the page’ has a negative connotation. We want to keep ourselves in the same fantasy novel we’ve been operating in. We just want to write a new chapter.” The meat of the American League has started writing its new chapter. The Red Sox are stuck revisiting their old one. So much so that Dombrowski brought the same exact team (minus a few pieces) back to the fold expecting the same results. It never works that way. The 2018 Red Sox won 108 games but they still had weaknesses. Dombrowski never addressed them during the offseason. Last year’s team played with a chip on its shoulder after quick playoff exits in 2016 and 2017. The team playing with that same edge in 2019 holds an 11-game lead over the Red Sox in the American League East.
And what’s the excuse for going 20-22 at home through the first three months? They’re already two wins away from matching last season’s loss total at Fenway Park (they were 57-24 in home games). Nobody should expect the Red Sox to win 108 games again, but you won’t go far if you can’t take care of business at home (ask the Bruins how that worked in the Stanley Cup).
We’ve seen 84 games of this year’s team and they’ve been consistently inconsistent the entire way. With the trade deadline approaching, time’s ticking on the Red Sox. They need to find answers and they need them soon.
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I’m not sure if Danny Ainge hit it out of the park by signing Kemba Walker. I thought Nikola Vucevic was the player Ainge should’ve gone after. It’s a little more difficult to find a star center who averages a double-double than it is to find a point guard who can fit into Brad Stevens’ system. Either way, Ainge had to do something and Walker’s a solid addition to the mix. With a few more depth pieces and a couple bigs, the Celtics should have a well-rounded roster capable of making noise in the Eastern Conference. But it’s all going to come down to whether or not Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum play to their potential.
