The last 10 games the Red Sox played prior to their romp through the Major League badlands were against the Mariners, Angels, Giants and Blue Jays.
In other words, real teams.
In that 10-game sample, which I consider more than adequate for assessing the quality of the team, the Red Sox were 3-7. In those 10 games, they scored 44 runs – 15 of them in one game.
I don’t know where these guys came from – the ones who have spent the last six games tap dancing on the Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies. But my guess is that they feasted – like the rest of the Major Leagues have feasted – on two incredibly bad teams.
The immediate benefit of having pulverized the Nats and Rockies is that even if Tampa Bay sweeps them in the next four games, they’ll go into the All-Star break at .500, which is probably where they should be.
Before the season started, the “smart” inside baseball people predicted the Red Sox could win the American League East because the Yankees were without Gerrit Cole and had lost Juan Soto to free agency.
It looks as if New York’s cracks are showing, but apparently everybody slept on Toronto, which, as of Thursday, is 2 ½ games up on the Yankees. Oh, and since you’re probably asking, the Red Sox are 3-7 against the Blue Jays.
Simply put, the Red Sox are a .500 team. They are where they belong. The Sox have had poor performances from the likes of Trevor Story (who slept through April and May), Lucas Giolito (who struggled early as well) and their bullpen. Their defense has been horrendous, and their hitting spotty at best.
The team leads the league in strikeouts, and – as those aforementioned 10 games showed – it’s either feast or famine, and usually the latter. In fact, I’ll state here that instead of going after pitching coach Andrew Bailey, someone should do a deep dive on hitting coach Peter Fatse.
Then there was the Rafael Devers drama, which is rather odd since his issues didn’t include hitting. Devers led the team in home runs and RBI before he was traded. But apparently behind the scenes, Devers was not having ANY of what the Red Sox management wanted him to do.
Perhaps Devers was justifiably angry over how he felt he was being jerked around, but he wasn’t smart in how he showed it. Now he’s a Giant.
Here’s where the rubber meets the road, however. Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Carlos Narváez are terrorizing pitchers who, in the days of 10-team leagues, would be playing Double-A ball, if even that high. And Boston’s pitchers are overmatching Double-A hitters.
It’s not a fair fight, even when it’s the Red Sox doing the pulverizing. Yet, “Red Sox Nation” has concluded that, “Who needs Devers with all these sluggers in the lineup?”
Let’s see what happens now. Going into the break, the Red Sox have four games at home against the Rays, against whom they always struggle. Coming out of the break, the Red Sox have nine games against the Cubs and Phillies on the road, then the Dodgers at home. If they can at least break even in those 13 games, maybe we can talk about the postseason.
And it gets no easier either. They have six games against Houston and three in San Diego. In fact, the second half is a killer, which is why it was so important for the Red Sox to make hay in the early season, which, of course, they failed to do.
In my 70-odd years of Sox watching, I’ve seen them consistently overrate their talent, which has prevented them from making intelligent trades and engaging in prudent risk-taking.
In a curious sort of way, I admire GM Craig Breslow for pulling the trigger on a risky trade, even if I do not like the trade. It shows, like the Celtics’ Brad Stevens, he’s not afraid to part with a good player in hopes of getting a good one or two in return (see Smart, Marcus).
That’s the first time either Breslow – or Chaim Bloom before him – admitted that all of these untouchables aren’t so untouchable. And it’ll put everyone else on notice that they’re not sacrosanct either.
But this year?
Unless they demonstrate that they can hang in there against the rest of the league, and not just the wretched refuse, this team is .500 at best. And if the rest of the league is so mediocre that .500 gets them into the playoffs, count your blessings.
