Honestly, I have to admit that I have finally given up doubting the Red Sox and their current surprise of a baseball season.
I’ve criticized their roster, pointed out that they’ve only been successful when they beat bad teams, and waited patiently for their record to finally match the nature of their roster and for them to finally plummet to the basement of the AL East, where they’ve sat for three of the last four seasons.
But no, it’s time to ask ourselves how the team got to this point – 51-42, good for third place in the division – but also how far it can actually go.
I was at Fenway on Thursday night, and even though the Sox crushed the helpless Oakland A’s 7-0, I still couldn’t understand how they could win games without having so many stars in the mix. The game sheet that day included such unknown names as David Hamilton, Romy Gonzalez, Dominic Smith, Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela, Connor Wong and Masataka Yoshida, and these guys are the team’s regulars, not losers thrown in because of various injuries to the team.
Of course, the Red Sox have a handful of fairly well-known stars in their ranks, such as American League All-Stars Rafael Devers and Jared Duran, and, surprisingly, Tyler O’Neill. But those guys went 0-for-10 with eight strikeouts on Thursday night, and the team still won by seven runs.
Boston has a 15-7 record since June 14 and has lost just one of its last 11 series since late May. That makes Boston a serious contender for wild-card berth in the AL, where it currently sits third. The Red Sox have beaten the Yankees in four of six meetings so far this season and even won a series against the NL’s best team, the 61-win Phillies.
That doesn’t make sense, especially since the team is without the services of rising star Triston Casas and infielders Vaughn Grissom and Trevor Story, all of whom have missed extended periods of time with injuries, as well as their most important additions, starting pitcher Lucas Giolito and Swiss Army knife Garrett Whitlock, both of whom are recovering from season-ending elbow surgery. In addition, five other pitchers from the Sox’ 40-man roster are also on the injured list, and yet the team is 10 games over .500 in the supposedly highly competitive AL East.
So how do they do it? I just don’t know, but the offense was pretty good. Boston had a .253 batting average as a team against the Royals on Friday night, which is the eighth-best performance in all of baseball. They were second in the MLB with 14 triples (21st-best with 19 total in 2023) and sixth in the major leagues in slugging (.424), on-base percentage (.746) and steals (88 – last year the Sox had 112 all season, which was good enough for 17th).
On the pitching side, Boston surprisingly finished fifth in all of baseball with a team ERA of 3.65 (before the 6-1 loss to the Royals), thanks largely to the work of its four key starters: Tanner Houck (8-6, 2.54 ERA), Kutter Crawford (5-7, but a solid 3.24 ERA), Brayan Bello (9-5, 5.40) and Nick Pivetta (4-6, 4.18).
Now that the Red Sox are surprisingly rekindling interest among New England baseball fans, all eyes are on the team’s management and ownership to see if they will sign any players before the month-end MLB transfer deadline. From most fans’ perspective, it almost seems like those in charge are hoping the team will get back down to earth so they don’t have to make difficult decisions to improve the team. New baseball ops man Craig Breslow, a former Red Sox and member of the 2013 Boston Strong world championship team, isn’t commenting on how active the team will be, and the owners are largely silent, particularly principal owner John Henry, who hasn’t been quoted by local journalists in several years.
What is clear, however, is that the team is hesitant to invest a lot of money in the club, as was the case as recently as 2021, when the payroll was the sixth-highest in the major leagues. Boston has been among the four MLB teams with the highest payrolls every season since 2015 through 2021, and this season and the following they were in the top six. This season the payroll dropped all the way to 11th, and as mentioned a week ago, the roster’s payroll is $181.3 million, but if you subtract the $17 million the team is still paying Chris Sale to play in Atlanta and the $6.7 million they are still paying Justin Turner to play for the Blue Jays, the team’s payroll is only $157.6 million, which would rank just 16th in the major leagues.
If the team keeps winning, however, management will hopefully feel obligated to invest in some improvements, otherwise the fan base will rightly direct its ire at the team’s stinginess and lack of a win orientation. Folks around here are well aware that the ballclub used to be John Henry & Co.’s primary focus in terms of spending and improvements, but Fenway Sports Group is so fragmented right now due to its myriad interests in auto racing (NASCAR’s Roush Fenway Racing), the Premier League (Liverpool, which ended its 30-year league title-less drought after being purchased by FSG in 2010), the NHL (the Pittsburgh Penguins) and even the American professional golf landscape as it navigates its way into merging the Saudi-sponsored LIV Tour with the established PGA Tour. Henry also owns the Boston Globe, which I imagine isn’t exactly a cash cow here in 2024.
So if the team decides to add to its roster at the trade deadline, what should it seek? That’s pretty simple: another starting pitcher. Ideally a left-hander, since the team only has three on the current roster and they’re all fairly unknown middle relievers. Another right-hander would also be a welcome addition, and here’s why: Before Thursday’s game, Boston had been good against right-handed starters this year (38-27, .585) but had similar problems against lefties (12-14, .462). Overall, the Red Sox are batting just .247 against lefties (14th in MLB) with an OBP of .326 (8th) and a slugging percentage of .390 (16th). The team also boasts an incredible 29 percent strikeout rate against left-handers—the highest in the major leagues—highlighted by the struggles of Devers (.238 against lefties, .316 against righties) and Duran (.248 against .291).
This season reminds me a little of the magical 2013 season that produced incredible upsets, especially in the postseason. That season was two years after the monumental collapse in September 2011 that ultimately led to the departure of manager Terry Francona and GM Theo Epstein. The next season, the team, in its infinite wisdom, decided to hire Bobby Valentine to manage the ballclub, with predictably disastrous results: a 69-93 record and the team’s first last-place finish since 1993, as well as the first of six cellar finishes in the last twelve seasons.
A year later, with John Farrell at the helm and a ragtag bunch of bearded brothers (including Mike Napoli, Jonny Gomes and Shane Victorino) joining the team, the team somehow went from last place the previous season to a division title and a 97-65 regular season record in the season played after the Boston Marathon bombings. When the trade deadline came, the Sox were a half-game ahead of the Rays in second place but were 20 games over their .500 record, so they didn’t have much to do, and that’s not what they did, acquiring 32-year-old starter Jake Peavy from the Tigers. The former Cy Young Award winner (2007) was brought in to provide extended service in a bullpen that had lost Andrew Bailey, Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Miller to injuries that ruled them out for the end of the season. Peavy went 4-1 with a 4.04 average in the regular season, but was relatively inconsequential in the postseason, although he started one game in each of the teams’ three playoff rounds.
In the ALCS against the powerful Tigers, the Sox as a team only managed a modest batting average of .202 with an OPS of .609, while Detroit hit .254. The teams’ ERAs (Detroit: 2.77, Boston 3.06) also varied, as did their total strikeouts (the Tigers struck out 42 times, Boston 73). Nevertheless, the Sox won comfortably in six games, thanks in particular to the heroics of David Ortiz in Game 2, and then eliminated the Redbirds in six games to win the franchise’s eighth World Series title.
From last place to first place – sound familiar? Could it happen again 11 seasons later? Unlikely, considering this boring roster, but stranger things have happened. If this current Red Sox team can be 10 games over .500 in mid-July and in third place ahead of two teams that are more talented than them on paper (the Rays and Jays), then the owners and front office geeks need to look beyond the numbers and probabilities and properly invest in a team (of destiny?) that quickly captured the hearts of the Fenway faithful, even though all signs pointed otherwise at the start of this ill-fated season.
