A Cure For What Ails Ya

Just a ton of stuff: Sale, Schwarber, the rotation, Sweeping the O's, Injuries, the return of Travis Shaw, and more games against the Yankees

Imagine you are wandering in the desert. You’re exhausted, barely able to struggle on, the sand is endless, mound after mound of it is all you can see. What would you want to find more than anything? Water, right? Coming across a big pool of fresh, cool drinking water would answer your prayers and quite possibly save your life.

Now imagine you aren’t a person, you are a baseball team. You are lost in the desert. What would you want to see more than anything in the world? Water right? NO! The Baltimore Orioles!

The Red Sox came over the top of the proverbial sand dune and saw, standing there facing them, the answers to their prayers. We’ll get into all of it, but first, if you are new here or haven’t subscribed yet, please do! Sox Outsider is a free, fun, and informative newsletter about the Red Sox, by me, Matt Kory. Just click this little button and put in your email. That’s it!

The Red Sox were reeling, having lost 10 of their past 15 games, including losing two of three to Tampa in Boston. Things were bad. But! The Red Sox had something going for them that no other team in baseball did: they got to play the Orioles.

That’s not to dismiss the Orioles entirely. They are a major league baseball team and, as such, are entirely capable of winning baseball games against any opponent including the Red Sox. But my gosh! They are not good! To their credit, the Red Sox took advantage of the Orioles not-goodness, winning all three games and in the process outscoring the Orioles 30-5. I know it sounds crazy because that looks like way too many runs for the Orioles to have scored, but apparently they actually did score five! I know, I can’t remember that many either.

But back to the Red Sox who did all the things they’d struggled to do against Toronto and Tampa, namely hit, hit with runners in scoring position, add on to leads when given the opportunity, and hold the opponent down in later innings. There are more things I could list but I have to go to bed at some point tonight. The point is, the Red Sox looked like a completely different team against Baltimore than they had over the past two weeks. And again, that’s not really a huge surprise, but considering this Red Sox team has failed to take advantage of numerous opportunities presented to it, both during games and by the schedule, the fact that they did make the most of facing a team knocking on the door to another first overall draft pick is a good sign.

That’s not the only news out of this weekend though.

Kyle Schwarber Debuts

Boston’s deadline prize, Kyle Schwarber, surprisingly made his Red Sox debut at DH on Friday. I say surprisingly because, despite missing significant time, Schwarber never went on a rehab assignment. Despite that though, he looked quite good, walking twice and scoring two runs, the first of which is very un-2021 Red Sox. Schwarber got Saturday off, but started in yesterday’s game, and went 2-for-4 with two doubles. That makes him 2-for-6 with two doubles and two walks and three runs scored in his exceedingly short Red Sox career.

Aside from small sample size silliness, you can see what drew the Red Sox to Schwarber. He’s a big lefty bat with tons of power and a patient approach at the plate. Over his career he’s hit righties much better than lefties, but he’s shown some improvement this season against lefties. Still, it wouldn’t shock me, especially considering his injury history, if the Red Sox took the opportunity to rest him against lefty starters most of the time. We’ll see how that plan unfolds as the Red Sox are expected to face Jordan Montgomery of the Yankees during Tuesday’s double-header.

When he’s in the lineup though, Schwarber does make a huge difference, lengthening the middle as well as allowing manager Alex Cora to make it tough on opposing managers later in the game by mixing up righties and lefties much more easily. So far Schwarber has yet to play the field, but presumably he’ll be at first base at some point soon.

Chris Sale!!!

This is probably burying the lede but Chris Sale made his triumphant return to the Fenway Mound on Saturday, throwing five innings of two run ball with eight strikeouts and no walks. Aside from the specifics (which I’ll get into in a moment) it was great to see Sale walk out to the mound and compete wearing a Red Sox uniform. It was a reminder of what we’d missed over these past two calendar years. The man is a damn horse! A super skinny, bearded horse that strikes major league hitters out. He’s truly a sight to behold.

As to the particulars, Sale looked good. He was able to reach the mid-90s with his fastball at times, but the pitched bounced around speed-wise between 96 mph and 90 mph. It’s not clear if that’s because Sale is still working back from injury, if he’s still a bit rusty overall considering the extent of his injury and his lack of a normal off-season, spring training, etc, or if he’s just a 32 year old pitcher. Truthfully, it’s probably a bit of all of the above.

Sale has never been a guy who throws 90 though, so seeing that reading on the gun in his final inning was a bit surprising, but he came back after that and registered 93 mph on what ended up being his last fastball of the day.

Mostly though, it as all there, if not quite at Peak Sale. There were times when he just made Orioles hitters look silly, like the slider he threw to Trey Mancini in the first inning that looked like it was going to be well outside then looked like it was going over the plate (which is when Mancini committed to swinging at it) then ended up almost hitting Mancini in his back foot which was after his swing had missed it by about three feet. There was also the 96 mph fastball that completely fooled some Orioles hitter enough that he feebly swung at (and missed) it despite the fact that it was up and away and never was a strike.

Moments like that - where Sale throws a pitch that for another pitcher would be borderline non-competitive but for Sale it gets a swing and a miss because there is no way for a batter to track and adjust to all Sale’s crazy pitches - are just another example of how impossible Sale can be to hit when he’s healthy and on his game.

Speaking of on his game, there was some rust. He did miss his spots sometimes, and sometimes he missed them by a lot. He threw pitches right over the middle of the plate and because he’s Chris Sale, most of the time that worked despite the dangerous location. But twice it didn’t work, once on a changeup up in the zone to Austin Hays and once on a fastball down the middle to Trey Mancini. Both pitches were swiftly deposited over the Monster and the centerfield wall, respectively.

But even that was okay. It was okay because the Red Sox were up 6-0 at the time of the first homer and would score 10 more runs before the game concluded. It was also okay because there were two outs and no runners on base when both homers were hit, so the damage, even extraordinary as it looked (homers off Sale are always extraordinary), was limited. But mostly, it was okay because the Red Sox ace was back on the mound and healthy.

New Starting Rotation

I wrote about this a few weeks ago and it’s finally come to fruition. Chris Sale’s return combined with the demotion of Garrett Richards to the bullpen along with former rotation-mate and current bullpen-mate Martin Perez means the Red Sox have their best rotation setup right now. That rotation is:

1. Chris Sale

2. Eduardo Rodriguez

3. Nathan Eovaldi

4. Tanner Houck

5. Nick Pivetta

Or some variation on that theme. The names might not be in the order you’d choose and they might not be in the order the Red Sox choose, but those are the correct names, and for now at least that’s what matters.

And you know what? That rotation isn’t half bad. Nobody is going to confuse it with a healthy Dodgers rotation, but it’s got some upside and, as importantly, there aren’t any starters who you think ‘uh-oh, the Red Sox are going to have to score 10 to win today.’ By FanGraphs metrics, Eovaldi, Rodriguez, and Pivetta are all having solid seasons, Chris Sale is Chris Sale, and somehow Tanner Houck has better numbers than all of them. Again, not the Dodgers, but if they can stay healthy (always the caveat with pitchers), this is a group who can get this team where they want to go.

The Orioles

My gosh they’re bad. Oof.

Injuries

Adam Ottavino and Josh Taylor both went out on the same day though for different reasons. Ottavino took a come-backer off his non-throwing arm and reports are that he’ll be okay though he may miss some time with general soreness. The man has struggled recently as well and continued that trend against Baltimore before leaving with the injury on Sunday, so maybe some time off wouldn’t be the worst thing for him. He’s thrown a lot of innings this season.

As for Taylor, he was placed on the COVID-IL though it’s not clear if he has the illness or was simply exposed to someone who had it. For his part, Cora seems to think Taylor will be back again soon.

Travis Shaw Returns (for now)

Normally this would be its own post, but crazy news day as today is, it’s at the bottom (almost). The Red Sox claimed old friend Travis Shaw off waivers from Milwaukee yesterday and intend to have him in uniform for the series against New York beginning Tuesday. That probably spells the end of Franchy Cordero’s second stint in Boston, but we’ll see what the corresponding move is when they active Shaw on Tuesday.

Shaw had a couple fantastic seasons in Milwaukee, proving how misguided trading him away had been. But since putting up an .843 OPS with 63 homers over two seasons in 2017 and 2018, Shaw has cooled considerably. His slash line from 2019 to the present day is .191/.287/.331. As a 31-year-old with not the longest track record of major league success who hasn’t been particularly good at anything since 2019, it’s possible Shaw is simply done as a productive major leaguer. But the Red Sox clearly think there’s something still there, or at least he has some useful skill that the front office feels can help the team win baseball games. After pouring over his numbers, I’m not seeing it, but that doesn’t mean much, so hopefully Shaw can pull a rabbit from the hat the rabbit he pulled from his hat back in 2017 was wearing. That would be fun.

Yankees Series

It’s mid-August and this is a big series. Three games in two days bookended by off-days. The Yankees are 2.5 games behind the Red Sox. By Wednesday evening they could be a half game ahead, or they could be 5.5 games back. A few simple games can make an entire season feel good or bad. That’s something that, if we didn’t know it already, we just learned from Baltimore.