Game Two: Not What You Want
Red Sox drop a second straight game to the Yankees to start the season
It’s hard to take much from two games. It’d be like flipping a coin twice, getting tails both times, and declaring, well, I guess I’ll never get heads again. Things will even out over the long season. Just last season the Red Sox lost the first three to a truly bad Baltimore team, and as much whining and fretting as we all did about it at the time, looking back on that series, it really and truly was completely meaningless.
That said, yesterday’s game kinda sucked. Let’s get into it after I say hello.
Hello! I’m Matt Kory and this is Sox Outsider. You might know me from The Athletic, FanGraphs, Vice Sports, or Sports on Earth. I’ve written lots of places and now I’m writing here, covering the Red Sox. So stick around, follow along, it’s free to do all of that. I just ask that you subscribe so you won’t miss anything and so I’ll feel better about myself. Thats how this works, right? Thanks.
Yeah, it’s not what you want. You don’t draw up losing two in a row to the Yankees to start the year. If you wanted to, you could start to point out deficiencies in the roster based on these two losses. Or you could do that even if you didn’t want to. I, let’s be clear, don’t want to. But I’m gonna!
The first is the bullpen. So far this season the bullpen has pitched eight innings and allowed [checks box scores]… one earned run? That can’t be right. [checks again] One earned run? One earned run! In eight innings? That’s… good!
But okay, that actually doesn’t count the two Zombie Manfred Runners that started at second base in the 10th and 11th innings on Friday, both of which scored. So if you want to count those as earned runs, which you shouldn’t, but if you wanted to, it would be three earned runs in eight innings. That’s still not too bad! And if you wanted to split the difference and count just one of them, also, not bad!
The Red Sox bullpen might yet prove to be a ranging inferno that consumes the season in its fiery clutches. But if you look at just the first two games, that’s not been the case. And in fact, the opposite is true. So far.
How about the rotation? The rotation just isn’t good enough, right? That’s what we’ve heard all off-season. It’s not deep enough. It’s not strong enough. Through two games, the two best Red Sox starters on the roster have pitched and they’ve combined to give up seven runs in 10.2 innings. That’s… not good.
There are some caveats to it though. It’s early. The Yankees in Yankee Stadium are a bad matchup for any pitcher, let alone two with noted home run issues throughout their careers in Nathan Eovaldi and Nick Pivetta. So it’s a tough assignment. It’s a bad setting. But if you were looking at the early performance to confirm your prior notions about the inadequacies of the rotation, you’re probably feeling pretty confident about those ideas right about now. And what’s more, I can’t refute it with anything we’ve seen.
I do think the Red Sox rotation is deep enough. They have six guys for five spots (Eovaldi, Pivetta, Tanner Houck, Michael Wacha, Rich Hill, and Garrett Whitlock), with Chris Sale and James Paxton on the IL scheduled to join the team and hopefully make an impact in the rotation in a few months. They have a few guys in the minors who could get starts at some point in the majors if the situation warranted it in Josh Winckowski and Kutter Crawford (though he may just be a long man out of the bullpen). They have more than enough guys to fill out the back end of the rotation in a respectable manner.
If there is a complaint that resonates with me, it’s that there isn’t enough top talent. After Eovaldi there really should be someone better than Nick Pivetta or Tanner Houck. Potentially that can be remedied by Chris Sale’s return, but considering how his 2019, 2020, and 2021 seasons went, that’s might be wishful thinking. We’ll see where things stand closer to the trade deadline, but starting pitching might be something the Red Sox have to look at adding.
The last item is the offense. The Red Sox have scored seven runs in two games, but that includes the Zombie Manfred run they scored in the 10th inning of Game One. So if you don’t count that, it’s six in two games. Against the Yankees top two pitchers, that’s not terrible. It absolutely needs to be more, but it’s not terrible. The Red Sox could easily have won the first game and weren’t too far from at least finishing the second game tied. So, fine, whatever.
It’s super early, but I love what I’ve seen from Rafael Devers both at the plate and in the field. Xander Bogaerts had a fantastic first game and a horrendous second game. Trevor Story needs to get his timing back (he missed most of Spring Training due to signing late). Bobby Dalbec still strikes out a ton. The jury is still out on whether or not JBJ is cooked at the plate. Enrique Hernandez hasn’t found his stroke yet either. JD and Verdugo look like their old selves, for better and worse.
But, friends! It’s just so so early. Maybe we’ll be singing a different tune in a week (please let’s not be singing a different tune in a week!) or two, but right now, the Red Sox are, yes, 0-2, but from where I sit, they haven’t looked bad. This isn’t a finished product in terms of the roster or the specific players skills and abilities on it currently. As Alex Cora would I’m sure say, there’s work to be done. If you watched the first two games you likely picked up on that.
Thanks for reading. Back with a series recap on Monday.
**One quick note, Substack has said they accidentally sent out some posts twice. They’ve apologized and said they’re going to do everything they can so it won’t happen again. You have my apology as well. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again, but if it does please feel free to let me know. Thanks -Matt