Here's Your Covid-Delayed Month in Review: April Edition!

The Red Sox did pretty okay (pretty okay?) in April, so let's dig in: top (and bottom) three Red Sox hitters, and deep-diving on the starting rotation and some reasons for optimism going forward

Happy April! (Photo by Tunafish on Unsplash)

So folks, friends, frenimies (Hi, Bryan!), and all you wonderful people who waste what amounts to useful portions of your life reading this silly newsletter about the Boston Red Sox, hello! I have covid. Again. The last time it absolutely crushed me. I was out for months. Here’s hoping this isn’t a rerun of that. Yesterday was horrendous. I couldn’t lift my head and even speaking required more energy than I could muster. Today though I’m feeling much much better. So I thought since I’m sitting in bed staring at the ceiling, and quite a fine ceiling it is, that I’d write up the Red Sox month that was.

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Let’s start with vibes.

The vibes are… Good?

I don’t know. Vibes are hard. It’s hard to distinguish how we’re feeling coming off yesterday’s win over Toronto with the rest of the first month of the season. But I think on the whole, while there are still a lot of questions, there is interest. People are interested in the Boston Red Sox. I’m not sure that’s what we’re going for, but it’s better than the opposite, so that’s something.

As for myself, I think I’m mostly where I was to begin the season. I’d say I’m optimistic without any real expectations. Maybe that’s a weasely answer but after thinking for a moment about the team and what I’m expecting and hoping for from them in 2023, that’s where I’m at. I’d love to hear where you’re at in the comments.

Now let’s get into some numbers. The offense raked in April! It was like that GIF of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes, but more positive.

One of my favorite Simpsons gags.

Anyway, they hit a ton in April. A ton of rakes! If I was to ask you to guess on April 1 where the team would rank in runs scored for the month, how many of you would’ve guessed top 10? How about top five? How about third overall? How about second???

No, it was third. But still, third! The actual number, in case you were wondering, was 163 runs, behind just Tampa (195) and Detroit (194).

Kidding, Detroit was last with like three runs scored or something. Texas was second with 178.

So where’d all this production come from? Well. Here’s the funny part. If you sort Boston’s production by player, the top player is…

Any guesses?

Adam Duvall!

Yes, still. Crazy, no? Duvall hit .455/.514/1.030 for 1.1 fWAR in eight games. EIGHT GAMES! That led the team in April. Or at least it was tied for the lead with Alex Verdugo who A) had a very nice month, and B) played 21 more games than Duvall.

Verdugo, well, I was going to say he was my biggest surprise of the month, and maybe he was, but he has some competition from Jarren Duran. But we’re not talking about surprises. Instead, let’s look at the best (and worst) players for Boston in April.

1. Adam Duvall. I mean, yes, it was eight games, but it was a full month’s production plus probably a bit more all packed into eight games. Simply ridiculous. The really weird part about it is, I’m not sure the guy with the 1.544 OPS has a regular spot when he gets back. Where are you going to put him? Are you taking out Duran or Yoshida or Verdugo? Or I guess Justin Turner is an option? There’s always ways to make it work, but still. Not a problem I anticipated!

2. Alex Verdugo. I wrote up Verdugo a week or so ago (you can read it here) so long story short, of all the players this was probably the guy I was expecting the least from. Oops. All the negative indicators went the other way in April, as Verdugo improved his speed, his fielding, his throwing (?), and oh yeah, his hitting, too. The key to me though has been his defensive play, which went from “not sure he can handle left field” to “dude is killing it in a tough right field.” A lot was made of Alex Cora challenging Verdugo after last season, and while it’s impossible to say if that’s what made the difference, it sure didn’t hurt.

3. Jarren Duran. Duran was literally an afterthought. I probably mentioned him in my season preview, but maybe I didn’t? If I did, it wasn’t much more than as throw-in, as in here’s some Triple-A filler in case anyone gets hurt. But Duran looks like the guy everyone was hoping he’d be when he first came up as a prospect. His speed is as impressive as ever, but now he’s hitting the ball on a line routinely, and not trying to pull everything way up in the air. His homer yesterday (not in April, I know) was simply mashed but it looked like a line drive off the bat. A 380+ foot line drive. Not bad. He’s not going to hit .396 on the season (or IS he? [seductively twirls overly long mustache] but he’s hitting the ball really hard and, perhaps best of all, he’s playing a competent (FanGraphs says above average) center field. That’s a huge step forward in all respects.

And if we’re doing the positive, we gotta throw in the negative as well. Here are three players who struggled in April.

1. Triston Casas. I remain a believer in Casas, but the big concern about him was his ability to put the bat on the ball (i.e. hit tool), and boy has that been the problem in April. After a scorching Spring, Casas has hit .133/.283/.293 in April, which is, bluntly, bad. However, it’s important to note that he’s just 23 and this is his first full season in the majors so it’s not time to give up on him. Famously Dustin Pedroia had an awful month and a half when he first came up before the Laser Show started, and Pedroia was hardly the first to struggle upon first exposure to major league pitching. Casas is still taking his walks and when he has made contact it’s been loud, so that’s two somethings. This is going to be an important month for him.

2. Enrique Hernandez. Hernandez has hit fine. Not great, but fine, but that hasn’t been the problem. His play at shortstop has been rough. He’s getting to balls okay, but the throws have been shatter-shot. It’s a really tough position to play and starting there full time is a very tough thing to ask of a player who hasn’t played there much in his career. Presumably Aldelberto Mondesi (remember him?) will be healthy sometime in June (before inevitably going on the injured list again) so there are reinforcements coming, but this may be a problem the Red Sox have to live with for a bit longer.

3. Christian Arroyo. It feels unfair to put Arroyo here. He’s really a backup middle infielder, so just the fact that he’s been healthy (a big thing for him) and serviceable should be enough to keep him off a list like this. But in the absence of someone else, he’s here because he didn’t hit in April. Though even that’s not really true as he picked it up at the end of the month.

All of this is burying the lede though because the real problem - and you know we’re here to talk about problems - was the starting pitching. Red Sox starters in April were second to last in the league with a 6.05 ERA (Oakland’s starters put up an ERA starting with an “8” so it could be worse). That’s a rough number from a group that isn’t composted of world beaters, but does have some skills.

Let’s get the least palatable out of the way first and start with Corey Kluber (6.75 ERA). Kluber, and this is starting technical, was bad. The profile of an older wily innings-eater with crazy good control was sort of accurate. He is older (check!) but after that things start to fall apart. Kluber’s control wasn’t good. He walked 7.5 percent of batters after walking only three percent last season. He’s going to give up homers because of his lack of velocity, so he’s got to induce weak contact and not walk hitters to be successful. He failed on both accounts last month.

Garrett Whitlock had one really good start sandwiched in between two bad ones before going on the IL with a potentially serious arm problem. I’m still bullish on him longterm, but he’s going to have to stay healthy before he can actually be the number three starter that it’s easy to see in there.

The rest were mostly predictable. Brayan Bello is a rookie and you can see his promise, but he’s prone to missing spots. Nick Pivetta was pretty much full-on Nick Pivetta, getting strikeouts, giving up homers, and with the maybe more occasional than you’d like walk thrown in. Tanner Houck looked serviceable. I still like him out of the bullpen as a longman who can pitch the sixth and seventh or seventh and eighth innings, but he’s fine in the rotation as long as he never sees the lineup a third time.

The other guy who is worth talking about at length is Chris Sale. Sale has had two magnificent starts (both six innings, one run) and has gotten more or less shelled in the other four starts. So which one is the real Sale? Damned if I know. It’s pretty easy to see that difference is command (the ability to locate the ball not just to the strike zone but within the zone). When he’s commanding his pitches he’s the old Chris Sale. Tons of strikeouts, a few homers, but overall a really good pitcher. When he leaves his pitches out over the plate, he gets hit. Maybe that’s weak analysis, but that’s what I see when I watch him. When the catcher sets up and then has to move his glove six to eight inches that’s bad, and it’s been happening too much.

But the fact that we’ve seen the Good Sale twice means that’s still in there. What gives us the Good Sale instead of the Bad Sale? I’m guessing that’s the question the Red Sox are working on right now.

Overall, there’s some promise here. I like Bello for the long term. Sale… probably? I’d imagine he should be better. Houck and Pivetta should remain at about what they are and, as I said above, I like Whitlock, though it’s hard to count on a guy who keeps getting hurt.

A month in, this seems to be the big issue, which is surprising given I haven’t yet mentioned the word “bullpen” in any kind of real way. Back in my season preview piece I said the rotation could be fine-to-good, or something like that. I still feel that way. James Paxton might be coming up soon after another rehab start in Triple-A but he’s probably more of the same, an injury-prone 4-to-5(-to-6) ERA guy. He’s not a game changer. The improvement is going to come from Sale getting regular (you know what I mean!), Bello getting used to the majors and refining his command, and Whitlock getting healthy. The rest can approximate two number four or five starters.

The bullpen (here it is!) has been …

fine. I kinda hate talking about relievers because they tend to come and go, and the sample sizes are so small. Kenley Jansen was fantastic until he got hurt. So, kinda like Adam Duvall, that was fun while it lasted. We’ll see what he looks like when he comes back. Overall, the pen has been about league average which is…yeah, I guess fine. You shoot for better, but if pressed, I’ll take a league average pen.

The last thing to touch on here is team defense. I worried about this coming into the season, primarily in the outfield where Verdugo would be forced to move to a more difficult corner and Enrique Hernandez, the team’s best outfielder, was moving to shortstop. Right now, the Red Sox rank as a bad defensive team, which isn’t particularly surprising considering the above concerns. That said, the way they get there is rather surprising.

Triston Casas has looked fine to me at first, but they say he’s awful there. So, yeah, okay. They hate Masataka Yoshida in left field, which was something else I worried about, though I think he’s looked at least decent out there if not fantastic. Enmanuel Valdez has been awful at second base, which, yes, absolutely true (though he’s hitting .333/.333/.583 so that mitigates things a bit), but the real culprit is Enrique Hernandez’s defense at shortstop. As I said above, the team is likely going to have to deal with that for a month or so longer, especially given the injury to Yu Chang. But that was fair to wonder about coming into the season and, well, yeah. It hasn’t worked out so far.

So where does all that leave us?

In what is shaping up to be a historically competitive division, the Red Sox exited the month of April with a winning record (15-14), which isn’t too bad considering they got swept in two of their first four series of the year.

There’s a lot of questions, but there’s reason for optimism too. For me, I’ll be watching Jarren Duran to see if he can keep some semblance of this hot streak up. I’ll be watching Triston Casas to see if he can find it at the plate. I’ll be watching Masataka Yoshida because, well, he’s just fun to watch! And I’ll be *GULP* watching Chris Sale to see if he can find any semblance of consistency. In a good way, I mean.

What are you looking for going forward? Has this team intrigued you? Are you more optimistic now than you were when the season started, or less? Let me know in the comments!

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