Matt Finds Different Ways To Say That Sucked!

Losing isn't fun but is it more fun when NOPE NO NO IT IS NOT NOPE

Me too, Garrett. Me too.

No loss is a good loss. It’s never fun or desirable to lose. But some losses seem to burn brighter, to burrow deeper under the skin, to sit in your brain and refuse to leave, like my grandparents at a restaurant after dessert. That was last night’s debacle of a loss to the lowly Detroit Tigers, a 6-5 extra-inning dunking in the spitting gloom of Fenway Park.

I don’t want to go back over the parts of the game that sucked. There are too many and, like episodes of Family Guy, there’s no real point. The Red Sox missed opportunity after opportunity, including leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning. But as I’ve written before, those things are going to happen. Opportunities will be gained and then squandered. That happens generally, but also this team isn’t the runaway train we saw in 2018, and even that team lost some stinkers. The baseball season is silly long and takes all comers, stinkers included.

No, what I want to discuss is the state of this team, or at least parts of it. The 2021 Red Sox are still in first place. I think we’d all take that on May 6, but if you haven’t noticed, the rest of the division has woken up. The Yankees, Blue Jays, and Rays after all getting off to rough starts, now all have winning records. Even the dead-in-the-water Orioles are just three games back. The Red Sox have been in first place all year but that’s not any kind of guarantee they’ll be there in two days or a week, and their grip on the top spot in the division feels more tenuous by the moment.

So what was the problem?

It was sort of the pitching, except it sort of wasn’t. Martin Perez was effective against a bad lineup, leaving in the sixth with the team down 3-1. Was it great? No, of course not. It was Martin Perez. But it certainly should have been enough against a Tigers team that has given up the second most runs in the American League and talent-wise is probably worse than that. And Perez was - stop me if you’ve read this sentence before - victimized by his defense. The end result of Perez’s start was predictable and acceptable. In the end it’s Martin Perez. So you can’t get mad at Perez.

How about Garrett Whitlock? He’s the guy who gave up the monster three run homer to Jeimer Candelario in the 10th inning? Consider that Candelario’s homer brought Whitlock’s ERA to 1.76 and his WHIP to 0.85. Every pitcher has a bad outing, and this wasn’t really that bad. It was a three run homer, but one of those runs was the free runner on second base because it was the 10th inning, and one of those runs was a weak hit by Jonathan Scoop one pitch after he should’ve been called out on a pitch inexplicably called a ball despite it passing right over the plate. Really this was a solo shot gussied up by MLB’s silly extra inning rules and some crappy umpiring. Then remember that Whitlock has been a revelation, a gust of fresh air, an opening car door when your sibling farted and the child’s lock is engaged. People are talking about Whitlock being one of the best prospects currently in the Red Sox system, a future mid-rotation starter. You can’t get mad at Whitlock.

To me, this loss highlighted two problems this team has. First, though, has anyone seen the back third of the lineup? They were there in Fort Myers, then they went to use the bathroom at the airport and I haven’t seen them since.

Chaim Bloom brought in three outfielders in Hunter Renfroe, Franchy Cordero, and Enrique Hernandez. Hernandez was thought, by me, to be a second baseman at the time, but we all make mistakes and my mom has forgiven me so it’s probably time for you to as well. All three of those outfielders have been awful. Hernandez has looked fine defensively, but that’s about the sum total of their combined positive contributions on the field. Cordero looks like he’s completely lost both at the plate and in the field. I would say he should be sent down to Triple-A but he’s so lost I’m not sure he’d get there. Renfroe isn’t on the chopping block like Cordero is, but his Red Sox tenure can’t survive too many more months of a sub-.300 on-base percentage and a sub-.400 slugging.

Fortunately for the Red Sox, there are options. Jarren Duran lurks in Triple-A, and the organization has reportedly been playing him some in left field. Bloom recently said Duran would let the Red Sox know when he’s ready, which is to say we’re a few hot weeks away from Duran’s major league debut. And he’s not coming to Boston to sit on the bench. All of that is good news.

That said, there are real questions about Duran. His power hasn’t been around that long. He swings at a lot of pitches. He is inexperienced in the outfield, and, if we’re being honest, at the plate. But the guys in Boston are setting the bar pretty low, so even with those questions, he should be able to reach the level of “improvement.”

That’s probably it from the minor league system, at least until September, though if Bobby Dalbec continues to hit like a starting member of the Detroit Tigers, we could be looking at the Return Of The Ice Horse (worst Metallica album ever). Really though, the Red Sox just can’t run out four or five offensive black holes in their lineup each night. At some point soon the hitting has to start or the changes will.

The second problem is the gloves. The Red Sox cost themselves at least a few runs against the Tigers yesterday with circuitous outfield routes to balls, Marwin Gonzalez inexplicably forgetting he was playing first base not second, and the like. These are consistent issues. This team simply isn’t particularly strong defensively, and I don’t expect that to change this season simply because there’s no real way to do it. But it should be a focus going forward to find players who can add value with their gloves.

The end result of all this, the offensive ineptitude from the back of the lineup, the continued and at this point expected defensive miscues, and a healthy dose of bad sequencing and ill-timed luck gave us the gristliest loss of the year. Have fun chewing on that for the next week. Yuck.