Monday Sox Notes: Welcome To Splitsville, USA

Population: Red Sox

Never hurts to give yourself a hand from time to time

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This marks the third straight series split for the Red Sox. That’s fine. It sure isn’t great, but it sure isn’t bad either. The baseball season is so long - it snows at the beginning of the baseball season AND at the end - so there is absolutely nothing wrong with treading some water once in a while. Even a small losing streak isn’t a deal-breaker. It’s the extended month-long dirges, a three or four week funeral march when everything falls apart that does a team in. That’s clearly not what’s happening. There is stuff to work on here in the present, but this isn’t that. And so that’s fine.

Eddie Rod

The 2020 Red Sox were a mess in more than one way, but the biggest problem by far was the starting rotation. The ‘20 Red Sox rotation was the worst starting rotation the team has assembled since they started keeping track of these things in 1901. That’s 11 years before Fenway Park. That’s pre-World War, as in the first one, before there was a reason to use a number. The 2021 starting rotation has already passed the 2020 group in WAR and it’s not even May yet.

They probably wouldn’t have been particularly good anyway, but the reason they were historically horrendous was they were missing their two best starters. Chris Sale went down with Tommy John surgery before the season started, and Eduardo Rodriguez got incredibly sick with COVID-19 and then developed a case of myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart muscle, and if that sounds bad, it is). They weren’t a deep group to begin with, so removing the two best starters before the season started was pretty much the equivalent of taking the engine out of a race car before the race. Turn the key and nothing happens. Open the hood and there’s Mike Kickham staring back at you.

Days like Sunday were a reminder of what that 2020 staff was missing. Rodriguez was spectacular. He didn’t have his best velocity (and in fact he had the lowest velocity of any start in his career) but he was playing-darts-standing-in-front-of-the-dartboard accurate. He could seemingly reach out and put each pitch wherever he wanted. He was spotting the fastball inside, outside, up down, whatever was called for. He threw 71 of his 98 pitches for strikes. Not surprisingly he didn’t walk anyone, and he struck out eight over seven full innings. Masterful.

Thing is, he was also unlucky. He easily could’ve shut the Mariners out, or at least held them to a run instead of three. He gave up five doubles, which sounds bad, but four were ground balls that could have been turned into outs or at least kept to singles. The Mariners started the game with two identical doubles, both grounders between third base and shortstop. Either could’ve been a ground out had the infielders been positioned a few feet in either direction (or had better range, but that ship has sailed far far away). Neither hit looked like anything more than a single off the bat, but J.D. Martinez was playing left field and by left field I mean center field because on both doubles he had to come running over from out of the screen to field the ball and throw it in.

This was the first double but the second was almost exactly the same. Ground ball between Devers and Marwin Gonzalez (who was in for Bogaerts, who DH’d), then, after you finish reading War and Peace, J.D. Martinez comes into view to get the ball. That all resulted in the first Mariners run.

The second and third runs came in the fifth inning, when the Mariners again hit two ground ball doubles. The first went under Rafael Devers. It was a tough play, buuuuuut it was also a play you’d like your major league third baseman to at least knock down. The second went by Bobby Dalbec at first. That one is probably legit even though it might be the weakest hit of the four, as Dalbec was playing off the line and so there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. Still, when you get four grounders, none hit especially hard, you’d like to think a few of them might be turned into outs. Baseball Savant’s Expected Batting Average stat shows how unlikely all four were to turn into doubles.

(The Dylan Moore double was totally legit, but came in the second inning and was followed by a ground ball out and two Ks.)

Alex Speier of the Boston Globe illustrated the unlikeliness of this in tweet form:

Alex Speier @alexspeier

More on the bad luck for Rodriguez - the Mariners have 4 doubles on groundballs. No team has done that in a game since April 18, 2019.

So yeah. Eduardo pitched great. That should be enormously gratifying for a team looking to compete for a spot in the post-season. Nice to have one of the team’s best starters healthy.

Now do Chris Sale.

We’re going walkies!

I’ve commented before about this team’s proclivity to avoid walks. Coming into Sunday the Red Sox were 26th in walk rate, walking in only 7.2 percent of their plate appearances. For context, the Yankees are first in baseball in this particular stat (and not many others), walking 11.5 percent of the time, while the Phillies are at the midpoint, 15th, at 9.1 percent. The lack of walks isn’t a fatal flaw for the Red Sox, but it does make scoring runs a bit more difficult. Yesterday though was different and frankly, a bit of a breath of fresh air. The Red Sox took seven walks from Mariners pitching, including four in the first inning against erstwhile starter Nick Margevicius, the spelling of whose name I’ve triple-checked and who lasted a full third of an inning before getting pulled for the crime of walking everyone and everything he possibly could. So maybe the Red Sox haven’t turned a corner when it comes to patience at the plate, but it was a good sign nevertheless.

The Mariners Aren’t Good

The Mariners are in second place in the AL West, they have a positive run differential (+4 currently) and a winning record. And yet… they are not a good team. They can play a bit of defense (something the Red Sox might want to look into) and they have a surprisingly strong bullpen, but the starting rotation is thin and the team has maybe one good hitter. Mitch Hanigar can hit, and he did against the Red Sox, but after that it’s a pretty weak hitting team. I said above there isn’t anything wrong with a split. And that’s true. But a weaker west coast team in Boston for a four game series? That’s kinda one you’d like to take three from.

The View

Still though. Looks good from up here.

Up Next

Easier isn’t the right word, but the schedule does lighten up a hair. Tuesday the Red Sox start another two game set, this one in New York but against the Mets. Yes, MLB’s schedule makers have the Red Sox playing the Mets before they play the Yankees. Then the Red Sox go to Texas for four games, the first two of which will conclude the month of April. Then it goes Tigers, Orioles, A’s, Angels, three of those last four being three game series at home in Boston.

No month in the major league schedule is easy, but this one seems like a chance for Boston to pad the record a bit. We’ll see if they can replicate their so-far successful April. First though, meet the Mets, and yes, it appears the Sox will face Jacob deGrom on Wednesday. Splitsville, here we come again!

Sox Outsider Podcast Update Now

Don’t forget to check out the Sox Outsider Podcast. I’ve had incredible guests on, including Eno Sarris of The Athletic, Rob Neyer, Chris Smith of Mass Live, Mike Petriello and Michael Clair of MLB.com, Craig Goldstein and Matthew Trueblood of Baseball Prospectus, Chris Crawford of NBC Sports Edge, and Steven Goldman of The Infinite Inning Podcast! I’m up to 25 episodes so I’m not going to list them all, but each episode has been tons of fun. You should listen and subscribe.

Recently, I talked to Corey Brock, who covers the Mariners for The Athletic. We previewed the Sox/Mariners series. The newest episode features Cliff Corcoran, formerly of Sports Illustrated and The Athletic, who now runs his own substack, The Cycle (which you should subscribe to). I spoke to Cliff about the Red Sox strong start, the Yankees weak one, and the changes in the baseball that could be altering the on-field product. Check those out where ever you get your podcasts, or click here for a list of podcast providers who carry the Sox Outsider Podcast.