Red Sox/Astros AL Championship Series Primer

Notes and thoughts on an ALCS matchup that should be totally normal and very average

We’ve come a long way, Red Sox fans. This team has gone from “I hope they’re not as embarrassing as 2020” to “maybe they can make the playoffs” to “WORLD SERIES COM’N GET THE HECK OUTTA THE WAY!” It’s been a neck-destroying triple-take of a season, and as the title of this piece will tell you, it’s not over.

There is, at minimum, a whole seven game series to go against the Houston Astros, a team that travels light as a feather. The Red Sox themselves tend to go baggage-free and so it’s certainly not as if the entire country (short of Astros and Red Sox fans) is rooting for “direct Asteroid hit” in this matchup.

But you know what? Who cares what people think. Both these teams are fantastic and both deserve to be here and if people don’t like it they can go watch golf, which is about the meanest thing I can say.

But how do they matchup against each other? Let’s get into it, but first, if you’re new here, this is Sox Outsider, a newsletter about the Boston Red Sox by me, Matt Kory. I’ve written at The Athletic, FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, Cat Fancy, Vice Sports… okay, not Cat Fancy (if you work for Cat Fancy, please get in touch!), but a lot of places and now I’m trying to make it on my own. You can support me by subscribing, which is free, so I mean, come on. I hope you’ll join me here. Thanks.

The Red Sox face a tough test in this ALCS. So let’s break it down.

Pitching

Red Sox

Let’s start with the home team and yesterday’s big news. Chris Sale is going to start Game One. That’s… terrifying. Sale gave up five in his only inning of work against the Rays in what ended up being a 14-6 Red Sox win in Game Two of the Division Series. Sale has had two major problems, and both exhibited themselves in that inning. The first is command. Command of pitches is often the last thing to return following Tommy John surgery, which is what Sale is coming back from, so it’s not like this is a permanent thing. It’s likely something he’s working through, but it’s still a thing, and Chris Sale isn’t always throwing 97 anymore, so if/when he misses his spots, bad things can happen.

The other problem is his changeup. Sale didn’t throw it until pitch 23 in his last start, and that was after he’d already given up five runs, which should tell you how much confidence he has in the pitch right now. Without it he’s a two pitch starter, which might’ve worked for him six years ago, but right now it’s iffy. Previously Sale talked about how inconsistent he is with the pitch. Quoting from Connor Roche’s article at Boston.com, Sale said, “I think the biggest flaw in [the changeup] is the consistency,” Sale said. “If I throw 10 of them, four of them are really good. Two of them are ‘ehh’ and the other ones are batting practice. I just have to find a way to get more consistent with that pitch.”

We humans are often overly impacted by what we’ve just seen, and what we’ve just seen is Chris Sale imploding against the Rays. Prior to that, Sale was decent. Maybe decent is too strong… He was bad in two innings against the Nationals, but before that at least he was acceptable against the Orioles, Mets, and Orioles again, where he gave up six runs in 15.1 innings with 15 strikeouts and three walks.

So who knows what they’ll get from Sale. Beyond Sale though is the Red Sox best chance at a sure thing in Nate Eovaldi. Eovaldi has been nails, giving up three runs in 10 innings against New York and Tampa in his two 2021 post-season starts. He’s the best thing the Red Sox have and the best shot at winning a game in Houston. Beyond Sale and Eovaldi, manager Alex Cora will likely call on Nick Pivetta and Eduardo Rodriguez for games three and four in Boston. Both pitchers have been good in their most recent stints, with Rodriguez being particularly impressive against Tampa in his last start where he was commanding everything he threw perfectly. Pivetta was impressive out of the bullpen in a Game Three extra inning win against the Rays in the Division Series, so might not be fully stretched out, but then again Nick Pivetta doesn’t strike me as a guy who cares how stretched out he is.

The upshot of the Red Sox rotation is: it might be good? It could be! The older I get the less sure of things I am - if I’m still writing this newsletter when I’m 80 it’s just going to be a weekly shrugging emoji - and the Red Sox starting rotation might be at the top of my uncertainties list. It doesn’t stretch credulity to see good starts from Eovaldi, Eduardo, and acceptable starts from Pivetta and Sale. If that happens, the Red Sox should be sitting pretty.

Beyond the rotation, the Red Sox bullpen comes into the ALCS in a more compromised state than it has been for a while. Pen stalwarts Matt Barnes and Adam Ottavino are either off the playoff roster or on it but so buried in the back as to be irrelevant. Without them, the pen is Garrett Whitlock at the top, about 10 pastures full of cows, a stream, Tanner Houck, 10 more cow pastures, and then Hansel Robles, Ryan Brasier, and Josh Taylor. It would be nice to have Pivetta and Houck in the pen like the team did in the ALDS but the necessities of a seven game series require a four man rotation, so off to the rotation Pivetta must go. Probably. It could be Houck that goes to the rotation, but given Houck’s inability to go more than twice through a batting order, that seems less likely.

One thing to watch for is Red Sox starters throwing innings on their throw days, something Cora tried with some success during the 2018 playoff run. If Sale has a good start, he could theoretically throw an inning in Game Three back in Boston three days later, for example. Same for Eovaldi in Game Four or Five if need be.

One final thought, Alex Cora has been very good at turning mediocre pens into good playoff pens through intelligent decision-making and strategic planning. For the Sox to make the Series he’s going to have to pull a rabbit from the hat that’s being worn by a rabbit whose hat he just pulled a rabbit from. Just be glad it’s not your job.

Astros

The big news for the Astros is their best starter, Lance McCullers Jr. is likely out for the ALCS after suffering a forearm injury in his final appearance against the White Sox. That’s a body blow to the Astros, but it’s one they can absorb and still come out on top. Without McCullers, Houston is left with a rotation of Framber Valdez, who will start in Game One, and Luis Garcia, who will likely start Game Two. In particular, Valdez shut down the Red Sox in June with his wicked curveball. After that things get dicier, with Jose Urquidy, who didn’t pitch in the ALDS, Zack Greinke, who has been pitching out of the pen, and Jake Odorizzi, who was left off the Division Series roster altogether, as their best options. None of those pitchers blow you away. All are effective on the whole, but not on the order of an ace.

One thing of note is Astros starters have a tendency to walk a few hitters from time to time, Valdez (10 percent) and Garcia (eight percent) in particular. That can be said of Astros relievers as well, as Cristian Haviar (14 percent), Kendall Graveman (12 percent), Brooks Raley (8 percent), and Ryan Stanek (13 percent) all have an easy to identify weakness. The Red Sox would do well to let these guys dig their own proverbial graves and be selective. That’s easier to write than do, and it’s not exactly a skill the Red Sox possess in droves, but hopefully it’s something the team can at least attempt to incorporate into their overall strategy.

Hitting

The Astros lineup has been called relentless, unstoppable, the best in baseball, and fuzzy like a kitten (that one was me just now bringing the humor). The sad thing for the Red Sox is that the first three of those are probably true. The Astros batters were first in baseball in fWAR and first in wRC+. They were also first in batting average, on-base percentage, and third in slugging (behind Toronto and Boston). They’re the best hitting team at home and also the best hitting team on the road. This is a serious offense, folks.

The thing they do best is put the ball in play, which is to say they don’t strike out. The Astros as a team struck out 19.8 percent of the time this season, least in baseball and five percent behind the Red Sox. And it’s not a stat that’s brought down by the backups. Some of the best Astros hitters barely strikeout (relatively speaking) such as Carlos Correa (19.2 percent), Kyle Tucker (15.4 percent), Alex Bregman (15.1 percent), Jose Altuve (14.4 percent), Yuri Gurriel (11.9 percent), and Michael Brantley (9.8 percent!). This is a team that puts the ball in play, and against a team that doesn’t always cover itself in glory in the field, that is a tough matchup. But we’ll get to that.

First, the Red Sox hitters. Boston has benefited from a few things of recent, namely the incredible hotness of Enrique Hernandez (and he’s been hitting well, too!) and the addition of Kyle Schwarber. Schwarber gives the team a badly needed dose of on-base percentage (though the homers don’t hurt either) atop the lineup, and adding him there really does lengthen the lineup. Hernandez has simply been the hottest hitter on the planet, batting a billion or something I’m not looking it up, I saw it with my own eyes he batted a billion.

A lineup with Schwarber and a good-hitting Hernandez at the top really fills things out ahead of Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, JD Martinez, Alex Verdugo, and Hunter Renfroe. That’s a tough middle-of-the-order as is, but when Martinez is batting sixth and one of Verdugo or Renfroe is batting eighth, that’s an extremely deep lineup. It’s probably not Astros Deep (tm) but it’s at least in the same ballpark.

Defense

Ah… now we get the crux of the problem. The Red Sox managed to bury this issue in the Division series but that will be harder to do now. But we’ll start at the top. The Red Sox are not a good defensive team. They have bad range and they make too many mistakes. We saw that against Tampa, but not enough to hurt the Sox chances. Before that we saw it, well, a good example is all season long. In the ALDS, Red Sox pitchers were able to mitigate the team’s defensive issues by striking out a lot of Rays hitters. Each Ray hitter that struck out was a Ray hitter who didn’t put the ball in play and force Boston’s defense to turn it into an out. Unfortunately for Boston, strikeouts will happen less frequently in the ALCS than they did in the ALDS because, as discussed above, the Astros don’t strike out. So that’s a bit of a problem for Boston.

On the other side, the Astros are a good defensive team, if not a great one. Carlos Correa is having a great year and is going to get PAID this off-season. Jose Altuve and Kyle Tucker are having above average defensive seasons. The rest of the roster is fine defensively, certainly there’s nobody horrendous. Well, that green fuzzy mascot is awful, but he doesn’t play the field.

Managing

Alex Cora is going to have his hands full trying to get his square pitching staff to fit in the round hole that is this ALCS. Navigating the Houston lineup with Boston’s bullpen is going to be a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel except without the barrel. If anyone can do it, Cora can, but that’s a bit like saying if anyone can swallow that Volkswagon, Phil can. Sure, Phil likes to eat and can put a few sandwiches away, but that’s a 3,000 pound VW right there, and that’s before mayo and a pickle.

On the other side, Dusty Baker is managing for Houston, and while he’s not a tactical genius on the level of Cora, he’s clearly a good dude who gets the most out of his players. That counts for a lot. Losing McCullers makes his job harder, and in fact that’ll likely be his biggest challenge. If the Astros can come up with enough starter innings that they don’t have to rely too heavily on their bullpen, they have a great shot to win the series.

Finally…

Even without McCullers it’s hard to pick the Red Sox in this series. The Astros are so good and even more importantly they’re the perfect roster to take advantage of the Red Sox biggest weakness, which is their defense. If somehow Boston pitchers can up their strikeouts and keep Houston’s hitters from hitting the ball, the Red Sox have a shot. They should be able to score some runs against the Houston pitching staff. I’m expecting a lot of 8-6 games, which means no team will score more than three runs in any game of the series.

That all said, if Chris Sale comes out and shoves, all bets are off.

I’ll be here tomorrow with the recap. Thanks for reading and subscribing, everyone.