Richards Latest Implosion, Sox Loss Brings Up Big Questions For Red Sox
In the words of Dave Matthews, there’s so much to say about yesterday’s game, and yet, to paraphrase No Doubt, I don’t want to speak about any of it. Why? *huge sigh* Well, the game brings up so many important and as yet unanswered questions about Richards and his spot in the Red Sox rotation, the Red Sox lineup, their manager, their GM, baseball’s ongoing spin rate drama, and the Germans notorious love for actor/director David Hasselhoff. Fortunately for you, I’m only going to cover five of those six topics. I’ll let you guess which ones.
Richards’ Spot In The Red Sox Rotation
Garrett Richards had another bad start, and perhaps bad is being generous. Richards got five outs, walked four, gave up two homers, and exhibited little to no command of, well, anything.
That above is Richards strike zone plot (in case the heading “Strikezone Plot: Garrett Richards” didn’t give it away). The pitches are not, shall we say, focused. In fact, I would describe them as all over the place, and keep in mind that this is less than two innings of work. It would normally take a starting pitcher at least six or seven innings to throw pitches to all those locations, but Richards managed it in 1.2 innings.
Oof.
The spin rates on all his pitches were down noticeably yesterday, which follows a trend he set two starts ago. Clearly Richards is struggling to command all his pitches, to “get the feel for his pitches,” without the aid of whatever sticky substance he normally uses, and this applies especially to his curve. No judgement here, but now that using that stuff is not legal, Richards is seemingly lost in the woods.
But if you look further, you’ll find that is only window dressing. Look at these numbers from Baseball Savant.
The spin rates are nice, but the other numbers paint a startling picture. Richards is getting absolutely crushed. What’s more, those numbers aren’t the result of one or two starts. They’re not the result of a lack of feel for his pitches or an inability to use something to help him grip the ball. They’re the result of almost three months of Richards getting crushed. His strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and now the Red Sox can throw his utter and complete lack of command over the past two and potentially future starts on the pile as well.
The long and short of it is Richards was terrible and the Red Sox, who ended up losing 8-2, had no shot in an important divisional game against their at-this-point biggest rival because of his performance. It begs the question, how long can the Red Sox continue to run Richards out there if he has to revamp himself? I’m not advocating for the Red Sox to DFA Richards. I’m not advocating for anything in fact. I don’t have an answer here. Hopefully the Red Sox have some idea of what processes Richards is going through and how close he is to being a serviceable starting pitcher. The problem is, though, spin rates aside, even when he’s been going well, he’s not been all that good.
There isn’t some wunderkind waiting in the wings to grab Richards’ spot in the rotation, so there may not be much to do in the short term, but the trade deadline is coming up. Tanner Houck and Conner Seabold are both supposedly returning to health. Soon enough there will be options and soon enough the Red Sox are going to have to make a decision with the knowledge that the season is almost half over and this team has a legitimate shot at the post-season.
Red Sox Lineup, Manager, and GM
The Red Sox didn’t lose yesterday’s game because they hit Danny Santana leadoff, but that’s kinda the thing. You can look at a million different games and say, yeah, we did something completely counter-productive and self-defeating and it didn’t directly cause us to lose the game, but that’s really not a smart way to do things. Most games aren’t won or lost by individual actions or decisions. With a competent leadoff guy the Red Sox probably still lose yesterday’s game. With prime Rickey Henderson the Red Sox probably still lose yesterday’s game. But again, that’s not really the point. You play to win and that means not just on the scoreboard.
This whole leadoff thing is just bizarre. I’m sorry, I think I called it bizarre yesterday too but I’ve run out of adjectives. Why in the heck would you ever put one of your worst hitters in the leadoff spot? It makes no sense. I’m honestly pacing the room right now. Back and forth back and forth. I’m trying to understand this, truly I am, but it’s eluding me.
In reply to one of my tweets on the topic, Twitter person Costa had, I think, the perfect response.
The whole thing is mind-bending. Why would a team do this? We know they’re not stupid. We know Alex Cora is a good manager. We know Chaim Bloom is a smart GM. We know all these things, and yet, there’s this one thing that sticks out, that you know goes against all of what you know, and ultimately challenges everything you thought you knew about the organization and the people in it.
Is that too much to put on this one kinda dumb thing? Maybe. Maybe it is. But I don’t really think so. Teams can win while batting their worst hitters first in the lineup. We know that, but we also know they’re winning despite that, not because of it. This is 2003 Baseball Prospectus-level stuff and the fact that the Red Sox either don’t know or, far more likely, don’t care, really does make me feel like I’ve ingested crazy pills.
Coda
The end result of all of this is that this Red Sox team is rebuilding. We haven’t been thinking of it that way, and with good reason. They’re in first place! Typically rebuilding teams don’t win baseball games nearly as much as the 2021 Red Sox have been, but we’re less than two seasons out from the Mookie Betts trade. We’re less than two years out from the team dumping David Price’s salary. They’re still trying to build up the farm system. They’re still trying to build up the 40 man roster, to increase the depth and overall talent level of the organization.
This particular team is an attempt to thread the needle, to rebuild while contending. It worked brilliantly in 2013, if a bit less so afterwards. This team is running that same play. It could work again. On the whole, the results have been impressive. But games like yesterdays make us all wake up to the reality that there is still so much left to do. Some of it will be difficult and some will be expensive. Some won’t be done for years. But some can be done right now with the flick of a pen. It seems so easy to put it that way.