Sox Sweep O's

Red Sox take advantage of a sad Orioles team, Chris Sale pitches (yay!) and speaks (uh...), Garrett Whitlock gets hurt, the lineup is good, and scoreboard watching to beat the band

Imagine studying for a big test in college. It’s a huge test, very important, on some super complicated math. You spend weeks studying and preparing. You get to the classroom on the day of the test, the professor puts the test in front of you and the problems are like 8+7= and 12-6=.

That’s what it’s like for a professional baseball team to play the Orioles.

The Red Sox took advantage of their scheduled gift this past weekend, sweeping the three game set with Baltimore by a combined score of 24-10. Credit the Red Sox with not relaxing and taking it easy, something they very easily could’ve done considering their opponent. The Sox recognized the importance of these games, not because they were against Baltimore, but because they were three of the very few games remaining in a quickly dwindling regular season.

And now here are some notes on that series, and on a few other topics of interest. First though, if you’re just reading this for the first time, welcome! I’m Matt Kory, and this is my Red Sox newsletter. I’ve written for The Athletic, Vice Sports, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus among other places, and now I’m doing this. The newsletter is free, so if you’re subscribed, great! Thank you! If you’re not yet subscribed, please consider doing so. I appreciate it.

The Orioles

The Orioles… oh my gosh.

They’re rebuilding in Baltimore, which is a bit misleading because they’re not really building back from anything. They’ve been bad for going on two decades now. Yes, there were a few seasons of good baseball scattered here and there over the past twenty-something years, like crumbs on a living room carpet, but the Orioles haven’t seen a Championship Series since 1997. Bill Clinton was President in 1997. You know how much gas cost in 1997? It didn’t cost anything. Gas was free then. So was milk. The last time the Orioles were any good we were all living in glorious worker’s paradise.

The future is brighter than the present though, as the Orioles do have a bunch of prospects - Baseball America says they have the best farm system in baseball - but none of them have matriculated up to the majors just yet. Aside from a few players here or there, the major league roster is pretty barren. There are a few hitters who can hurt you, Cedric Mullins is having an outstanding season that should garner MVP votes, but things fall off pretty quickly from there.

It’s not the hitting that’s the problem though. Well, hitting is A problem, but not THE problem. THE problem is pitching or the complete and total lack thereof. The term “Orioles pitching” is almost a contradiction. Baltimore has given up 897 runs on the season, which is 72 more than second-worst Arizona, and 111 more than third-worst Minnesota. Think how bad Boston’s defense has been recently, how many balls have got through the infield, how much we’ve talked about this as a potentially fatal roster flaw. Now consider the Orioles have given up almost 200 more runs on the season than the Red Sox have. Two hundred!

The Orioles are on a path to winning, but it’s a very slow path, one that takes you up through the mountains, perhaps on a long winding path over an icy crevice. There are probably snakes too. Ice snakes. Don’t tell me the Orioles don’t have an ice snake problem, I’ve seen their bullpen.

Realistically it’s going to take three more seasons (at least) for all their talent to reach the majors, and even then there might not be enough pitching to make it all function. For now and for the immediate future, “BAL” on the schedule will continue to mean “free wins, come ‘n get 'em.”

The Red Sox just did.

Chris Sale

Speaking of shaking your head… Chris Sale…

Following his start, his first since testing positive for COVID-19, Chris Sale admitted to Alex Speier of the Boston Globe that he was not vaccinated.

Alex Speier @alexspeier

Sale says he’s been asymptomatic both times he’s had COVID. He also said he’s not vaccinated.

Oh man…

I struggle with how to talk about this topic because, honestly, I’m not looking to offend anyone. This is a baseball newsletter, not a political one, so with that said, let’s stick to baseball: Chris Sale should be vaccinated so he can continue playing baseball! The Red Sox aren’t exactly flush with other great starting pitchers and if Sale is exposed again (it’s happened twice so not exactly an impossible situation) he’s going to have to quarantine. Meaning, putting aside Sale’s personal health, a topic I’d argue is actually the most important point here, even if Sale doesn’t test positive for COVID he could still miss playoff games and indeed entire an series simply by being near someone who has COVID.

Not great!

As for Sale’s pitching, his start was effective though his fastball velocity was noticeably down, and the separation between his changeup and fastball was minimal. He gave up one run in five innings on a solo homer (a 91 mph fastball inside) and while a run in five innings is pretty great, that it came against the Orioles and was accompanied by just one strikeout makes the performance suspect. Sale was coming off the IL for a COVID infection, so it makes sense he might not yet be at full strength (yet another reason to just get the shot already) but this is definitely something to monitor. To state the obvious, although maybe not so obvious to Chris Sale himself, the Red Sox with a healthy Chris Sale at the top of their rotation are a much stronger team than the Red Sox with Chris Sale on the COVID Il again.

Garrett Whitlock

Speaking of the difference between with and without, Garrett Whitlock was pulled from Sunday’s game with some sort of chest issue. It’s not clear as of this writing whether it was a muscle pull, a lat strain, or something potentially more serious. That information will be forthcoming and might yet be available by the time you read these words, but the Red Sox bullpen without Whitlock is a scary thought. Almost as scary as the Red Sox rotation without Sale.

Whitlock has cleaned up so many messes out of the bullpen this season that he’s been one of the most important players on the roster. That’s a crazy thing to say about a Rule 5 reliever. Typically those guys are just grasping wildly at their roster spot, hoping to make it through the season on the major league roster. Whitlock has been, without hyperbole, the best reliever on the Red Sox and perhaps the second most valuable pitcher on the team over the course of the season behind Nate Eovaldi. That kind of guy is hard to replace during the trade deadline, let alone two weeks from a potential Wild Card game.

Check back here for more info on this as it becomes available. Hopefully the news is good and I can loosen my grip on the armrests of this chair because OH MY GOSH.

The Lineup

It struck me the other night while talking to a friend about the strength of the Toronto Blue Jays lineup that the Red Sox lineup is almost as good.

Before you start screaming at me, yes, I acknowledge that hasn’t been the case throughout the season. But the Red Sox made two important acquisitions/additions to their lineup in middle of August. First, they added Kyle Schwarber, who was traded for at the deadline in late July, but didn’t arrive off the IL until August 13. Schwarber has a 138 wRC+ (38 percent above average) with the Red Sox, which is remarkably similar to the 136 wRC+ he put up with the Nationals in the first part of this season. Oddly, he’s been much more of an on-base machine with Boston, where as he was much more of a power hitter with the Nats. Regardless, he’s a talented hitter who improves any lineup he’s in.

Second, the Red Sox traded first half Bobby Dalbec for Superpsychobananapants Bobby Dalbec (always trade regular for Superpsychobananapants when you get the chance). I wrote about Bob Dalb last week, but to summarize, the Dalbec of April through July was one of the worst hitters in baseball, while the Dalbec of August and September has been one of the best hitters in baseball. That’s quite a trade!

Adding those two guys (assuming you believe Dalbec is going to continue to hit like this or, indeed, anything close) to a lineup that already includes JD Martinez, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Hunter Renfroe, Enrique Hernandez, and if he ever gets off the COVID list, Christian Arroyo makes an already decent lineup entirely more formidable. But, is it really better than the Jays?

In a word, no. But it’s probably closer than you might think!

The top five of the Jays lineup is just killer. Marcus Semien, George Springer, Bo Bichette, and Teoscar Hernandez all have OPSs in the 800s. Vlad Guerrero, Jr’s OPS is over 1.000. The fall off comes after that, but the Jays have a young catcher named Alejandro Kirk who is a very good hitter as well, though he doesn’t play all the time for defensive reasons. They also have Lourdes Gurriel, who, after a rough start to the season, has an OPS just a smidge under .800. So no, I don’t think they’re equal, but the Red Sox do have, if not the high highs, then pretty close to the depth of the Jays lineup.

Put it this way. It was closer than I thought when the idea first came to me. So that’s something.

Scoreboard Watching

The Red Sox have 11 games left in the 2021 season. Going into today’s games, the standings look like this:

That’s a 2.5 game lead over the Yankees for your Boston Red Sox. And the Yankees are scuffling. They spent Sunday getting their butts kicked by a team that can’t hit (Cleveland) even though New York started Gerrit Cole, their $300 million ace. That’s not what you want if you’re the Yankees. Since winning 13 straight games at the end of August, the Yankees are 7-15.

They start a three game series against the woebegone Rangers in the Bronx today which might ordinarily be good news for them, but just this month they’ve lost home series to Baltimore and Cleveland, so nothing is for certain right now for the Yankees.

After scorching everything in their path during August, the Rays have fallen back to earth in September. Despite nine games against Minnesota and Detroit, the Rays are 8-10 this month and their division lead has shrunken ever so slightly. They’re still heavy favorites to win the AL East, but a 6.5 game lead over Boston with series remaining against Houston, the Yankees, and Blue Jays is maybe not the sure thing it seemed a few weeks ago.

The Blue Jays are in a similar state. They’ve been on a ridiculous run, 15-3 in September, though they’re somehow still 3-2 in their last five games. They face an immediate future without ace starter Hyun-Jin Ryu who just hit the IL yesterday. Also, among their final 12 games are three game series with Tampa and the Yankees. Not that they can’t beat those teams, but they at least present a challenge, as opposed to, say, the Orioles.

Thanks for reading!