The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow
But the Red Sox will still have blown that game Tuesday night in Toronto: on the game, the series, the run of bad play, and the whole gosh-darn season because why not
By the time you read this, the sun will have risen. The earth will have spun one full rotation and it will be quite literally a new day.
Thank God for that.
Because the Red Sox pretty much soiled the last one.
I’m going to take a deep breath here. I recommend you take one too. Step outside for a moment. Look at the sky. Look at a tree. Feel the breeze on your skin. Remember there is so much beauty in the simplest parts of the world. A bug on a leaf. A bird in a tree.
Relax for a moment. Close your eyes. Let you shoulders drop. Sigh out loud. Feel the calm washing over you.
Now take a sip of coffee, and remember the Red Sox blew a three run lead in the bottom of the ninth to the Toronto Blue Jays.
It’s hard to believe how bad the Red Sox have been over the last week. Truly, horrendously, horrifically, painfully, spork-in-your-eye, trip-over-a-hundred-rakes, step-on-a lego-on-the-way-to-the-bathroom-at-2am-and-have-it-embed-itself-so-deeply-into-your-skin-that-it-sticks-to-the-bottom-of-your-foot, deeply-slice-the-tip-of-your-finger-while-signing-your-divorce-papers, carry-your-laptop-and-a-beer-into-another-room-and-trip-and-try-not-to-spill-your-beer-on-your-computer-so-you-drop-your-computer-and-then-drop-your-beer-on-the-computer-you-just-dropped bad.
It’s been bad is what I’m saying.
So okay, let’s get into it. I’ll just quickly say hi and ask people to subscribe to this silly newsletter about the Boston Red Sox. Hi there. I’m Matt. Please subscribe to this silly newsletter about the Boston Red Sox. Thank you.
This is getting old.
The Red Sox have been walked off twice in the last four games.
The Red Sox have lost all four of those last four games.
The Red Sox have lost six of their last seven games.
The Red Sox are 3-8 against the rest of the AL East.
So let’s start here. Despite all the above, the list, the lego thing, the whole bit, the season is not over. The standings are utterly meaningless here in late April, but supposing they weren’t, the Red Sox are just 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot and five games out of first place. If you’re going to be five games out, being five games out with 144 games left to play is the time to do it.
So the season isn’t sunk. It just feels that way right now. But it being that way and it feeling that way are two completely different things. It’s important to acknowledge that. Yes, you might want to start throwing your grandmother’s china plates through the windows, but the prudent thing is, and you know this in your heart, to wait at least a few months. Once the Sox fall 15 back in June you can start launching granny’s valuables through the plate glass. That’s the plan of a smart and prudent fan.
There are a few points to make about the Red Sox on the field right now. Let’s start with the offense. I wrote about the Red Sox inability to hit, like, at all, a few days ago. Yesterday they managed to score five runs. Yes it was in 10 innings, but still, five runs is good. Yesterday marked the fifth time the Red Sox have scored five runs in a game, and the first time since Sunday, April 17th when they dropped eight on the Twins. So mark last night down as progress of a small sort, at least in that one way.
Trevor Story had a hit. It was a big hit! He doubled in the tying run in the eighth inning. It’s easy to forget but the Red Sox were trailing in last night’s game for most of the night. For most of the night it felt like they were going to lose 2-1 in the most pathetic going-out-easy-like-a-light-switch kinda way. Instead they lost in a far different kind of way, but anyway they were losing and then Story stepped to the plate and doubled hard off the center field wall. It could easily have gone out for a three run homer, and maybe in a different baseball universe it would have. But either way, it was a great hit. It was a curveball at the very bottom of the zone, perhaps even a hair below the zone, and he went down and lifted it off the wall in the deepest part of the park. Story ended up 1-for-5 with two strikeouts, but that one AB was pretty sweet. Maybe it’ll be a turning point for his slow start. We’ll see.
Nick Pivetta wasn’t fantastic, but he fought and battled and battled and fought and scratched and clawed and wound up giving up only two runs in six innings. It was far from a great performance, but it was effective enough, which is a step forward for what Pivetta has been so far this season. Again, perhaps we saw a turning point of sorts for him take place last night.
Xander. He’s pretty much the only reliable source of offense for this team right now. There’s a few guys who had a few hits for a few games, but there hasn’t been much in the way of sustained offensive production outside of Xander Bogaerts. And to be clear, Bogaerts isn’t exactly killing it. He has an .887 OPS which is quite good, but not the kind of number that is going to carry a team. Still, this anemic offense can’t be pinned on him.
That said, my dude needs some help. JD Martinez, Alex Verdugo, and Rafael Devers all have OPS’s in the .700s, and everyone else is in the .500s. Christian Arroyo’s OPS is mid-.300s. Not his on-base, his OPS. Bobby Dalbec is trending that way as his OPS has fallen to .505. I’m not trying to argue that OPS is an important stat (it’s not), I’m just trying to illustrate how inept the Red Sox have been at the plate. As my friend Jonah Birenbaum of The Score said on Twitter, the Red Sox are getting nothing from outside their core players, and I think this illustrates his point. Boston’s entire offense is Bogaerts, Devers, JD, and Verdugo right now. That’s it. That’s the list. And that can’t continue if they’re going to do anything.
The bullpen.
Ah, yes, the bullpen.
[cues Paul Simon] “Hello darkness my old friend…”
The thing about all bullpens is we remember the blowups, we remember the meltdowns, we remember when they turned a three run lead into a brutal, self-immolation of a loss to a division rival. We remember all of those. We tattoo those on the inside of our eyelids. But we tend to forget when the pen was effective, perhaps because of the pain from over-tattooing our eyelids. That’s why stats are so important. Because if we consult the tattooed list inside our eyelids we’re always going to say the bullpen sucks.
By the numbers, the Red Sox bullpen isn’t good, but it’s not bed-crapping, dumpster-on-fire, ‘Abandon ship if you hope to survive!’ bad either. In fact, they’re kinda what we thought they were a month ago. Not great, certainly, but not horrible either. Too many walks, a lot of strikeouts, on the whole mostly effective, but yeah, there are going to be some nights, boy are there going to be some nights.
Last night was one of those nights. So let’s talk about that bottom of the ninth inning for a second. Here’s what I said on Twitter about it (or one of the things I said; I was not happy on Twitter dot com):
I still think that’s true and I stand by that, but have you looked at those two doubles? I hadn’t when I sent out my whiney tweet.
Jake Diekman came in to start the bottom of the ninth up three runs and facing the bottom of the Jays’ order. The first batter was Raimel Tapia. Tapia doubled down the left field line, which sounds bad, but look at the StatCast. Tapia hit the ball at such a speed and angle that the expected batting average on it was .250. The vast majority of time balls hit like that are outs. This one fell in, but it’s not like Diekman gave up a rocket. It was not a great hit but it was a hit. Whatever.
Next up was Santiago Espinal. Espinal did the same thing but to right field. Another double, but this time it was actually hit even more weakly. The expected batting average on Espinal’s hit was .100. That hit wasn’t even good enough to bat in the Red Sox lineup! [rim shot] The Jays started the inning with two weak and frankly lucky doubles.
Then George Springer hit the living crap out of the ball and there wasn’t any luck involved in that. But, if Diekman gets either Tapia or Espinal out, which he easily could have based on the quality of contact, Springer never even comes to the plate. Or if he does, he can homer all he wants and the Jays are still down a run or two with two outs in the ninth inning.
I’m not chalking this loss up to luck. It was a baseball game so luck played a role for sure, but the Red Sox had their share of luck as well (the check swing almost-K turned two-out weakly hit infield RBI by Enrique Hernandez comes to mind) and still lost. What I am saying (or trying to say) is Diekman’s results were bad but his process wasn’t, at least during those ABs. This kind of luck will turn but right now it feels like the Red Sox are swimming upstream against a mighty current and everything is pushing against them. That’s not true, but it’s a little true. And that’ll change over time.
The hope has to be that they don’t fall so far behind during this skid that they’re not able to take advantage of the turning tide.
At the end of the day the Red Sox just lost another baseball game. There’s another one today and another one tomorrow, then they get the Orioles for three and then they come home for six against the Angels and the reeling White Sox. Heck, this series has two more games in it. The Red Sox could still split. What I’m saying is this thing isn’t over.
Whether you want it to be or not.
Thanks for reading.