They Said It Couldn't Be Done: Red Sox Sweep A's in Oakland!
Notes on an encouraging but still early (and against Oakland so CAVEAT CAVEAT CAVEAT!) series win.
Your Boston Red Sox waltzed in to Oakland, which is a totally normal way for baseball teams to move, and straight up swept the vaunted (editor: nope) unvaunted (editor: nope, not a word) craptacular (editor: also not a word but I’ll allow it) Oakland A’s. This is one of those series that there’s no way to really win. If you swept them, well it was the A’s and they’re awful, but if you lose even one game, WHAT’S THE %$#&^ HOW COULD YOU LOSE TO THE A’S?
Fortunately the Red Sox got the better of those two bad options by crushing the A’s 9-0 on Monday, and then white-knuckling two one-run wins on Tuesday and Wednesday. If the Red Sox don’t ever lose again, this will be a special season!
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This image kinda sums up the 2024 A’s.
An outfielder lying on the ground staring at a baseball thinking, “I know I’m supposed to do something with this but I can’t for the life of me remember what.”
Yeah, the A’s are horrendous. Somehow they’re better on the field than off, which is like saying eating poop is better going in than coming back out. It’s other less disgusting analogies too, but this is the one that came to my mind. Nobody is forcing you to read this, so really this is your fault as much as mind. Maybe more.
Point being, the A’s are awful and despite the fact that the Red Sox just played three games against them, I’m hard pressed to name more than three players on the A’s current roster. Let’s see… Mason Miller was actually impressive. JJ Bleday hit a homer at some point and plays center field, I think. JD Davis used to be a Giant before they decided, “You know what? Never mind,” and he, like so much other baseball detritus, ended up in Oakland. Phineous Maxwell plays second base decently. Or I just made him up. One of those two. Regardless, it’s a roster bereft not just of names but of talent, and I expect there will be a lot of teams that will waltz into Oakland and sweep the A’s in 2024. It’s good the Red Sox were one of them though. Definitely better than them being one of the ones who somehow lost a game somewhere in there. You thought you didn’t want to turn on Boston sports radio before!
That’s enough about the A’s. The problem with moving fully on from them to the Red Sox though is that 60 percent of Boston’s wins have come against the A’s. So what can you possibly make of that?
Well, let’s see!
Nick Pivetta second start wasn’t exactly good, but still managed to hold the A’s scoreless. It’s funny to call a start ‘not exactly good’ when the pitcher threw five innings of scoreless ball, but such is the state of the A’s. Pivetta’s problem in this start was that he couldn’t find his sweeper, the pitch that helped vault him forward towards the end of last season, and was a major part of his arsenal in his first start in Seattle.
The Red Sox new pitching braintrust has pushed Boston’s pitchers to use fewer fastballs and throw more of whatever the most effective offspeed offering is. For Pivetta that meant fewer fastballs (fastballs have typically made up about 60 percent of his pitches) and more sweepers (basically a slider that sacrifices drop for side-to-side movement). In Seattle, Pivetta threw 33 percent sweepers, a higher percentage than any other pitch including his fastball. In Oakland, Pivetta threw the sweeper just 20 percent, third most behind his fastball (37 percent) and his cutter (22 percent). That could have to do with the handedness of the lineups or the tendencies of the specific hitters, but to my eyes it looked like Pivetta couldn’t command the pitch in the same way. It ended up not mattering because the A’s are bad but there’s definitely work to be done on the side before Pivetta’s next start against Baltimore.
Despite all the winning, only three Red Sox hitters have really started strong. That would be Tyler O’Neill, Jarren Duran, and, oddly, Reece McGuire. Meaning there’s more gas in them thar tank. Of course it’s unlikely that Nick Pivetta will end the season with a 0.82 ERA. Regression goes both ways.
In other less happy news, perhaps the worst of Boston’s starting pitchers has been Brayan Bello, who gave up two homers in Oakland to add to the homer he gave up on Opening Day in Seattle. For a supposed Ground Ball Guy this is not a good thing. It’s not good to give up homers generally, but it happens to every pitcher and we’re still firmly in small sample territory so take every attempt at analysis with many many grains of salt. Even so, it’s a worrying trend that’s worth noting.
Next up is a three game set with the Angels, after which the Red Sox will have played their first 10 games in a row on the road and on the West Coast. Other than facing the Dodgers and Rockies in LA and Denver respectively (a trip that begins in mid-July), this current trip is the only time the Red Sox will come out west during the 2024 regular season. Another scheduling oddity, since I’m looking at things now: the Red Sox don’t face the Yankees until mid-June. So I guess that’s good or not good depending on your point of view.
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