Things Are Better Now

Or the magic of Xander Bogaerts

Not technically Xander Bogaerts but a pretty swing regardless

I was going to write a piece about last night’s game but after watching seemingly every single Blue Jays’ batted ball go through, past, or over Boston’s infielders for a hit, I thought my time might be better spent jumping up and down and yelling until I passed out. I was pretty sure if I tried to write about Tuesday’s game, you’d wake up to huge blinking swear word GIFs in your inbox. Frankly you don’t deserve that, that’s not what you’ve signed up for here at Sox Outsider, so I decided to get some sleep and spare you. I’m glad I did. The Red Sox did better on Wednesday and all is right with the world or at least with Red Sox Nation.

It really is amazing how this team operates on two main principles: decent pitching and four hitters going out of their minds bananas nutso sillypants. Without Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Rafael Devers, and (to a slightly smaller extent) Alex Verdugo, this team would be the damn Detroit Tigers. I could pull up a spreadsheet and figure out where Boston’s offense would be without those four guys, but instead, imagine a luxury plane flying over the desert. Inside are the Boston Red Sox, relaxing, enjoying some food, maybe a glass of champaign, or perhaps leaning back in those massive comfy chairs that I imagine they have on luxury jets but don’t know for sure because nobody will ever let me within shouting distance of one.

Now, take Devers, Martinez, Bogaerts, and Verdugo off that plane and… POOF! That luxury plane has now become a children’s big wheel. And not a new one, but a used one, where the front tire has been worn down from doing wheelies in the driveway, and the plastic handlebars are frayed at the ends so you cut the sides of your hands when you ride it.

What the hell are you saying, Matt?

Without those four guys, the rest of the Red Sox lineup would be dead in the desert. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Back to actual baseball for a second: last night that foursome went 7-for-18 with a double and two homers. FanGraphs has Bogaerts, Devers, and Martinez as three of the top thirty hitters in baseball this season, and Bogaerts himself is third behind Mike Trout and Vlad Guerrero, Jr. A good offensive team has taken all their talent and shoehorned it all into just four dudes. It’s like if you found a soda you really liked and tried to pour four of them into one glass, and of course it overflowing all over the counter and creating a massive sticky mess. Then the Red Sox happened along, tried the same exact thing, and instead of making a huge mess, it made the best soda anyone had ever tasted.

Yes, yesterday Kike Hernandez had a good day, going 3-for-5 with a double and homer. That brought his OPS up to .767, which is good, fine, but welcome, Kike, to offensive respectability.

The back of the lineup, which I’ve complained about in print before, all have OPSs in the .600 and .500 range. They really are replacement level players at the plate in the strictest sense of the words. That’s not to say they’re not useful hitters on a given day, but too often they’re not useful, and the weight falls, again, on Bogaerts, Devers, and Martinez.

No offense to the others, but let’s talk Bogaerts for a second. I have some concerns about his defensive play this season, but if the man is going to continue to hit in the neighborhood of the .346/.402/.597 that he currently occupies, well, I’ll take those concerns, cut them up into two long cylinders, and shove them half way up my nose, then with those concerns dangling from my nostrils, I’ll go stand on the street corner and tell every passerby what a damn good baseball player Xander Bogaerts is and how damn lucky the Red Sox are to have him, dammit.

Two more hits last night as well, and well, my gosh, what else is there to say about this man? He’s handsome? Well, okay, yes. Toss that on the pile too. Why not?

There have been some encouraging signs beyond the Gang of Four. Kike had a day, as noted above. Christian Vazquez homered, and from as streaky a hitter as Vazquez can be, that can only be a good sign. Hunter Renfroe hasn’t been a total zero (don’t look at the stats don’t look at the stats don’t look at the stats)… right? Sure! Let’s go with it.

Bobby Dalbec had one of those ‘let’s all pretend things aren’t going extremely poorly for Bobby Dalbec nights’ where he singled in a run with two outs, which was awesome, and then while we all spent the next two and a half hours thinking about that (awesome) hit, he struck out three times.

There’s work to be done here. But for now, this core, these four hitters can stand up to any pitching staff and to any comparison with another lineup you can throw at it. Seriously. Which four hitters from any team now would you take over my four dudes?

As you can tell this isn’t an in-depth piece examining the exit velocity of some player or the launch angle of another. There will be time for that, but for now, enjoy the Red Sox win, and maybe more importantly, enjoy being in first place, ahead of the Yankees (no-hitter or no), ahead of the pesky Blue Jays, and ahead of the hard-charging Rays, all for at least one more day.

Today we go for the series win. Praise Xander that we get it.