Time To Step Up
The offense has struggled at the same time as the rotation has fallen off. Here are the offenders along with what their prognosis is for the rest of the season
Last night I couldn’t sleep and so I burdened you with 2,000 words on the Red Sox rotation and the lineup’s struggles with hitting with runners on. I hope you enjoyed it. I’m sure you did. I mean, how could you not? Today, I want to highlight a few players who could step forward and make this playoff run a bit less disastrous.
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This post is inspired by one of my favorite Red Sox writers, Chad Finn of the Boston Globe, who tweeted this.
As usual, Chad is totally correct. Verdugo has been struggling, and for a while now. His entire batting line of .271/.340/.413 isn’t exactly bad, but it’s not really pulling in the right direction either. It just kind of is, the sprig of parsley on the plate.
Rafael Devers and Enrique Hernandez have been killing it, as the kids say, with a wRC+ of 172 and 157, respectively. The kids always cite wRC+. Christian Arroyo is right there too at 152, but he’s only played nine games since then. After that? The only above average hitter in the entire lineup over that period is JD Martinez, and he’s three percent above league average. Three percent!
That leaves Xander Bogaerts, Christian Vazquez, the aforementioned Verdugo, Hunter Renfroe, and of course Bobby Dalbec and Jarren Duran. For the last month the lineup has been operating with two big hitters, one average one, and everyone else is hurting the team to some degree or another. Not a recipe for winning baseball games right there.
The biggest offender is Dalbec, but he’s been terrible all season long, so this isn’t exactly a new thing. The Red Sox picked up Kyle Schwarber at the deadline and presumably he’ll play at least some first base or maybe a lot (fingers crossed!) whenever he regains his health. That should help alleviate the Dalbec problem.
Beyond Dalbec is Jarren Duran. Duran has only played in 14 games to date, and yes, the results have been putrid, but it’s not unheard of for prospects, even top prospects, to struggle with their initial toe dip into the majors. So far the strikeouts are bad but the contact he’s made has been good. The fact that Duran is running a .217 BABIP is just silly, too. A dude that fast should have a BABIP that starts with a 3 and perhaps higher than that. If he keeps hitting like this and improves his K and swing and miss numbers just a bit, this problem will self correct, at least somewhat.
Hunter Renfroe has been getting a lot of plaudits from the Red Sox broadcasts and elsewhere, but he’s hit .207/.276/.402 since July 1. The bad news about that is that it’s in the neighborhood of his career batting line of .233/.295/.481. The danger is we might’ve seen the hot streak and now we’re back to what could’ve been expected from Renfroe to begin with. We’ll see on that, but that’s always a danger when shopping in the bargain bin. Sometimes you pull a rabbit out of a hat, and sometimes you pull a turd out but it looks like a rabbit for a little while (don’t ask how that happens, it’s a baseball mystery). The Red Sox got one of the bargains of the off-season with Renfroe’s season to date but there are signs he might be reverting to form. Hopefully not considering the slump the rest of the offense is mired in, but that’s something to monitor.
Another big name on the list is Christian Vazquez who has been positively dreadful for months now. Vazquez has never been a great hitter, but he had a strong 2020 season, what little of it there was, and came out of the gate well in 2021. Since mid-April though, it’s been straight stinky. Now some of that stinkiness is acceptable because Vazquez is a catcher and catchers league-wide can’t hit. But it’s not an encouraging sign when you have someone not hitting for average, not getting on base, and showing zero power. I mean, at that point you’re just hoping for bloop singles and that’s really nothing to feel good about. Having watched Vazquez all season long there isn’t much to feel optimistic about here. Maybe he’ll find his power stroke again, but this isn’t where I’d go looking for improvement down the stretch.
Finally we get to Bogaerts, who since July 1 has hit .225/.312/.400. It’s tempting to blame this on a wrist injury that has been reportedly bothering him. Bogaerts is one of the most consistent hitters in baseball, and a slash line like that really isn’t him. He’s been playing because the Red Sox don’t have a back up shortstop and Marwin Gonzalez who plays that role on TV has been on the IL for a while now. Perhaps Bogaerts doesn’t want to go on the IL for that reason (or maybe he really doesn’t like Marwin Gonzalez) which I applaud but a line like that might be trying to tell us something. Bogaerts did just hit a homer against the Rays in the second game of that disastrous series so perhaps the wrist is feeling a bit better. The Red Sox need their All Star shortstop to be healthy and productive if they’re going to make a run.
The last guy on the list is JD Martinez. Martinez is hitting .232/.302/.463 since July 1. That’s not awful, but it’s not lighting the world afire either. The overall season line for Martinez still looks good, so for now, chalk this up to a rough month.
The good thing about most of those lines is positive regression is the likeliest scenario. I don’t for a moment think Bogaerts will continue to hit like that through the rest of the season, and I know Martinez has more to give as well. Vazquez, Renfroe, Duran, and Dalbec though, all those guys come with questions and some of the likely answers might not be great.
The good news though is this team won with four good hitters and five mediocre-to-bad hitters through the first three months of the season. If Enrique Hernandez and Rafael Devers can keep up what they’re doing or something close, adding Kyle Schwarber to a healthier Bogaerts and a slightly less slumpy Martinez, and the offense should come around a bit. That’s the hope, anyway.
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Great take as always.
“Positive regression” might be the coolest oxymoron I’ve seen.😀
Been thinking a lot about regression lately, because many of us haven’t fully appreciated how fortunate the Sox have been (in addition to being good.)
Even after four straight losses, they are five wins ahead of their expected total. Their best players have until recently been both productive and healthy.
And in a year where players and especially pitchers have been dropping like flies, they have used six starting pitchers in the first 107 games.