We're Going (Winning) Streaking!

On a winning streak, covid recovering, the rotation, injuries, like everything, my peeps!

Writing is like winning. Once you get out of the habit of doing it, it can be difficult to get back into it. Or maybe the two aren’t related at all and this is just a not-so-clever word trick to introduce both ideas, I don’t know. I’ll let you decide.

One thing I do know is that I’m feeling much better. Not 100 percent yet, but definitely on that path, and I gotta say I’ve not been so excited about normal life in a long time. Covid really kicked my butt, like a 2018 Red Sox playoffs style butt kicking. Laying in bed knowing that you don’t have the energy or breath to get up to go to the bathroom would not make my top 10 list of fun things. So being able to get up, make coffee, and get my boys ready for school is truly a blessing, even if some mornings it might not feel that way.

Another blessing, since I’m counting (and truthfully, there are too many in my life to count), is writing here for you nice people. I’m hopeful I’ll be back to writing every few days here at the ol’ Sox Outsider very soon. I won’t promise anything. This illness might not be done with me yet. But I sure hope I’m just a few steps from getting out of this thing.

Anyway. That’s way more than enough about me. Let’s talk some Red Sox!

But first, let’s mention this silly newsletter. Hi! I’m Matt Kory, and this is Sox Outsider. You might know my work from The Athletic, FanGraphs, and a bunch of other fun spots. Now, when I’m not busy having covid, sleeping, or sleeping and having covid (I’m nothing if not a multi-tasker) I’m writing about the Red Sox here. I try to make it fun, entertaining, and informative, or at the very least, peppered with the occasional poop joke. So come along for the ride and subscribe. It’s free, it’s fun, and if you hate it, you can always unsubscribe later! How’s that for a sales pitch? Thanks for reading.

Winning: It’s better than losing!

As it turns out, right? And the funny thing is traditionally these west coast road swings absolutely beat the Red Sox up. I went to see the 2018 team play in Seattle. That was the best Red Sox team of my lifetime and the lifetime of anyone else who happens to be alive. They got completely shut down by Mariners immortal Wade Leblanc. Which is to say every win on the yearly West Coast roadtrip is an impressive feat in and of itself.

It’s all the more impressive that the Red Sox went 8-2 on this annual death march of a road trip. And in fact they are an even better 9-2 in July! I’m not going to look it up, but I will state with absolute confidence that this was the best west coast trip the Red Sox have ever had and you’re not going to look it up either and we’re both going to just sit here grinning in blissful ignorance.

Since getting their butts kicked by the White Sox in early May, the Red Sox have played 32 games. They are 22-10 in those games (including, bizarrely, losing three of five games to the Orioles).

What’s funny about this is how things have just switched, like flicking a light switch. I hear this most often associated with hockey teams entering the playoffs, but the idea that a team can just “turn it on” when they need to has always felt untrue to me. But what can happen is, well, whatever just happened to the Red Sox.

As I pointed out to Christopher Crawford a few days back on the NBC Sports Edge podcast that he was kind enough to invite me on, the Red Sox were 28th in offense (as measured by FanGraphs’ wRC+) in April, which is another way of saying they were third from last in baseball with the bats. That’s probably not the mark of a good team!

If I were to remove the team name and ask you how you thought such a team would do the following month, you’d likely say roughly the same. Why would you have any confidence that that team would get better? But that would be wrong! The Red Sox (oops now I’ve accidentally told you which team we’re talking about) were, in fact, the best team in all of baseball with the bats in May. They went from a .225/.273/.336 slash line in April [fart sounds] to a .282/.346/.476 slash line in May [standing ovation]. That’s a 140 point jump in slugging! That’s an improvement of 63 percentage points in wRC+!

How can a team do that? Like, how?!? I’m going to let you in a secret. Lean in and I’ll tell you:

I have no idea.

I’m not the Red Sox hitting coach, so I’m sorry there, but I really don’t know what changed. It could have been a ton of little things coming together at once, or it could have been a big thing that happened collectively to the group. Did they suddenly get the new baseballs? Did they get notes from their moms to take their morning vitamins? I don’t know. But look at these numbers!

That’s wRC+, by the way. My chart making skills aren’t great, but hopefully you get the idea. Just look at the differences though!

To be clear, wRC+ is weighted (that’s what the “w” is) to make 100 correspond to league average. 101 is one percent above league average and 99 is one percent below. In April, six of the nine players were in the 70s or below. That means six of the nine players were 30 percent or more worse than league average.

That all changed in May. Seven players were well above league average in May. Also notably only two players were worse in May than in April, and one of those was Xander Bogaerts who went from 66 percent above league average to 32 percent above league average. That’s a drop off you can live with.

Things haven’t been quite as rosy on the batting front since June began but the Red Sox have played exactly one home game all month long (they dropped seven on Cincinnati on June 1) so I’m willing to cut them some slack.

This little hot streak has done wonders to resuscitate a season that looked dead in the water. This team looks a lot more like the one we thought we’d get going into the season, flawed to be sure, but powerful enough to hit themselves into contention, and indeed that’s what we’ve seen over these past 30-plus games.

Injuries

Everything isn’t perfect, of course. This is both the Boston Red Sox and a baseball season so there’s going to be some bumps in the road, at bare minimum. And, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve started to hit some turbulence, and it’s not just that 70 percent of the team forgot how to hit.

Matt Barnes was somewhat mercifully put on the IL a few weeks back, but now he’s been joined by Enrique Hernandez, Garrett Whitlock, and just yesterday, Nathan Eovaldi. The way Hernandez was hitting, his loss isn’t huge, at least in the short term. Jackie Bradley can cover for him in center and is sadly a blurry-eyed version of him at the plate as well, at least the version of Hernandez that we’ve been treated to in 2022.

Covering for Whitlock and Eovaldi is a bit more of a challenge. The Red Sox got off to a good start on that front yesterday when Kutter Crawford shut down the Mariners on one hit over five scoreless innings (and four walks). It’s likely Crawford will stay in the rotation, at least for another start after yesterday’s gem.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Red Sox are able to cover for some injuries in the rotation, at least in the short term. Boston has a Triple-A rotation consisting of top-100 prospect Brayan Bello, former Futures Game participant and current Tommy John recovery plan follower Bryan Mata, Josh Winkowski, who came over in the Andrew Benintendi trade, and Connor Seabold, stolen from the Phillies two trade deadlines ago, who seems to occasionally misplace his velocity. But he’s pretty good when he finds it laying around!

So there are options. None are likely long term rotation mates - well, Bello might be, and there was a time pre-TJ when we thought the same of Mata - but in a pinch they aren’t bad options to have.

Bello in particular is intriguing. He dominated Double-A, sporting a 1.60 ERA and 42 Ks in 32.2 innings, got called up to Triple-A and pulled the same trick. So far in Worcester he’s got the same 42 Ks (and 12 BBs) but in 28.1 innings. The ERA is a bit higher at 3.49 but it’s quite clear the stuff will play. It would be a rapid rise to bring him all the way up as he’s only had five starts in Triple-A, but the kid is 23 which isn’t especially young for a prospect. Getting his feet wet might not be the worst idea. If he continues pitching well he could figure prominently for the Red Sox later in the season, either as a spot starter, or more likely, as a power arm out of the bullpen.

How good are these Yankees?

Oh who cares? I was going to write about them, and I may still, but I don’t want to end this on a down note. The Yankees are very good. They’re also lucky (Matt Carpenter? Really?) but lucky or not, they’re way out ahead of the Red Sox. Right now, the role of AL East champ is spoken for and it’s going to take a big change in fortunes both at the top and the bottom for that to cease to be the case.

For now, the Red Sox are doing well taking care of their own business. Keep playing well and things will sort themselves out. The trade deadline is a bit over a month away and that’s a place in the calendar when change can accelerate.

We’ll talk more about that soon enough. For now I’ll say thanks so much for reading. I do appreciate it. I hope to be back here in your inbox soon. I hope you are well and staying safe.