Red Sox Fans Sitting Next to Their Panic Button
It’s too early for Red Sox fans to hit the panic button.
The Boston Red Sox are coming off arguably the greatest season in franchise history. They won a franchise record 108 games in the regular season. Then they dismantled the three other best teams in baseball in the playoffs en route to a World Series Championship. They didn’t allow the Yankees, Astros, nor Dodgers to win more than a single game in any series.
The roster returning for the 2019 season is more or less the same that began and finished the 2018 season. The most notable losses for the Sox were in the bullpen. Craig Kimbrel, the teams closer for the last couple years, remains unsigned, and Joe Kelly, a postseason stud, signed a deal in LA where he is struggling mightily with the Dodgers. Those two losses led to a lot of speculation over the offseason that the Red Sox bullpen might not be of championship caliber.
I’m not worried about the Red Sox bullpen.
So far this season, the bullpen has arguably been the strongest component of the Red Sox roster. Boston’s 1-0 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on the last game of its 11-game season opening west coast road trip was the best pitched game the Sox have had all season, and it was a bullpen game. The likes of Hector Velazquez, Brandon Workman, Marcus Walden, Matt Barnes, and Ryan Brasier shut a Diamondbacks lineup down that had been feasting on the Sox staff the three games prior.
This performance along with the fact that bullpen performance tends to be highly variable year to year due to small sample sizes should give Red Sox fans confidence that the bullpen will not be an unmitigated disaster that serves as the Achilles heel for the Red Sox over the summer.
I’m not worried about the Red Sox lineup.
Moving onto the lineup. The offense so far has been solid, not great or timely but good enough that this team should not be 3-9 right now. Mookie Betts, JD Martinez, Xander Bogaerts, and Andrew Benintendi are all well above average baseball players in or around the primes of their careers. Even if they all have relative down years compared to their expectations those four should be able to carry this lineup through the ups and downs of the season. Jackie Bradley and Rafael Devers have struggled a little bit out of the gate but those two have typically been streaky hitters. Fans yet to learn to be patient with them, should get used to more disappointment. The two brightest spots in the lineup thus far have been Mitch Moreland and Blake Swihart. First base and especially catcher were two positions that the Red Sox did not get tons of production out of last season. If these two can keep it up along with the return of Steve Pearce, this lineup becomes even deeper and more dangerous than it was last year.
The offense should not and will not be a concern for the Red Sox this year. They’re too talented to consistently fail over a 162-game season. Baseball, like water, seems to always find its level and I’m confident this Red Sox lineup will do the same.
I’m not worried about the Red Sox starting pitching.
Starting pitching, the backbone of this team, has been BY FAR the biggest concern of the 2019 season for the Red Sox. Every single one of their starters has looked like they borrowed a pre-game routine from Matt Harvey on Cinco de Mayo. A lot of people look to the workload in Spring Training, talking about how these pitchers aren’t prepared for the regular season. Alex Cora has come out and said their load management was exactly the same in the 2018 Spring Training and I have no reason not to trust the manager after how incredible he’s been in his year-plus at the helm.
One of the sneaky biggest concerns I had for this Sox team heading into the season was their starting pitching depth. The top five guys are great. I’d argue Sale, Price, Porcello, Eovaldi, and Rodriguez are the second-best rotation in baseball behind the Cleveland Indians. Some people may argue the Yankees, Astros, Mets, or Nationals are better, but the Sox certainly belong among the top 6 or 7 rotation in baseball.
But once Steven Wright got nabbed for PEDs and subsequently suspended for 80 games, the Red Sox lost their safety blanket. If one of these starters goes down, we’re bound to see a lot more game plans like the one used in the 1-0 win against the Diamondbacks. And while Red Sox fans may be thinking that’s not such a bad thing right now, in the long run it is. It puts a lot of wear and tear on an already somewhat thin and inexperienced bullpen and that’s the last thing the Red Sox want to deal with in the dog days of summer.
That’s why I theorize, and I could be completely wrong, that the Red Sox management is currently telling their starting rotation to take things easy in the first few weeks of the season to ensure that all five are able to survive the entire season and are fully ready to go when it really counts in August-November. I expect this rotation to start letting it loose in the next couple of weeks and to look completely different from how they have in the first 12 games. Again, like the lineup, these pitchers have been too good for too long to be this historically bad all season long. They can literally only get better; they’re last in the Majors in WAR right now. I fully expect them to get a lot better.
The one thing to keep an eye on is Chris Sale’s velocity. His velocity was a concern during the postseason last year and is a worry to start this season too. He’s not the same Cy Young caliber pitcher when he has to rely on his soft stuff. When he’s able to pair his slider and changeup with a 95+ MPH fastball he’s virtually unhittable. Until then though, he’s forced to outsmart opponents and miss barrels instead of bats liked he did in his one successful outing this season against the A’s. What gives me confidence in Sale is that he unleashed a couple 94 and 95 MPH fastballs in his last start against the Blue Jays in the sub 40-degree weather in Boston. The Red Sox are likely confident in his health judging by the 5 years, $150M deal they gave him.
Getting out to a 3-9 record is about as big of a nightmare as Red Sox fans have had since 2004. They have solace in the fact that the Yankees have been struggling so far as well with their banged-up roster. Red Sox fans may need to try on their “Worried about the Tampa Bay Rays” hat. They look like an absolute wagon right now with a deep and dominant bullpen, a couple high caliber starting pitchers, and a young, talented, and versatile lineup. Spotting the Rays with a 6.5 game lead 12 games into the season certainly isn’t ideal, but I’m not worried about the Red Sox.
