Just over a week ago, I said the Boston Red Sox would be the World Series Champions. Wow, what a difference a week makes. Boston is now 0-6 and along with the Rays are one of only two winless teams remaining in baseball. Where have they gone wrong?
That has an easy answer…EVERYWHERE. Their big offseason acquisitions (Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford) have gone a combined 11 for 46 (.239), with 1 homerun, 6 runs driven in and scored 4 runs, and the sad part is, Adrian Gonzalez is hitting better than anyone else on the team as he is the only player on the team batting over .240. In the preseason there was talk of this loaded lineup with former MVP Dustin Pedroia, five-tool superstar Carl Crawford, the aforementioned power bat of Gonzalez, speed-demon Jacob Ellsbury, and the rest of the group scoring 1000+ runs. They might have trouble getting to 500 runs at their current pace as they’ve plated only six in the last four games, and three of those against an Indians team that allowed 24 runs in a three game set against the White Sox. The offense is not just bad right now, they rank 28th in all of baseball in runs scored (16), 29th in team batting average (.181), 28th in On base percentage (.269), 29th in Slugging (.275), 29th in Total Bases (53), 29th in Extra Base Hits (10), and have no sacrifices, flys or bunts. To put it bluntly, the offense has yet to hit or manufacture runs.
Ok, you cannot hit right now, what about the pitching? They don’t have that either right now. Jon Lester has lived up to expectation (3.65 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 2.25:1 strikeout to walk ratio), it’s the rest of the staff that has performed below expectations. Clay Buchholz, Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and John Lackey have been very bad, combining to give up 19 runs in 20 innings for a 8.55 ERA and have nearly as many walks as strikeouts 12:11. Thing do not get much better in the bullpen with a combined 7.88 ERA and two loss. In all, the Red Sox pitching staff is 30th in ERA (7.13), 29th in Quality Starts (1), 30th in innings pitched (48, they’ve been so bad that no team has had to bat against them in the 9th to lockup the game), 30th in Slugging percentage against (.646, next worse is .519), and 30th in Home Runs allowed (14).
To put this simple, Boston has been the worst team in baseball through the first week of the season. That is the beauty of baseball though, their 0-6 start accounts for 1/27th of their season, it’s the equivalent of an NFL team getting beaten in their 1st half of football in the first game of the season. It is a small sample size for a marathon of a season. Red Sox Nation is not happy, the Sox themselves are not happy, but the ship can be righted this weekend when they open Fenway for the season with the rival Yankees coming to down. I know that no team has started 0-6 and won the World Series, but keep in mind, no team had been down 0-3 in a playoff series and came back and won. Do not be surprised to see the Sox wake up and put a beating on the Yanks this weekend. I’m sticking with my guns, they are the most talented team in baseball, it is only a matter of time before we see it on the field.
