While the Boston Red Sox remain in last place in the American League East, things have started looking up for a long-dejected offense. Multiple players — both expected and unexpected — have broken out in a big way, which has led to high scores and even a series win over the first-place Cleveland Guardians.
Some power rankings don’t necessarily reflect the swift offensive changes that have hit Boston, however. In FanSided’s latest iteration (for the week of May 25-31), the Red Sox come in at No. 25 on the list, down from No. 22 on the previous one.
The Red Sox earned their No. 22 placement following a sweep of the Kansas City Royals, and in the series immediately after, a sweep loss to the Minnesota Twins. Boston fought valiantly against Minnesota, losing all three games by two runs or fewer, but the Twins just have its number this year.
This week, the Red Sox mustered the same number of wins as they did last week, but they scored more runs on the way there. Boston kept pace with an MLB-best Atlanta Braves team — one of its two losses was by one run, its one win was an eight-run shutout (again, of one of the league’s best offenses) and the Red Sox scored one fewer run (16) than the Braves (17) the entire series.
Red Sox’s drop in FanSided’s MLB power rankings doesn’t align with offensive surge
The Sox went off on their offensive tear against some of the best pitching staffs in MLB. The Braves have a 3.16 ERA as a team, the second-best in the league, while the Guardians’ staff has a 3.74 ERA, the seventh-best. Boston scored 37 runs against the most impressive pitchers it’d faced in multiple series (since it last played the Braves from May 15-17).
The Red Sox still have their issues and one week of gutsy offense isn’t enough to change their standing too much. But the Miami Marlins, who ranked one spot ahead of Boston, lost all but one of their games this week and were even swept by the lowly New York Mets. The Red Sox at least could’ve finished this week at No. 24 instead of falling three spots despite an offensive outburst.
There are a bunch of underwhelming American League teams around the Red Sox’s spot in the rankings, like the Houston Astros (No. 21), the Twins (No. 23), the Los Angeles Angels (No. 26), the Royals (No. 28) and the Detroit Tigers (No. 30) and Boston — one of the underwhelming teams in question — still has much work to do to break away from the bottom of the rankings. But this week’s offensive showing should’ve been a good start.
Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow