Throughout their history, the Boston Red Sox have notoriously done damage at the plate.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty difficult to find an era in which they didn\u2019t have mashers \u2014 or at least long, sustained periods where they ranked among the best in baseball at putting runs on the board.<\/p>\n
Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr were the standard bearers in the 1940s and 1950s. Carl Yastrzemski then showed up in 1961, ushering in an era that included the likes of Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, and Carlton Fisk. Dwight Evans and Wade Boggs knocked the cover off the ball throughout the 1980s. (I don\u2019t want to talk about the early 1990s, because that doesn\u2019t fit my agenda.) Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Rafael Devers are just a few of the names who have led the charge for top-five offenses since the turn of the century.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tradition \u2014 though that seems to have been lost this season\u2026<\/p>\n
The Red Sox seem to have forgotten what they\u2019re supposed to be, as they ranked 29th in OPS (.666) and HR (33), 27th in total bases (546), and 22nd in batting average (.235) entering this week\u2019s series against the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t need to get into all of the things that got them to this point, but a mix of stupid personnel decisions (Durbin, Caleb), regressing veterans (Duran, Jarren; Story, Trevor), injured youngsters (Anthony, Roman) and an entirely new coaching staff full of dweebs who have never played the sport in their lives are probably a good place to start the conversation \u2014 but where does it end?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d be extremely surprised if we see any meaningful moves made to get this group back on track before it\u2019s too late, nor do I expect many of the names listed above to just turn things around. I just think they\u2019re going to start playing a brand of baseball that works for them.<\/p>\n
If that means playing like the Tampa Bay Rays, they\u2019re going to play like the Tampa Bay Rays!<\/p>\n
Boston\u2019s pitching staff could be one of the three or four best in baseball, with the starting rotation giving you a quality start in seven of the last nine games. The Red Sox haven\u2019t been able to consistently turn those performances into wins however, so there has been an emphasis on getting guys into the lineup who can actually put the ball in play and attempt to manufacture runs.<\/p>\n
Mickey Gasper has started seven of the last nine games. Nick Sogard was called up and immediately inserted into an every day role. Andruw Monasterio is getting regular at-bats with the injury to Story. Connor Wong is playing a bit more.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not sexy, but at least they aren\u2019t swinging through everything and routinely posting uncompetitive innings.<\/p>\n
Wong, Sogard, and Duran combined for an instance of small ball in Monday\u2019s victory at Kauffman Stadium, with the former lacing a double down the line, moving over to third base on a bunt single, and scoring on a sacrifice fly \u2014 scoring an insurance run that gave them some breathing room in a 3-1 win over Kansas City.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s insane that those things get me excited, but that\u2019s where we\u2019re at!<\/p>\n
Boston needs to continue playing that brand of baseball, which means more Sogard, Monasterio, Gasper, and whoever else is willing to actually give a shit.<\/p>\n
Junior Caminero would be helpful, too, but they can\u2019t actually be those guys\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout their history, the Boston Red Sox have notoriously done damage at the plate. It\u2019s pretty difficult to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,4,297,1322,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-703117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-red-sox-analysis","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116601406309251457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}