It’s June, and the Red Sox are in last place.
Not a convincing last place – Boston, at 22-29 going into Monday’s games, are only four games out from the division lead jointly held by the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays. Not the same last place as, say, the Milwaukee Brewers, who enter the week 16.5 games out of first place (yes, that’s not a typo). But the Red Sox are last nonetheless, in a division full of teams none of whom seem either complete enough or healthy enough to snatch first place and run with it. There’s a very simple reason for Boston’s position: they can’t pitch.
Oh, they can’t really hit, either – not a single batter on the team has an OPS over .800, not even in abysmally small sample sizes (except for Justin Masterson, the starting pitcher with a 1.333 OPS in 3 PA to go along with his 6.37 ERA in 35.1 IP; he is currently on the disabled list with “shoulder tendinitis”) – but the pedigree of the hitters in Boston’s lineup and the park in which they play both indicate that, barring complete catastrophe, this is a temporary problem. It’s fully possible that age has caught up to David Ortiz, that Pablo Sandoval is having another 2010 season at the plate, that Mike Napoli has declined into a mediocre platoon bat at first base (and it’s taken an obscene hot streak over the past week to get his season numbers even back up to that level), that Mookie Betts is a modest-hitting centerfielder instead of a superstar, that Blake Swihart isn’t ready at all for major league pitching, so on and so forth. It’s far more likely, however, that most if not all of these problems will work themselves out.
The pitching, on the other hand – especially the starting pitching – could very easily be just as bad as it looks. The poster child for disappointment so far this season has arguably been Joe Kelly, who came over to the Red Sox with Allen Craig as part of a trade with St Louis for starting pitcher John Lackey for reasons which seemed too cute at the time (the Red Sox were betting on a big rebound from Craig, whose hitting had fallen off a cliff since suffering a lingering foot injury, and were enforcing an ideological push to get all their starting pitchers under the age of 30) and have since spiralled out into utter disaster. Craig, who makes $5.5m this season and $20m over the next two, has been optioned to Triple A Pawtucket – where at the very least he is hitting acceptably in 72 PA – while Kelly continues to prove that a mid-90s fastball means nothing if it’s flat and the only places you can put it are hitters’ wheelhouses and off the plate. With a 5 IP, 1ER performance over the weekend in a non-decision against the Rangers, Kelly finally brought his ERA down below six to 5.83.
Kelly and Masterson are really just the tip of the iceberg, though. Wade Miley, the lefty for whom the Red Sox dealt Allen Webster and ready young pitcher Rubby de la Rosa, has pitched to a 4.97 ERA in 10 starts; he’s played better at Fenway than on the road so far, which might not continue as the weather gets warmer and right-handed pull hitters take greater advantage of the Green Monster. Rick Porcello, the groundball wizard who the Red Sox gave an $82.5m contract extension that starts next year, is posting the lowest groundball percentage (43.3%) and highest flyball percentage (38.1%) of his career to start the season and has so far been rewarded with a 5.37 ERA of his own. And Clay Buchholz remains Clay Buchholz: an utter mystery coming off the worst season of his career in 2014, and who at the very least has solid peripheral stats to point to as a reason to expect his 4.33 ERA to improve.
Is there help on the way? Well, Steven Wright’s made a few spot starts in Masterson’s spot in the rotation, and his ERA is “only” 3.90, even if he’s not striking out a lot of guys. And Eduardo Rodriguez, the former Orioles pitching prospect who joined the Red Sox organization at the deadline last year when Baltimore dealt him for Andrew Miller (now a Yankee) had an excellent debut against the Rangers in the one game of that series the Sox were able to win. The knock on Rodriguez was always his terrible command of an electric fastball, but he was able to command it well on Thursday; should he continue to do so at the major league level, then between him and Jake Arrieta’s second lease on life with the Chicago Cubs, the onus will fall on Orioles’ pitching development to explain why they can’t teach their young pitchers command, and what they’re not doing that is so easily being fixed by other teams’ developmental coaches.
Rodriguez and Wright can’t save this team by themselves, however, and even if Joe Kelly is rightly sent to the pen to see if his stuff plays up more in middle relief, Porcello, Miley, and Buchholz aren’t going anywhere. There’s still one solution on the horizon – the lingering specter of Cole Hamels, who continues to pitch quality start after quality start with a putrid Phillies team behind him – but the acquisition price on him still appears to be much higher than Boston is willing to pay, and other teams are getting interested as the trade deadline looms.
The easiest “solution,” of course, is just to hope that Porcello and Miley start pitching like it’s 2014 again, and Buchholz like it’s 2013; but that’s hardly a solution at all, merely wishful thinking that might come true. They have been good pitchers in the past, but in wildly different contexts. There’s nothing to say that two or even all three of them won’t turn things around, but it’s hardly an inevitable outcome that just needs another month or two to be realized.
The good news for Boston fans is that no team in the AL East is much better off than the Red Sox. The Orioles and Blue Jays also can’t pitch, the Yankees remain in a state of perpetual disrepair thanks to age and injuries, and the Rays are driven right now by a number of young hitters the league should get a handle on by the time midsummer ends. If Rodriguez is the real deal and the Red Sox are willing to part with something meaningful for Hamels, Boston can still pull this thing out.
And if not, well, chin up Boston fans: there are a number of good arms hitting free agency this offseason to help bolster your rotation. Like John Lackey.
