The 2010 Red Sox: What You See Is What You Get!

Monday, May 03, 2010

By: Scott Cordischi

Unfortunately, this is more like it. After a maddeningly inconsistent start to the 2010 season, the Boston Red Sox may be settling in as the team we can expect to see this season. Through the first 15 games or so of the season it was a collective failure. The offense wasn’t there, the starting pitching and bullpen was failing and the defense was shoddy.

Now, the starting rotation seems to found its way. Josh Beckett’s start in Baltimore was more like what we expect from him as was Jon Lester’s performance in Toronto. John Lackey has been steady with only one out of his five starts this season falling short of a quality start and Clay Buchholz has arguably been the staff ace through the first month of the season. As for the #5-spot in the rotation? That is still a work in progress with Tim Wakefield having had to give way to Daisuke Matsuzaka who made his first start of the season in Baltimore. But who really expects consistency out of their fifth starter?

Defensively the Sox rank second to last in the American League in fielding percentage but you can expect those numbers to get better. One stat which will not improve is their inability to stop teams from stealing on them. The Sox have allowed a league-high 38 stolen bases through 24 games thanks to the dangerous combination of pitchers who can’t hold runners on and catchers who can’t throw them out.

But make no mistake about it. This teams Achilles in 2010 will be its offense. Their .261 team batting average thus far ranks 6^thin the American League but is far from the numbers posted by recent Red Sox teams. Boston ranks 22^ndoverall in Major League baseball with just 50 hits with runners in scoring position.

Not having Jacoby Ellsbury healthy is a definite factor. His ability to not just get on base, but to put pressure on opposing pitchers with his threat to run is sorely missed. But it is so much more than that. Victor Martinez is a career .297 hitter batting just .233. JD Drew is a career .282 hitter currently batting .214. David Ortiz has a .280 career average and is a paltry .159 at the moment. And Mike Lowell bats .280 for his career and currently stands at just .222.

There is no doubt that all of these averages will come up throughout the course of the season. But by how much? Ortiz is the biggest concern as he appears to have lost some bat speed. This often happens to big sluggers as they get older. We also assume that he no longer takes any type of performance enhancing drugs which he was alleged to have taken a few years back. Big Papi’s average has steadily declined in recent years. He batted .269 in 2008 and just .238 last year so our expectations for him should not be very high.

Ditto for Mike Lowell who is also long in the tooth. Now a year removed from hip surgery you have to wonder how much gas is left in his tank?

As for J.D. Drew, general manager Theo Epstein can tout his OPS all he wants but the bottom line is that Boston hasn’t received anywhere close to 14 million dollars a year worth of production from his bat and this year will likely be no different.

Victor Martinez’s bat may hold the most promise of any of the slumping Sox but when there’s little protection in the line-up and not much production around you, things can be difficult.

Most experts agreed at the end of the 2009 season that the Red Sox not only needed to re-sign their big stick in the outfield Jason Bay, but also add another thumper to the line-up. They did neither and now they appear to be paying a price for it.