On Sept. 3 the Red Sox led the Rays by nine games in the Wild Card standings, now on the morning of Sept. 19 the lead is down to two games.
Things have not gone the Red Sox’ way on the field this month with injuries and tough breaks. These have added to this being such a rough month for the Red Sox. Considering how good the months of July and August were for the team, this month sort of came by surprise.
Pitching has been the biggest issue of the month for the Red Sox. As a staff they are 4-12 with a 6.10 ERA, which nearly doubles the ERAs of July and August which saw ERA’s of 3.70 and 3.82 respectively.
The pitcher who has had the toughest month has been set-up man Daniel Bard. Earlier in the year Bard had a 26 1/3 scoreless inning streak and had a 0.00 ERA in both June and July. In seven appearances this month Bard has allowed ten runs and has a woeful 12.15 ERA.
The Red Sox bats were red hot in July and August, where they hit .298 and .279 respectively. So far in September they are hitting .267, with only 18 home runs. They hit 40 home runs in both July and August.
Dustin Pedoria, who was once a leader in the MVP race, has cooled off substantially in the month of September. He is only hitting .215 with three home runs, seven extra base hits and 12 strikeouts. In comparison, in the month of July Pedroia hit .411 with eight home runs, 18 extra base hits and just six strikeouts. While no one is going to keep that pace up all year, it just shows just how much he has fallen off.
Another player who has cooled down of late is slugger Adrian Gonzalez, particularly from the first half to the second half. In the first half of the year he hit 17 home runs. So far with a little over a week left in the season he has hit nine second half home runs. Also, in June and July he hit .404 and .373, while in August and September he has hit .283 and .271.
All of the aforementioned needs to change, and change quick if the Red Sox want to crawl their way into the playoffs and then make some noise. Otherwise the so called “best team ever”, will be remembered as the team that blew the biggest lead in MLB history.
Add us as a preferred source on Google