Red Sox Strut: Mitch Moreland and Chris Sale lead the pack

Strutting Candidates: A Recap of the Red Sox offense last week

With 32 total runs scored over the course of the week, the Red Sox averaged about 4.5 runs per game. This isn’t lighting it up by any means, but should be enough to get some victories with good pitching in the mix. And that is basically what they did – they earned “some” victories and had an average week with a record of 4-and-3.

Many beat reporters and fans assumed that if anyone was ready to take over the reins from a retired David Ortiz, that player would have to the electric Mookie Betts. That hasn’t quite come to fruition as of yet in 2017. While Betts had a couple big games against the Rays going 7-for-9 with two RBI, he also had a tough 0-for-4 performance on Saturday. In fact, that is the problem with Betts thus far. Too many games without a hit or getting on base. Betts had three games last week without a hit.

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Andrew Benintendi is also going through some growing pains with a few “0-for” performances of his own. He did add a few RBI as well though. Ideally, it would be great to afford John Farrell the ability to move Benintendi down in the lineup this early in the season but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now. His 3-for-4/2 RBI performance on Marathon Monday was crucial however.

Pablo Sandoval’s struggles continue. Farrell even decided to have the Panda take a seat on Thursday to clear his head and again on Monday. Farrell has talked about how Sandoval maybe trying a bit too hard in order to redeem himself after a couple rough seasons in Boston. Perhaps the great Miguel Cabrera will have a lasting effect on Sandoval in order to get him out of this funk, as ESPN’s Scott Lauber recently noted. Ironically, despite his problems at the plate, he seems to be the only Sox player who can hit a homerun at this point. He had two last week to give him three total on the year so far.

Xander Bogaerts and Hanley Ramirez are both starting to come along. They missed last Monday’s game, but returned to the lineup on Tuesday. They began the week slowly, but came around. Bogaerts had an 8-for-13 stretch over three games with four RBI. Hanley is still getting over the shoulder injury and is really just adding a hit here or there but added five big RBI last week.

We can’t forget about ol’ trusty Dustin Pedroia who continues to be a leader and a solid top-of-the-lineup guy for Boston. He did have a couple tough games going 0-for-3 with a strikeout against Baltimore and 0-for-5 on Sunday against Tampa. Pedroia had eigh hits total for the week, and the Sox would probably like to see even more out of Pedey going forward to get this lineup going.