Red Sox Strut: Hanley Ramirez, Craig Kimbrel finish out the month strong
The weekly article series where we examine the two players who deserve to strut their stuff for the Boston Red Sox. This week — Hanley Ramirez and Craig Kimbrel.
If you want to fully understand what the Red Sox Strut is, it means to have reason to walk with a confident, proud air around you. Some people mistake it for vanity, arrogance, or being pompous. This incorrect assumption is not what we mean. The Strut is about knowing that your deeds showed off your amazing skills to the baseball-loving public.
It was a huge week schedule-wise for the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees were heading into town for the first time in 2017 as well as the defending world champion Chicago Cubs with former Sox GM Theo Epstein leading the charge.
That was the story that would hopefully end the Dustin Pedroia/Manny Machado drama that dominated the storylines the week prior. Then the story became how the struggling Red Sox offense was costing the team victories.
After a rain out on Tuesday shortened the series by a game, Boston dropped two in a row to New York in disappointing fashion. They did redeem themselves against Chicago over the weekend taking two out of three to get to 2-3 on the week to get to 13-11 for the season – 2.5 games out of first place and in the middle of the AL East standings with the first place Orioles set to come to Fenway to start the week.
Let’s take a look at some of the top performers and not-so-great performers over the course of the last week before getting to the Strutters.
Strutting Candidates: A Recap of the Red Sox offense last week
Boston’s offense was just never clicking in the two games against the Yankees, and that’s putting it mildly. They only managed to cross the plate one time. They ended up picking it up a bit against Chicago scoring 15 runs in the three game series.
Clearly, no one was really hitting in the NY series besides Hanley Ramirez. There were a bunch of “0-for” nights throughout the order. The team overall was 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position for the series.
Pedroia did not play in the first game of the series after John Farrell decided to give him an extra day after the Machado slide forced him to miss some games with a sore knee. After going 0-for-4 the night after, John Farrell decided to move Pedroia down in the order for the first time in forever and he batted sixth in the Cubs series. He ended up with six hits and two walks so this may continue this week.
However, I don’t think that Xander Bogaerts is getting on base enough to warrant hitting him in the lead-off spot. He finished the week with just four hits and three walks. If this experiment is going to work, he’s going to need to be on base much more.
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The last couple offensive Strutters struggled this week. While Mookie Betts was the only Sox player to hit two doubles this week, he was only 4-for-18 with four strikeouts. Mitch Moreland was even worse. He had just one hit total on the week going 1-for-15 with four strikeouts of his own. Boston really needs these guys to get back on track.
Jackie Bradley Jr. wasn’t much better. I know he only returned to the lineup recently, but he clearly has not hit that stride that he hit last when he absolutely caught fire in the middle of the season. JBJ had just two hits for the week with a couple RBI and five strikeouts.
The catching duo of Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez has been awful at the plate. Sure, these guys are great defensively, but Leon has completely lost his way with the bat going for 0-for-6 against the Yanks. Vasquez did have an OK game on Friday versus the Cubs going 2-for-4 with an RBI but only added one more hit the rest of the weekend.
Beside the actual Strut winner this week, the only bright spot in the lineup was Andrew Benintendi. He showed some perseverance after not getting a hit the NY series and then going 4-for-11 against Chicago with two homeruns and three RBI. Benintendi surely looks like he’s the real deal and is ready for the spotlight.
And this week’s offensive Strutter is…Hanley Ramirez
After a very slow start that may or may not have been due to a sore shoulder, Hanley Ramirez has finally got going on offense. He hasn’t played in the field, but most Sox fans just want him to start crushing the ball like he did toward the end of 2016. This year, with no David Ortiz, he’s even more crucial to the Sox lineup’s success.
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Hanley hit two absolute bombs against the Cubs (one on Saturday and one on Sunday) that may have not even landed yet. He was also one of the few hitters to get anything going against the Yankees earlier in the week going 3-for-6 with a walk. He finished the weekend against the Cubs going 4-for-11 meaning his overall batting average for the week was .412. He also had four RBI and four runs scored in the Cubs series.
Ramirez in only hitting .253 on the year with three home runs thus far. Hopefully this weekend will start him on a hot streak. He was certainly the catalyst to getting past Chicago over the weekend. It’s obvious that the Red Sox have a severe lack of power in 2017 after not doing anything on the open market to replace David Ortiz. They need Hanley to produce, but for now, he’s strutting!
Strutting Candidates: A recap of the Red Sox pitching staff last week
It was a rough week for the Red Sox starting staff. It wasn’t really that they had bad outings necessarily, but they needed to be flawless in order to win without much offense or run support. Rick Porcello only gave up two runs on five hits and four walks in 6.2 innings pitched, but ended up being the losing pitcher against the Yanks. He did have nine strikeouts though. It would be nice to see Porcello get his walks down, but he’s looking better as his starts add up. He’s also already given up six homeruns on the year (one last week) so that needs to change as well.
The way Chris Sale lost on Thursday was a shame. He went eight strong innings only giving up two earned runs with another ten strikeouts and was still the losing pitcher after the Sox were shut out. Boston’s offense really needs to give him some support going forward, although if you ask Sale himself, he says he has only himself to blame. MassLive’s Jen McCaffrey recently quoted Sale:
“The only frustration would be towards myself. I know what I need to do and I just need to be better at it.”
McCaffrey also notes that Sale has let up just five earned runs in five starts so far in 2017, yet his record is 1-2.
Drew Pomeranz continued to not go very deep into games with only six innings on Friday and again allowing a couple homers, but with only two earned runs and seven K’s, he was able to earn a much needed win for Boston. The bullpen was key to holding on to the lead for the Sox in this one as well.
Steven Wright really struggled in his start on Saturday allowing five runs on seven hits, two of which were home runs, and a walk. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – I don’t care if he’s a knuckleballer, this guy does not look like the same guy from 2016 and could be an issue going forward.
Eduardo Rodriguez was great on Sunday night in the rubber match against the Cubs. In fact, he may have earned the Strut honors if he could have gone a bit deeper in the game. He allowed just one run on five hits and two walks with nine strikeouts. Again, the bullpen was very important to securing the victory.
Craig Kimbrel finally gets the honors to Strut
Craig Kimbrel has really been stellar this season and has come very close to earning the honors to Strut but was overshadowed by a starter. While Sale or Rodriguez could certainly be argued for, I think this is the perfect week to give Kimbrel the nod.
While he only had two appearance for the week, they were both close to flawless. He gave up just one hit – a double to Ben Zobrist on Friday. He also struck out the side in that same game and looked close to unhittable. He is fooling hitters by keeping them guessing with a nice combination of throwing gas and that vicious curveball.
Then in a non-save situation on Sunday night, Kimbrel again mowed down the opposition getting the Cubs to go 1-2-3 in the ninth to secure a huge win.
Next: Red Sox Standings Watch: Stuck in the middle
I know that Strut is supposed to be a weekly award, but with the month that Kimbrel has had, I just couldn’t let his performance go unnoticed. He has been the anchor of the bullpen and is one of the reasons that the relief staff has really turned things around in 2017. Apparently Boston.com agrees. He has allowed just one home run this season and has an ERA of 1.59. If Kimbrel continues his dominance, only good things can happen for this team. For now though, he’s strutting into May!