Red Sox: Offense back on track after explosive weekend at the plate
By Sean Penney
The offense is picking up for the Boston Red Sox, just as it did around this time last year when they finished the season with the best lineup in baseball.
The Boston Red Sox were off to a slow start at the plate this season, which many were quick to blame on the retirement of David Ortiz. It’s only fitting then that their bats would wake up in the city where Big Papi’s career began.
Heading into the weekend series against the Minnesota Twins, Boston’s season-high for runs scored in a game was eight. They hung an eight spot on the Twins in the second inning alone in Saturday’s 11-1 victory and followed that up with a whopping 10 runs in the 9th inning on Sunday.
The Red Sox crossed the plate 28 times over the last two games, vaulting them up to 7th in the league in runs scored. The power outage that we were all so concerned about seems to be a distant memory after the lineup combined to smash seven homers over the weekend. Boston is still last in the league in home runs, but now they are tied for last place with 27 instead of dead last and inching closer to the league average of 35.
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Boston has now scored the most runs in the American League this month with 35 and they are tied for second with 12 home runs. This is the type of production we expected from this star-studded lineup, but why did it take so long for the offense to get going?
Recent lineup changes, which involved moving Mookie Betts back to the lead-off spot he occupied for most of last season and having Andrew Benintendi bat cleanup, helped spark a sputtering offense. Farrell deserves some credit for tinkering with the order to find something that works, although shifting a few hitters around isn’t the only reason that the offense has come alive.
We actually should have seen this offensive explosion coming.
As frustrating as the opening month could be watching this lineup struggle to score runs, it was only a matter of time before they turned it around. The Red Sox have eight hitters who have played in at least 14 games this season with a respectable .350 OBP or above. Getting on base wasn’t the problem, it’s driving those runners in that eluded this team in April.
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Boston leads the league with a .297 average with runners in scoring position, so timely hitting wasn’t to blame. The problem was that the Red Sox struggled to get extra-base hits in those situations to drive in multiple runs, an issue magnified by their glaring lack of home run power.
It’s a trend that wasn’t meant to last, in part because there’s too much talent on this team for the lineup to be suppressed for long. It’s also reminiscent of how last season started. We tend to forget given that the Red Sox ended up being an offensive juggernaut that led the majors in runs scored, but April 2016 saw them finish last in the league in home runs as well.
When the weather started to heat up, so did the Red Sox lineup. They would end up finishing in the middle of the pack in terms of home runs, yet that proved to be more than enough to finish at or near the top of nearly ever other offensive category.
This team can score in a variety of ways, so they don’t necessarily need to rely heavily on the long ball. What they can’t afford is to be a distant last in that category. Teams that qualify for the postseason rarely finish near the bottom of the league in home runs, so a power surge was certainly needed in order to get back on track.
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This past weekend served as a reminder of what this lineup is capable of. If they can continue to bounce back from a slow start in the power department then the Red Sox will find themselves in the playoff hunt – just like last year.