Red Sox slugger Andrew Benintendi is not having his best season. He’s currently frustrated by the way he’s playing and hopefully turns it around.
It seems like this whole team is trying to find their identity this year. This clearly isn’t the same team that won the World Series last season. The Boston Red Sox have problems everywhere from starting pitching to hitting. As the second half of the season started recently, It’ll be nice to see if the Sox can turn it around a make a playoff run. The pitching needs to be better as does the offense. It’s been a frustrating year for this whole team but Andrew Benintendi has had enough.
Benintendi was great in his first two seasons in the big leagues. Last year, he was in the running for the Gold Glove award. However, this season he’s not having the season he hoped, only batting .268 with 42 RBI’s and seven home runs.
Last year, he finished with 16 home runs and 87 RBI’s. Manager Alex Cora briefly tried Benintendi in the leadoff spot in 2018 and he had 15 RBI’s and a .322 average in 87 at-bats. Cora did the same thing this season, swapping out Benindenti as the leadoff and placing Mookie Betts in the second spot in the lineup. However, that move did not last long and Benintendi only batted .267 in the leadoff spot.
It’s good though Benintendi isn’t making excuses about his frustrating season. There are some players that would do that or blame others. He knows the team isn’t playing to the best of its ability this year but he’s taking responsibility for his part in it.
Benintendi told Alex Speir of the Boston Globe that this is the most frustrated he’s been.
"“This feels worse. In 2017, it was my first full season, so I expected some frustrating times, but it seems like this whole year, I’ve been grinding and trying to find stuff,” said Benintendi. “It’s just not going. I haven’t hit a stride or anything right now. This is the most frustrated I’ve been, for sure.”"
Benintendi went from the number two spot in the lineup to now fifth or even sixth in the lineup most nights. Maybe he needs to be more patient at the plate and fix something mechanically with his swing to be the hitter we’ve seen him be before. The hits have to outweigh the strikeouts which are up a career-high 23.0 percent, per FanGraphs.
Last year, his strikeout percentage was only at 16 percent. There’s obviously something going on with his swing that he can’t seem to get the bat on the ball as he has in previous seasons. His exit velocity is also down from a year ago at 87.5, per Baseball Savant. Last year, it was at 88.4 and in 2017 it was at 87.1. He changed something between 2017 and 2018 and he needs to find that swing again to get to where he was a year ago.
Hopefully, Benintendi figures out what he’s doing wrong at the plate. The Red Sox need his bat if they want a chance at a playoff run. He usually gets hits and does a great job coming through in the clutch. We’ll have to see what happens but hopefully, things turn around for the whole team and they can make a decent run to the postseason.