Red Sox: Defensive shortcomings will bury the 2021 team

The defense will be the Red Sox undoing for the 2021 season

The Boston Red Sox defense has been simply wretched for the 2021 season. Defense is broken into two segments – pitching and glove work. The first has been floundering all season, with the most consistent aspect being inconsistency.

The two accomplices worked in tandem – the rotation and the bullpen. The rotation eventually had an exit signposted for Garrett Richards and Martin Pérez. And the bullpen? To paraphrase comedian Henny Youngman: Take my bullpen, please.

The pitching has been discussed all season long incessantly. The other aspect is the glove work which is painful at times to witness. Too frequently, those times have become far more often. Players have consistently been placed in positions where they fail — the incompatibility issue.

Manager Alex Cora is not blameless, but circumstances have dictated players shuffling into areas of defensive strangeness, such as Kyle Schwarber at first base or Alex Verdugo attempting to go one and one with old Sol and creating an embarrassing outcome.

Those two incidents are just minutia since the real issue is top to bottom institutional failure. Hunter Renfroe and Christian Vazquez are about the two most solid citizens defensively. The rest are gaping holes of poor throws, juggling acts with the baseball, and head-scratching decision making.

With the game on the line in the ninth inning, do you want a difficult chance hit to Rafael Devers? Devers is in his usual position on the errors leaderboard – first place. Devers is quite accustomed to this position, and generally, it coincides with dreadful defensive runs saved number. Devers is a defensive liability at the hot corner.

A partner in defensive crime is shortstop Xander Bogaerts. Examining the latest metrics gives Bogaerts a far more positive appearance than I would. Is this a case of lies, damn lies, and statistics? All season long, questions have arisen regarding Bogaert’s defensive competence, but the offset – as with Devers – is quite apparent when they rake away.

Bobby Dalbec is misplaced and attempting to do some on-the-job defensive training at first base. To be gentle, Dalbec is a work in progress if you consider a -4.6 UZR/150 progress. Collectively the Red Sox defensive group at first base is lingering in 14th place if you worship metrics.

Those are just a few players mentioned as the difficulties drift through the entire roster where it is a killer that surfaces all too frequently at the most inopportune of times. This is further reflected on pitching who have their issues without having to get four outs an inning. This team is defensively structured to give and not take away-outs. In football terminology, they would be losing the turnover battle.

The Red Sox may or may not be in the playoffs. The last few weeks have seen an almost nightly display of defensive indifference, and Cora has expressed his frustration and has resisted going all Tommy Lasorda on his players. At least in public. A far different view is displayed on social media and at the ballpark.

This offseason, Chaim Bloom has some significant defensive issues to address. The most notable and prominent is the pitching, but the team glovework is also substantial. How do you weigh the offensive contributions offset by the defensive liabilities?