3 Key Red Sox Takeaways from the Detroit Tigers Series

Top 3 takeaways from the Boston Red Sox series vs the Detroit Tigers

The Boston Red Sox took two out of three games from the Detroit Tigers to begin the week, bringing their season record to an even 3-3 heading into the home opener at Fenway Park on Friday. The bats came alive, and the pitching looked solid overall outside of a couple rough innings.

There were highlights and low lights throughout each game, and a few key takeaways from the series that we might be able to learn from. I’ve boiled it down to a Top 3, but here are a couple quick thoughts before diving into the details of those.

Quick Thought No. 1: The right field platoon remains unsettled.

• Christian Arroyo has been shaky thus far, taking a couple bad routes to balls and failing to make plays that are just slightly harder than routine. Throwing him into right field at Fenway could lead to some less than desirable results.
• Jackie Bradley Jr didn’t record his first hit of the season until the final game of the series, but his defense has been just about as expected outside of a missed diving attempt on a flare off Miguel Cabrera’s bat. He’s just 2-for-15 to this point of the season but has provided the top-notch defense we’ve come to expect.
• Arroyo is sure to improve his defense as he gets more experience, and the jury is still out on if Bradley Jr. can regain his offensive form from his first stint with the Red Sox. Michael Conforto is still available on the open market, and reports have surfaced about the Red Sox being interested in his services. Time will tell how this one plays out.

Quick Thought No. 2: Michael Wacha and Rich Hill should be just fine back-of-the-rotation starters until Chris Sale and James Paxton are healthy.

• Both Wacha and Hill turned in strong first starts of the season. Wacha went 4.1 innings giving up 2 H, 1 ER and 3 BB while striking out 4 in Game 1. Hill posted a line of 4.1 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 1 BB and 4 K in Game 2. The ability to piggyback Garrett Whitlock with either of these two depending on the game situation can be a major strength of his club in the early part of the season.

And now for the Top 3 takeaways from the recent series vs the Tigers.

2. The Red Sox need a closer, and it probably won’t come internally.

By most accounts, the bullpen has been a pleasant surprise to start the season. One silver lining of the truncated Spring Training has been that the Red Sox get to carry two extra pitchers on the roster for the first month of the season. This has allowed Alex Cora to get an extended look at fringe bullpen options.

But even with the extra arms on the staff to begin the year, no one has emerged as a candidate to take control of the 9th inning.

Jake Diekman and Kutter Crawford both showed that they might have the stuff during the Yankees series, but both followed that up with less-than-ideal performances in the series finale against the Tigers.

Matt Barnes returned during the series, appearing in the 6th inning of games 1 and 3 and didn’t allow a run. But that may provide more reason to think he is better served as a mid-inning or setup option than as a closer considering his woes during the second half of last season.

Matt Strahm is a name that has been mentioned as a possibility, but he threw just 0.2 innings during the series and wasn’t brought in during either save situation. Strahm’s repertoire is not traditional of a closer and he looks like he may be best utilized as a guy who can come in with runners on base.

Garrett Whitlock may end up getting a few saves by the nature of what his role appears to be, but it looks all but certain that he won’t have the availability needed to be a regular closer. That said, the role he is slated for this year appears to be a big one for this team.

Hansel Robles shut the door on a potential disaster during Game 3 of the series and, if there is a favorite to win the job, it appears to be him as of now. But Robles is 31 years old, and we know what he is at this point of his career. He has proven that he can get big outs, but he is also inconsistent. And an inconsistent closer is something that can cost a team down the stretch.

Josh Taylor might be the most intriguing option of the group, and he proved last year that he can be an elite arm when healthy and his command is working. But injuries have become an issue for him recently, and he is currently spending his fourth stint on the Injured List since last August.

Since 2004, every Red Sox team that has won the World Series has a had a clear and proven closer at the backend of the bullpen. The current Red Sox bullpen looks a lot better thus far than most people expected, but the recent Detroit series showed that the pitcher to fill the closer role probably isn’t on the active roster.

Expect the Red Sox to be tied to most relievers, especially with closing experience, that become available on the trade market as the season unfolds.

3. The Red Sox offense is as advertised before the season started.

The Red Sox finished the series with the Tigers by scoring 14 runs in their last 13 innings. While the offense was mostly quiet during the opening series in New York outside of the very first inning, the bats came alive in the second half of the Detroit series.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it isn’t. But the Red Sox offense seems to be at its best when Kiké Hernandez finds a way to reach base. He led off with a walk during the first inning against the Yankees, and it was downhill for both him and the Red Sox offense after that. It was also Hernandez who drove in the first run of Game 2 against the Tigers when he laced a double down the right field line for his first hit of the season, scoring Kevin Plawecki.

The Red Sox scored two more runs that inning, and two more in the 8th to win the game 5-3.

The offense picked it right back up in Game 3 against Eduardo Rodriguez. Hernandez got things going again, this time by belting his first home run of the season to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead in the 3rd inning.

The Sox went on to score six more runs in the 4th before ultimately winning the game 9-7.

Hernandez broke out. Rafael Devers went 6 for 14 with 3 RBI & 3 runs scored. J.D. Martinez was 3 for 9 with 3 BB, 1 HR, 2 RBI & 3 runs scored. Trevor Story returned from food poisoning at had two hits in Game 3. And even Jackie Bradley Jr. doubled twice.

The Red Sox offense showed how good it can be, and how deep it is during the second half of the series. Those 14 runs were scored with little help from guys like Xander Bogaerts and Alex Verdugo, both of which had just one hit during the series. Not everyone will be hot every night, but this offense is deep enough to put up runs on a nightly basis even if a couple of the regular producers aren’t performing.