The Red Sox need Trevor Story to wake up
The Red Sox may have won another series, which is fantastic, but it didn’t feel as good as it should have. When you drop the series’s final game of the series it always lets some air out of the balloon, especially when the game was more than winnable. A guy who was a complete non-factor yesterday was Trevor Story, and that’s becoming the narrative more and more with each game.
As we all know, Story was Boston’s big offseason signing as Chaim Bloom inked the infielder to a 6-year/$140M contract. He was brought here to not only fill a longstanding void at second base but to possibly be the next shortstop if Xander Bogaerts were to depart this winter. Unfortunately for Story and the Red Sox, this season has been a relative bust for the two-time All-Star.
The weird thing about the whole situation is the fact that it looked as if he was turning his season around. On May 23rd, he was named the American League Player of the Week and was the hottest hitter in baseball not named Aaron Judge. However, since then he has gone back to being ice cold with a few signs of life here and there.
I went back and looked at his numbers from the day he was given the award up through yesterday’s loss to the A’s and it’s like Jekyll and Hyde. During that hot streak, he slugged to the tune of .360/.452/1.120 with six homers and 14 RBI. Since then, he owns a paltry .205/.290/.349 with two homers and 13 RBI. At least he’s still knocking in runs, kind of.
The biggest concern to me is that he’s striking out at an insane rate of 36.6%. You can’t walk give the opposition the advantage of knowing you’re gonna whiff more than a quarter of the time. Yesterday alone, Story went 0-5 with three whiffs for the Red Sox, which simply can’t be accepted. Boston was 1-14 with RISP yesterday with Trevor leaving a pair in scoring position. Not good.
I don’t know what’s going on with him and I can’t even begin to pretend that I’m an expert. For that stretch in May when his bat was white-hot it looked like he was seeing beach balls in the batter’s box. Now, you may as well be chucking golf balls at him because he’ll and swing and sure as hell won’t be connecting.
When he was contributing on a nightly basis it took the pressure off of the big three and also sparked the rest of the lineup t dig in and produce. If he starts to revert back to his April ways, and it looks like he is, I’m worried that it might spread back to the bottom of the order and we’re going to lose all that progress they made. If the Red Sox are to have any sort of fighting chance in 2022, they need Trevor Story to be at his best, simple as that.
Yes, the Red Sox still won the series, but the rest of the division and Wild Card contenders are winning as well. They can’t afford to drop games to the worst of the worst teams and think things will be okay come October. We’re in June now and time is quickly shifting to not being on their side.
Winning the series is great, but they have to sweep these bottom-of-the-barrel squads each and every time so build the cushion for when they do lose to the big boys. Trevor Story needs to find whatever the hell it was he had back in May because if he’s not contributing, the Sox aren’t going anywhere.