Over Memorial Day weekend, offense was shockingly not the Boston Red Sox's greatest weakness. The offense posted 13 runs over three games against the Minnesota Twins, an average of 4.34 runs per game (greater than their season average of 3.69 runs per game before the series started).
Yet, the Red Sox were swept by the underwhelming American League Central club, dropping their home record to 8-17, the worst metric in the league. Every other team has at least 10 wins at their home park. For once, the bats can't take the blame, but Boston made other critical mistakes that led to its close losses.
The worst of which is the most recent: the heinous send of Connor Wong from second base to the plate in the ninth inning of the series finale. Not only was Wong seemingly not running at full speed when Isiah Kiner-Falefa's ball rattled off the Green Monster, interim third base coach Chad Epperson sent him home when there could've been runners on second and third base with one out in terrible conditions.
The Red Sox are desperate for wins and normally should be quite aggressive in that spot, but context matters. Wong is surprisingly fast for a catcher and more than likely could've scored from third base on a sac fly or base hit in to the outfield. Twins pitcher Yoendrys Gómez balked immediately after Kiner-Falefa's huge double because he could hardly stand on the mound the playing conditions were so poor. Wong had no business jogging as the tying runner, Epperson had no business sending him there and Chad Tracy had no business defending the send after the game.
Poor baserunning and errors spoiled Red Sox offensive breakout against Twins
Epperson had another questionable send on May 23 when he sent Willson Contreras home on a Ceddanne Rafaela single to right-center field. The ball wasn't hit exceedingly hard and Contreras is hardly a burner — he ended up being out by a mile. It was the Sox's best scoring chance of the day to that point and aggression is key in some of those moments, but that out was obvious as soon as the ball was thrown.
Boston and its normally-elite defense also returned to making errors against the Twins. Wilyer Abreu's Sunday overthrow didn't result in any runs scoring, but maybe he could've cut Trevor Larnach down at the plate in ideal playing conditions. On May 23, a rare fielding error from Contreras prolonged an inning in which the Twins scored their two winning runs.
The Twins stand in third place in the AL Central and they were by far Boston's easiest opponent of the week with the MLB-leading Atlanta Braves coming to town starting May 26. The Red Sox were handed an ideal matchup to help them fix their abysmal home record and finally got the offense to do it, but they got in their own way in key moments.
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