After the Boston Red Sox went 69 and 93 in 2012, a reworked coaching staff and front office gave up on many of the younger players it was trying to develop and replaced them with a cast of characters who at best had 5 years left in the league.
Their desperate reinvention of the Boston Red Sox job description earned the team a historic turnaround that spawned an AL East division title, a tie for the best record in baseball and in the end, a 3rd World Series in the past 10 years. After such excellence, the Sox locked down stars like Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli and Johnny Gomes and penciled that cast of 2013 Sox in as a team that could earn them additional championships in the coming years. In fact, the only actual major loss the Sox suffered during the summer was that of Jacoby Ellsbury but even that was not to huge a loss because unlike years before, the combination of Shane Victorino and Xander Bogaerts meant that Ellsbury was not the only Boston base runner capable of reaching incendiary speeds.
But if someone was not familiar with last years Red Sox watched the first 2 months of this season, the expected impression of the team would not be an accurate representation of this team. Simply speaking, the Red Sox do not look like defending champions. With a win/loss record of 20-26, the Sox are playing like a team that has either been bad for a decade or has just lost all of their star players in the most catastrophic of ways.
But that is not the case. So as we examine, the 26 losses the Sox have suffered this year and even more so the 7 straight they have lost since May 15th, what do we see? Well first of all, we see a Boston defense that has been downright pathetic in comparison to last years immaculate, error less play. One of the biggest problems on the defense has been the Boston pitching. After a bizarre off-season of bargaining and taking huge salary cuts, Boston's ace, Jon Lester, has been nothing like he was post all-star game last year. Beyond him, the shaky invalid that is Clay Buchholz has played straight up horrible in 2014 earning just 2 wins out of 9 games. In those 9 games Buchholz has allowed 71 hits. By comparison, in 16 games the year before, he allowed 75. The average of close to 8 hits per game has translated to a ERA of 6.32 for Clay Buchholz and in turn one of the worst seasons by a Red Sox pitcher in years.
Beyond the lack of pitching prowus, the Sox bats have been in hibernation all year long. They have whacked just 185 runs in 46 games which translates out to a pathetic runs-per-game average of just over 4.0. Furthermore, players like David Ortiz and Mike Napoli have lacked power and clutch hitting. Ortiz has drove in just 25 runs while Mike Napoli has driven in just 22. With strikeouts running rampant throughout the Sox lineup and the absolute meat of the batting order failing to produce in the most clutch situations games have been lost when they should have been won and runners have been left on base in 8th or 9th inning situations where they absolutely had to score.
"We're in a stretch of games here where we're giving up too many runs early and we're scuffling to score runs," John Farrell said. "That's a dangerous combination right now."
As for the pitching, after Jon Lester allowed 7 runs in the first two innings of the team's most recent game, Lester was highly critical of his season and his style.
No matter how you look at it, this years Red Sox team is playing terrible. After flopping in every majior category in the first quarter of the season, questions have begun to appear in regards to the true identity of this team. Are its players, namely Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino superstars or spotlight hungry has-been's? Is this team capable of winning again? And finally, was 2013 a fluke?
It is not my job to answer these questions. It is the job of the Red Sox and they better get started on answering these questions.
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