Red Sox nation was tantalizingly
close to giving up entirely on the 2015 season. But just as we were about to
put our rally towels away and find something else to entertain ourselves with
for the rest of the summer, the not-so-loveable losers, also knows as the 2015
Red Sox, gave us hope. They gave us just a little bit of a glimpse as to what
this team should be playing like.
Boston has
won seven of their last ten, and they’ve even gained some ground in the AL
East, as they now sit six games out of first place. I’m not saying this is a
warrant to jump on the bandwagon and start gearing up for a playoff run, but
even though I wouldn’t have told you this a week ago, this team may not be as
atrocious in the second half as they were in the first.
If the Red
Sox are going to turn this around, they need to do a few things. First off, the
front office needs to decide if they are in it to win it. If this season is a
bust, then the front office needs to recognize that and they need to let go of
2015 and start making moves that will benefit the 2016 Red Sox.
However, if
they are going to make a serious run at the top of the division, they need to
make some changes. They need to fix the bullpen. That is the second thing they
have to change if they are going to make a run. To put it mildly, the Red Sox
bullpen is terrible. To manager John Farrell’s credit, he has done a fair job
at managing the bullpen, but when he fixes one problem, another one seems to
arise immediately. Reliever Matt Barnes has particularly bad. Opponents are
hitting .334 against Barnes and he owns a 5.14 ERA. Relievers Craig Breslow,
Robbie Ross Jr., and Stephen Wright also have ERAs above four. Wright hasn’t
been terrible for the Sox, but if Farrell puts any of the other guys on that
list out on the hill, you’re almost guaranteed to see a bad inning.
The most
obvious thing to do is to trade for some help out in the bullpen. Koji Uehara is
safe in his job as the closer, but if the Boston could add a solid middle
reliever, they would be in much better shape.
Other than
that, they can explore with moving a starter to the bullpen or something along
those lines, but right now things are looking pretty grim from the point when
the starter comes out of the game and beyond.
The third
thing they need to do in order to succeed in the long run is to win games
against other teams in the AL East. I don’t know if it is a mental pressure or
what, but the Red Sox have been awful in games against other eastern teams.
They are 16-25 against the AL East, and if they keep that up they are never
going to come close to the top of that division. The quickest way to gain
ground in your own division is to win games against other teams in your
division, and right now the Sox simply can’t do that. Only one game separates
the first place team from the fourth place team, which means that nobody is
running away with the crown.
The fourth
key to winning is scoring first. When the Sox score first they are 28-12. It
seems that when the offense gets going early in the game, they can stay hot,
but when they start cold, they tend to finish cold.
I can’t
begin to predict what is next for this team, but hopefully some time off at the
all-star break will benefit them.
Contact Jasper Goodman
at jgoodman@radiovermont.com.
Follow him on Twitter @Jasper_Goodman.
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