The series this past weekend against the Blue Jays felt like rock bottom for the 2023 Boston Red Sox. In fact, it felt like the third or fourth “rock bottom” moment that the Red Sox have experienced this season.
The Sox came into Fenway Park following a rough West Coast trip to face the team that was a mere two games ahead of them as of the first pitch on Friday night.
Then they were swept. They were dominated. They were humiliated. In their own yard.
Boston exhibited poor pitching, poor fielding, poor baserunning, and an utter lack of timely hitting. Everything they hit hard seemed to go directly into somebody’s glove. The Red Sox, who had gone 7-0 against the Blue Jays in 2023 before this past weekend, were worked for three straight days at Fenway.
It was far from the first time they’ve been swept this season. It wasn’t even the first time they were swept at home this season. The Red Sox have alternated between sizzling winning streaks and bungling losing streaks for four months. As good as they look when they are doing well, they look just as incompetent when they are not. While the near future is very bright for this team, the present looks bleak just as often as it looks promising.
This most recent cold stretch has been indicative of every other cold stretch us fans have endured from this team. However, because the trade deadline passed last week without the red Sox adding a starting pitcher, a disturbingly large amount of fans want to blame the team’s recent struggles on the failure to add a starting pitcher before 6pm on August 1st.
This is paradoxical to me because, until Friday night, Boston’s starting pitching had been excellent since the beginning of July.
The Red Sox are now in last place again for a number of reasons, and their starting pitching has been the least of them. The offense alternates from blisteringly hot to ice cold with no in-between, they’ve played the worst defense in MLB this season, and they are awful at running the bases.
In other words, this is not the kind of team you load up for at the trade deadline.
Loading Up
This year’s trade deadline was a seller’s market. With twelve playoff spots available and an unprecedented number of teams in contention for those twelve spots, the prices for top arms that could really move the needle were dramatically unrealistic for any team that’s not a legitimate World Series contender.
Max Scherzer (Rangers) and Justin Verlander (Astros) departed the Big Apple last week to head down south. The cost of those big names? Top prospects from the Texas and Houston farm systems.
Scherzer (39) and Verlander (40) will each make $43 million per year through 2024 during the twilight of their careers. However, I won’t criticize the Rangers and Astros for coughing up future building blocks in exchange for two elder statesman with oligarchical salaries and shelf lives that can be clocked with an egg timer.
Why?
Because the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers are currently in completely different positions than the Boston Red Sox.
Texas and Houston are fully stocked at the MLB level with outstanding cost-controlled talent that can compliment the expensive stars they’ve shelled out enormous contracts to. Those teams put in years of work drafting, developing, and acquiring young players that can be solid contributors for reasonable salaries, freeing up an abundance of their teams’ payrolls to acquire established players via trades and free agency.
Look at the young, inexpensive talent on the Rangers offense (Adolis Garcia, Josh Jung, Leody Tavares, Ezequiel Duran, Nathaniel Lowe) and the Astros starting rotation (Framber Valdez, Hunter Brown, J.P. France, Luis Garcia). These players are all key pieces earning bargain basement prices in relation to their production.
This is how you build long-term winners in 2023. And this is exactly the type of dynamic the Red Sox are now so close to achieving with the emergence of budding players like Brayan Bello, Jarren Duran, Triston Casas, Connor Wong, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck, and Josh Winckowski.
The dual Mets flamethrowers weren’t the only premium pitchers on the market, but the asking prices for the other established hurlers were no more reasonable. Dylan Cease, who is also under contract through 2024, was reportedly made available in trade talks by the White Sox. But Cease sported a 4.61 ERA this season and is currently on pace to walk far more hitters than ever before. Rumors have surfaced that the White Sox were requesting Bryan Bello in exchange for Cease, which would completely defeat the purpose of acquiring him.
Back-End Starters
Obviously there are ways to add starting pitching without loading up on expensive superstars. There were back-end starting pitchers available at the deadline that could have been obtained by trading away mid-level prospects whose loss would not upend the foundation of Boston’s farm system. But is this the correct strategy for a team with poor defense and baserunning and a boom-or-bust offense?
How much good would acquiring Aaron Civale, Jordan Montgomery, Jack Flaherty, or Lance Lynn have on improving the Boston Red Sox’ playoff chances?
Let’s look back at this past weekend’s series against Toronto.
The only traditional Red Sox starting pitcher used this weekend was James Paxton, who was roughed up for four earned runs on nine hits (including three home runs) and two walks in five innings. Being Boston’s most consistent starting pitcher of 2023, Paxton would have started on Friday night regardless of any deadline deals that were made for additional starting pitchers.
John Schreiber opened Saturday’s game with a scoreless first inning before handing the ball to Nick Pivetta, the scheduled “bulk” pitcher for that game. Pivetta has been nails in the bulk role this season, and he pitched very well last week in Seattle for what had been his first start since being moved to the bullpen. He was another no-brainer to take the reigns against the Blue Jays, and I doubt many rational Red Sox fans would disagree with that sentiment. Pivetta did struggle against the Toronto lineup, surrendering three earned runs on six hits in four innings. However, once again, I doubt that any back end starting pitcher that may have been acquired in a deadline deal would have gotten the ball Saturday over a red-hot Pivetta.
Sunday’s abysmal 13-1 blowout got out of hand on the watch of Chris Murphy. However, let’s look beyond the ugly stat line for a moment (six runs on seven hits in 2.1 innings).
After beginning his outing with a clean second inning, Murphy retired the first two batters of the third before Brandon Belt dropped down a bunt single. George Springer then lofted a routine fly ball that Jarren Duran misjudged, leading to a double that put runners on second and third. The floodgates opened from there, resulting in a four-run third inning that would have been a scoreless third inning if Boston’s center fielder could have squeezed a routine fly ball.
The easy, simpleminded gripe for this series is to blame a lack of starting pitching, but that gripe falls apart under scrutiny. I’m quite certain that Paxton and Pivetta would have pitched on Friday and Saturday regardless of any deadline moves that could have been made, and Murphy’s performance was sabotaged by shoddy defense. Would Civale, Montgomery, Flaherty, or Lynn have fared any better against a Blue Jays lineup that was handed a fourth out?
The Pitching Outlook
We all know that Chris Sale and Tanner Houck are set to return to the starting rotation soon. Sale is scheduled to start on Friday against Detroit, while Houck could return as soon as next week in Washington. As frustrating as it is to constantly wait for pitchers to recover from injuries, Sale and Houck have been too good to simply disregard when planning for the rest of the season.
Sale was pitching like an ace again before he got hurt. He’s on the books for $27.5 million next year, so the Red Sox will give him every possible chance to regain that form and stay healthy.
Houck was shutting teams down for the first two trips through the order until he was nailed with that line drive. He has made significant progress as a starting pitcher this season, and he’s clearly been earmarked to be a big part of the future of this team.
Bello, Paxton, and Kutter Crawford have rightfully earned spots in the starting rotation for the rest of the year. Pivetta’s performance as a bulk reliever has shown that he is still good enough to be a solid starting pitcher.
Bello – Paxton – Sale – Crawford – Pivetta. There’s your starting five from this point forward.
If someone gets hurt in the next week or so, Tanner Houck should be ready to take that slot. If someone else gets hurt after that, Garrett Whitlock is expected to join the bullpen this weekend. With ten starts under his belt already this season, stretching him back out into a starting role shouldn’t be much of an issue. If yet another starting pitcher gets hurt sometime in the next two months, this team needs a priest more than it needs another starting pitcher.
The fact of the matter is that there is enough pitching on this Red Sox team. The recoveries of Sale, Whitlock, and Houck have been inconveniently lengthy, for sure. But you don’t trade away decent prospects for starting pitching at the deadline because you need to fill a gap for a weekend series.
That’s what openers are for.
The War Against Openers
Why do so many people hate openers?
There are legions of fans, even members of the Bleacher Brawls crew, that feel like openers are a crime against baseball. Why?
I think a lot of the hatred comes from the fact that openers originated out of Tampa Bay. For some reason, no matter how well they perform despite their miniscule payroll, nobody wants to be like the Rays. They had something like 15 pitchers on the Injured List for a significant period of time last season, yet they still made the playoffs. They know how to do more with less than any other franchise in MLB. If I had a team that was shorthanded due to injuries, I’d copy the Rays’ strategy verbatim.
Red Sox fans hate openers because they are different. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s not like the team started out the season with three starting pitchers and planned to use openers in 40% of their games all along. Openers are a means to an end; a way to endure a batch of injuries without:
a) calling up unprepared minor league starting pitchers out of necessity
b) getting yourself fleeced in a desperation trade for starting pitchers, which don’t come cheap
The Red Sox had MLB’s best record throughout July using a combination of three starting pitchers and two openers every five days. Sox fans continued to complain about the use of openers, but the only complaint was “it’s not sustainable.”
Well, it sustained for over a month.
Cut to August 7th, where the Red Sox have lost seven of their last eight. What has been the biggest issue during this cold spell?
Openers were used in three of Boston’s last seven losses.
- On July 29th against the Giants, Red Sox pitchers gave up two earned runs all day.
- On Saturday against Toronto, Brennan Bernadino pitched a scoreless first inning before Pivetta took over.
- On Sunday, John Schreiber pitched a scoreless first inning and Chris Murphy pitched a scoreless second before getting knocked around after Duran’s two-out miscue.
Total runs surrendered by openers in those three losses: 1
Total runs scored by the Red Sox offense in those three games: 8
Bottom line, the Red Sox have lost seven of their last eight games because their offense is too streaky. It had little, if anything, to do with using openers.
Boston has a good offense with several productive bats. But once those bats go cold, they stay cold for quite awhile.
Pivetta and Murphy
It’s one thing for 40% of your team’s games to be bullpen games. It’s another thing entirely to begin the game with an opener and then hand the ball off to guys like Nick Pivetta or Chris Murphy, who have been starting pitchers for the vast majority of their professional careers.
Pivetta and Murphy have been outstanding in the bulk relief role all season long. If it makes you feel any better, just think of them as starting pitchers that enter the game in the second or third inning instead of bulk relievers. Pivetta has been the equivalent of a fantastic fourth starter for the past two months, while Murphy has been the equivalent of a good fifth starter that’s coming into his own as a rookie.
The opener strategy the Red Sox have employed could burn out a bullpen if used for too long, but it has not been an issue in any way this season. The de facto starting five of Bello, Paxton, Crawford, Pivetta, and Murphy has excelled, and no pitchers aside from Josh Winckowski have been extensively pushed. With Sale rejoining the rotation Friday, Murphy’s move to a more traditional relief role will ease the bullpen’s workload a bit. When Houck and Whitlock return, there will be a veritable abundance of arms ready to compete for an exciting stretch run.
We’re Almost There
The lack of a big trade deadline acquisition has been the fall guy for a cold spell that is really just a natural symptom of a budding team that’s not ready to be a championship contender yet. There are a whole lot of things to like about where this team is headed after four years of rebuilding the organization. If you take an honest look at the players on the Red Sox roster this year and beyond, you will find a future that crystallizes more and more with each passing month. You’ll also find plenty of reasons to be excited.
However, this team is not yet where they need to be. The core of the future still needs polish and experience to refine themselves into a top team that can contend with the best of the best. That’s why the Red Sox had a brutal west coast trip, and that’s why the Blue Jays ran over them this past weekend at Fenway. The team continues to accrue that polish and experience with each passing game that they play. By the end of this season, I predict that there will be very few remaining Red Sox fans that doubt the philosophy of this regime.
Look at how all of the top contenders in MLB have developed into the elite teams that they have become. If you take the time to do so, you’ll see a blueprint that is eerily similar to that of Chaim Bloom’s tenure in Boston.
