August was a tough month for the Boston Red Sox. Our star rookie got hurt and is out for the rest of the season. Alex Bregman slumped so bad his average dropped from .300 to .280 and the starting rotation is looking very short. So am I wrong to still feel optimistic about this season?
A lot of Red Sox fans are ready to throw in the towel now that Roman is out for the season. A lot of Red Sox fans think Crochet and Giolito are running on fumes. A lot of Red Sox fans think the lineup is so bad that the Red Sox will slip to the third wild card spot.
Maybe they will, but I don’t feel that way.
Now, you can call me a homer or biased but I’m generally an optimistic person in all things in life. So naturally I’m going to be optimistic about my favorite team. But is it biased?
This team still has the possible Cy Young winner and two other starters with ERA under 3.50. This team has the best closer not just in the league but maybe the best season a closer has ever had in MLB history. Stacked with Whitlock who has pitched 65 innings this year mostly out of the 8th inning role and has an ERA sitting at 2.48. There are questions about the end of our rotation with the 4 and 5 spot being shuffled around all year. Now with the kids Tolle and Early up I think they will fill those spots. Is that ideal having two rookies in your rotation? No, no it’s not. Have they done enough to earn those spots already? No, but that might be all we got.
Tolle has had one great start and one bad start. I still think his good start outweighed his bad and there’s no reason for me not to believe in him. With maybe two starts left, one coming tonight against an As team that struggles to hit lefties, quality starts will be huge to get the trust of the team going into October.
Connelly Early was called up last night for his first career start, and oh my was that special. 5 innings 5 hits 11Ks!! 19 Whiffs! 0ER! An absurd stat like in a first career start. Now we’ll need to see it again but everything he has shown us this year in the minors tells us that was not a fluke. That’s who he is. He has 130 strikeouts in 100 innings in the minors this year and nothing changed coming into his first start sitting down 11 batters via the strikeout.
Can you bank on two rookies to perform at a high level in a playoff series, no of course you can’t. But is it still wrong to be optimistic about the stuff they’ve shown and how these two kids can pitch? 🤷♂️
As far as the lineup goes, is it concerning, sure it is. We need to see more consistency out of the lineup there’s no denying that. August has not been a great month of hitting for most of the lineup. Of course losing a lead off hitter who gets on base at a .400 clip is never good for your team.
On the other hand this lineup is capable of being very dangerous when things are clicking. Don’t even try sending a lefty to mound right now with Romy and Refsnynder mashing every lefty they see. Even with Bergman’s struggles, he has never missed the playoffs in his career and I think I can feel good going into a playoff series with him as our third baseman and second hitter in the lineup. Along with a surging Trevor Story who is putting together a silver slugger season, and players that are capable of catching fire like Duran and Ceddanne our lineup can explode any night.
Dropping down to either the third wild card spot or out of the playoffs are two things we’ve heard Red Sox fans be fearful about, but I don’t see either happening. Right now we’re sitting closer to leading the division than we are to the third wild car spot. With 16 games left we’d have to really shit the bed the rest of the season to drop down that far. I still think we own the Yankees and we will continue to do so in our last series with them and secure the top wild card spot going into the playoffs.
How far can this team go? Hard to say. This has been a very up and down year across the entire MLB that has been hard to predict. I think it’s very fair to say this team is capable of getting to the World Series and also getting swept in the first round. The last 16 games are pivotal in determining our seeding and momentum going into October, it’s going to be fun, let’s see how it goes. Go Sox!
Pitching is supreme in the playoffs and the beauty is it is condensed. Three starters are enough with a fourth relegated to long relief status. Boston has that. The same applies to the bullpen. That is my optimism but this team has a history of prolonged struggles defensively and offensively. Minimize that and you can go deep.