May the Sox Be With You
Their May record won’t take your breath away, but are there signs of life?
The Red Sox just completed a sweep of the Royals to improve their season record to 22-27, 5 games under .500. They are now 10-8 in May after going 12-19 in March & April. Baby steps. They accomplished this with two series sweeps against the Tigers and Royals. They lost their other four May series to fairly good teams (except the Astros). The Tigers and Royals are pretty bad, but at least the Sox are beating bad teams. They didn’t do much of that earlier in the season.
May Series
Astros (20-31) – loss (1-2)
Tigers (20-30) – win (3-0)
Rays (33-15) – loss (1-2)
Phillies (25-25) – loss (1-2)
Braves (34-16) – loss (1-2)
Royals (20-30) – win (3-0)
All Hail the RPU
The renowned Craig Breslow brainchild, the Run Prevention Unit, was firing on all cylinders in May. Both starting and relief pitching has been excellent.
The bullpen is now ranked second in MLB. Eight pitchers (3 starters and 5 relievers) have an ERA under 3. The back end of the bullpen has been lights out. Aroldis Chapman has 12 saves in 12 chances and could possibly be pitching better than his career year of 2025. With Garrett Crochet hurt, Sonny Gray, Ranger Suarez, Connelly Early, and Payton Tolle have been terrific. In May, the starters have only allowed 31 earned runs in 18 games, an average of 1.7 per game. The lone outlier is of course Brayan Bello, but with Crochet coming back, it is pretty clear Tolle will take Bello’s spot in the rotation.
The Red Sox continue to lead the league in defensive runs saved (DRS) with 45. They are second only to the Cubs in outs above average (OAA). They have only committed 7 errors in 18 games in May. The difference from last season has been in the infield. Willson Contreras, Marcelo Mayer, and Caleb Durbin have provided excellent defense to go along with great pitching. Unfortunately, Durbin has been riding the bench lately due to his offensive performance.
Signs of Life
Going into the Royals series, Jarren Duran was a black hole. He’s still hitting below the Mendoza line, but in the Royals series, he was 4 for 10, with a double, a triple, 2 home runs, and 4 walks. Here is the Red Sox OPS heat map for the first 2 months of the season to date:
Contreras’ performance has been steady. Duran and Rafaela have started to heat up. But after hot starts, guys like Abreu and Gasper have cooled off. It’s pretty simple. More guys need to hit. Half of the lineup is still ice cold.
So, does all this mean we should start fueling up the duck boats? Yeah, not yet. The RPU is currently a well-oiled machine, but it will be tough to continue that torrid pace. Sure, a few guys are starting to hit, but the majority of the lineup is still struggling mightily. What is a realistic goal? Making it to .500 is the first threshold they must reach. The next 5 series are against the Twins, Braves, Guardians, Orioles, and Yankees. It will be tough to win all of those series, but if they do, they’ll be .500 by early June. In 2025, they were a .500 team as late as July 5th.
There’s plenty of time to turn it around, but once the calendar turns to July, the buy/sell decisions need to be made. Will Craig Breslow be the one making them? I think I speak for quite a large portion of Red Sox Nation when I say I hope the hell not. Breslow has shown that he is a walking disaster at the trade deadline, regardless of whether he’s buying or selling. Let’s hope John Henry pulls the trigger so that someone who is somewhat competent is making decisions for the future of the team.