KANSAS CITY — It’s hard to take issue with a road trip in which the Red Sox won both series, finished at 4-2 and picked up a game in the wild card standings.
For that, the Red Sox can be justifiably proud. They’re in better shape now than they were when they left Boston last week, and they remain in the thick of the American League wild card chase, and as their manager continues to remind them, the division race isn’t ready to be conceded. Greed is good, as noted hardball historian Gordon Gekko was fond of saying.
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And yet, their 8-4 loss to the Royals on the final night of the trip not only cost them a chance to leapfrog the pesky Kansas City Royals in the wild card standings, but also exposed some potential fault lines for the seven weeks remaining in the regular season.
On this night, the offense could not bail out the pitching staff, as it’s routinely done since the All-Star break. The Red Sox are averaging 6.5 runs per contest in the second half, a level of production that is unlikely to be sustained.
“Can’t say enough good things about our offense,” said starter Kutter Crawford. “The offense has been carrying us since the All-Star break. They’ve been swinging the (crap) out of it. As a staff, we just have to get back to the drawing board and keep grinding.”
“It doesn’t sit well with our pitching group,” added pitching coach Andrew Bailey, “and I’m pretty sure I can speak for the pitchers in there, we don’t want to have so many games where the offense has to dig us out of holes or have comebacks and then have to score again.”
When the offense runs into a tough starter like Kansas City’s Cole Ragans, as it did Wednesday, the likelihood of matching that output decreases, and the Sox are left to rely more on their run prevention.
Than plan failed Wednesday when Crawford consistently fell behind hitters, which led to a ton of disadvantageous counts, or equally damaging, walks, of which there were four.
An audit of the current rotation is far from encouraging. Tanner Houck, an All-Star selection, has a 6.16 ERA since June 29. Crawford’s ERA, which was 2.17 on May 17, has nearly doubled (4.11) over the last two-plus months. Brayan Bello can’t seem to regularly get past the fifth inning, and on Wednesday, the Red Sox revealed that Nick Pivetta would be skipped in his next turn, the result of “arm fatigue.”
Currently, the most dependable starter in the rotation is 35-year-old James Paxton, who a few weeks back, was being cut loose by the Dodgers.
To top it off, nearly
The Sox and their pitching staff find themselves at an inflection point.
“It’s a big couple of weeks,” acknowledged Bailey. “We’re coming down in a playoff race and if you look across the league, everyone’s kind of coming up against the same challenges.”
Compounding things is the workload. Houck has already surpassed his career innings high, and Crawford did so Wednesday night. Bello will do sometime later this month or early next.
“I’m not super concerned over the innings,” insisted Bailey. “For me, it’s (about) execution, command of pitches that we need to refine a little bit. Obviously, we’ve been hit by the home run ball a little bit. We’re taking a look at how our pitches are performing in certain count and where we’re (not) executing.
“We just have to keep grinding away. We’re doing as much as we can on the information side of things to make sure that we’re executing our pitches when we need to, getting into counts that we need to and limiting walks as best as possible. We’re finding a lot of barrels right now and we have to find ways to adapt around that.”
What’s also clear is that there isn’t much in reserve. The Red Sox are enamored with some young arms at Worcester, but neither Quinn Priester nor Richard Fitts is about to step into a pennant race and save them from themselves. The solutions have to come internally, and the recent results haven’t been encouraging.
As Alex Cora noted, the bullpen, other than a few blowups, has mostly kept them in games. But even with the return of Chris Martin (one inning, three strikeouts) and the anticipated arrival next month of Liam Hendriks, the Red Sox can’t put too much on their relief corps.
Bailey dismissed a suggestion that the rest of the league has by now caught up to the Red Sox’ unorthodox game-planning, in which breaking balls are emphasized, four-seam fastballs are limited and pitchers often pitch backward.
“It comes down to execution,” said Bailey. “The guys have what they have. Their arsenal is what it is. It really gets back to the execution of things, working count leverage and commanding the strike zone.”
All of which, as the last few weeks have clearly demonstrated, is easier said than done.
