Cue the Duckboats! The Red Sox sweep the A’s

October here we come! The Red Sox completed their 3-0 sweep of the Oakland Athletics this afternoon after their 7-4 comeback victory. The Sox now stand 4 games below .500 (27-31) and remain 5.5 games back behind 1st place New York. the team travels to Baltimore to take on the last place Orioles Monday through Wednesday before coming back to fenway for a 3-game series with Toronto. the Sox are 5-2 in their last 7 and are definitely beginning to heat up offensively. Let’s cover the weekend:

6/5: BOS 4-2 OAK

WP: W. Miley (5-5) LP: S. Kazmir (2-4) SV: K. Uehara (12)

The Sox got 11 hits, 3 of which coming from Pedroia, and capitalized on the 3 errors by the A’s to win 4-2.

6/6: BOS 4-2 OAK

WP: J. Kelly (2-4) LP: J. Chavez (2-6) SV: K. Uehara (13)

Hanley Ramirez catches fire going 3 for 5 with a 2-run HR to lift the Sox over Oakland in Game 2. The Red Sox oddly scored 4 runs off 11 hits two days in a row.

6/7: BOS 7-4 OAK

WP: S. Wright (3-2) LP: T. Clippard (0-3) SV: T. Layne (1)

Down by 4 in the bottom of the 8th, the Red Sox rallied behind a solo HR by Rusney Castillo to lead things off in the inning. Hanley drove in Pedroia with a single to left and moved Holt to 3rd. Holt would score on a sac fly by ortiz to bring the game to  4-3. Sandoval would hit a single to advance Hanley and Betts came in as a pinch runner for Sandoval. Xander Bogaerts would be the day’s hero as his 2-run double would be the game winning hit for the Sox. Newly acquired de Aza would drive in Xander and Castillo would drive in de Aza to complete the 7 run 8th inning for the Sox.

And so, the Red Sox complete their FIRST sweep of a team in 2015. Best said by Tommy Largey, “This is the type of game that turns a season around.” and boy is he right. This is the type of game we’ve been waiting to see all season. Prior to today the Sox hadn’t comeback from a deficit greater than 3 runs. It seemed like when the lead got too much that this team just packed it in. Now, I am not saying that this team has turned it around. The A’s suck and with our roster we absolutely should have won the series. What is going to convince me is sustaining this success in the next 6 games. I cannot stress how important these games will be this week. Although we are 3rd in the AL East and are playing the last place (BAL) and 4th place (TOR) teams, we don’t have any separation from them in the standings. This division is the tightest in baseball this year, the difference between 1st and 5th being 5.5 games as of this afternoon. With the Yankees climbing out of their slump, it is important that the Red Sox sustain this recent success of their and take advantage of the slumping Rays and gain some ground in the division before the All-Star break.

P.S. Xander Bogaerts leads all AL shortstops in BA (.297), OBP (.340), and is 3rd in OPS (.742). This kid has turned it around since last year, he’s completely figured out his place in the game. I believe he should be right up there in All-Star voting.

The Red Sox are back and the MLB should just give up right now

The Red Sox may only be 2-7 in their last 9 but after yesterday’s performance the rest of the league should just not show up to a game for the rest of the season. Take a step into the spinzone and find out why:

1. Clay Buchholz finally led this team to victory. 

Clay may have gotten only his 2nd win on the year but we’ll take it. He only let up 3 runs and struck out 3 batters in 6.1 IP which basically is the Red Sox equivalent to a no-hitter. Hey if we can get a win when Clay pitches like this then I’m all-in on a World Series run. We just have to make sure Clay’s hair stays like this all year:

Love that pouty Macklemore look he’s going for, pure intimidation.

2. Our offense is actually playing offense.

Panda and Nap both hit HRs yesterday and Mookie hit a triple. The bats finally realized that you can’t leave 60 men on base and expect to win games. (No I did not make that stat up, they’ve actually left 60+ men on in May alone.) Not to mention Hanley Ramirez is back which means our offense just improved by a factor of a million. You don’t sign a man whose initials are HR for the t-shirt. This man is about to go off on our west coast tour and bring this team out of the gutter. King Felix should just call in sick now.

 3. Allen Craig is gone! Hurray!

Allen Craig got sent to Pawtucket because he sucks. I could write about how Allen Craig couldn’t hit a nail with a sledgehammer, or how he couldn’t catch a cold, or how he couldn’t throw a ball farther than a kid playing tee-ball but I won’t. Today we celebrate.

4. Carl Willis will make each of our starters eligible for the Cy Young.

Well I guess if we aren’t going to bring in any pitchers, we might as well bring in a guy to make the guys we got better. Carl Willis is a proven pitching genius and he’ll definitely whip our rotation into form. Who needs an Ace anyways? By the time Willis is done with our starting 5, each one will be eligible for the Cy Young.

So yeah, watch out MLB because Boston’s back, and this time for sure we aren’t going anywhere. World Series here we come baby!

Pitching is a problem, Hanley Ramirez is a monster, other Red Sox thoughts through the first 20 games

The Red Sox will play their 20th game of the season tonight against Toronto. After losing their past two series to AL East opponents Tampa bay and Baltimore, this series is a crucial one for the Red Sox to regain control of the AL East. As of now the Red Sox sit at 10-9 which is good for 2nd in the East behind New York and Tampa (both 11-8) . Boston is a grizzly 4-6 in the last 10 games never winning more than 2 in a row. A lot of this falls on pitching but there have been problems on offense as of lately (with the exception of a few bats).

Let’s start with the pitching through the first 19.

This graphic tells a lot. The most wins out of any pitcher on this team is 2 and the lowest ERA is 4.84. These aren’t good, plain and simple. Two of our starters (Miley and Kelly) haven’t even hit 20 IP yet. I can’t group all the pitchers on the roster into the “garbage category” because our bullpen has proven to be quite good so far. Despite being called on too early in games, being called into tough situations, and not having ample run support as of lately; our relief pitchers have held their own. The stats don’t reflect this but you have to realize that some of those ER were caused by our starters getting into trouble early and providing a shitty situation for the reliever when he comes in. I’ve said that if we have any hope for an October run this year we need solid bullpen performance if our starters are going to give us these kinds of outtings. Starting pitching is and will be our Achilles’ Heel this year unless addressed through a trade or if by the grace of God the guys we got drink some of this stuff:

+10 for a Space Jam reference in a Red Sox blog. Now on to the rest of the roster:

See that guy up top? No not Panda, I’m talking about Hanley Ramirez. Yeah Hanley, the guy who told Don Orsillo he would go deep last night and hit two dingers out of Camden Yard. I wrote before that Mookie Betts is possibly the future of this organization and I’ll stick by that claim, but Hanley Ramirez is  becoming the go-to guy this year. He has adapted so well to his role as a left-fielder, a position he had never professionally played, and has been a huge contributor to this teams success so far this year.

(courtesy of Jared Carrabis of Barstool Sports and Section 10 podcast)

This is an incredible stat and turnaround for Hanley. Once the rest of the team climbs out of this slump their in, the league better watch out. Pedroia is a lot healthier than last year and his numbers are on the upswing which catalyzes the offense production for the rest of the team. Victorino just got assigned to the DL for another hamstring injury. Shane is a great player in the field and at the plate but his proneness to injury hurts his value as a player and takes away a huge dynamic for the line-up. Mookie has stepped up and began to take over his role which is huge as it alleviates the pressure to perform from the veterans such as Ortiz, who is in mid-season form getting ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Brock Holt is still a phenomenal athlete and is providing an offensive spark for this club. Nap has struggled at the plate but he’s figuring it out. Losing Vasquez for the year hurt but Ryan Hannigan has stepped up and done very well in his absence. The Red Sox, as a team, have proven that they don’t need a solid outing from the pitcher to win games as long as the bats are swinging. Right now, however they aren’t swinging. The Tampa Bay series was really bad from an offensive standpoint and Baltimore was better but still not very good. Whatever magic we had versus Washington earlier this month is slowly vanishing. Granted there is still a lot of baseball to play this season and the standings will likely change a million times before October, the Red Sox can’t afford to have no offensive productivity with the state of our pitching staff is in.

All in all this team is doing fine so far. There are obvious needs that need to be addressed but there’s time to see how things play out. As of now, with the pieces we have, we are 3rd in the East and 5th in the AL. That’s honestly not bad despite all the negatives with our pitching and offense as of late. Once we sweep Toronto and get back on our feet everything will be fine and the Sox will cruise to a nice 153-9 record. Can’t wait to be back home and catch a some games.