With a franchise history best start, the Boston Red Sox have played solid offense to start the year. The pitching, overall, hasn’t been far behind. Clearly, Boston will be setting a league record this year, winning the world series and holding a regular season of 159-3. A skeptic this past offseason, I can admit I may have doubted the club’s ability to do little more than last year.
Batting
The Sox hitting has seen a huge improvement so far this season, and this year they’ll buck the trend of scoring all of their runs in the first month or so. Gone are the days of Chris Sale pitching into the eighth or ninth inning because he has no run support. The lineup has been firing homers left and right this year, a trend that will continue. JD Martinez has silenced offseason critics by hitting his first home run into the Green Monster and adding a grand slam.
Boston is scoring an average of 6.35 runs per game to start this season. Take that Giancarlo “Mr. Strikeout” Stanton and Aaron Judge. Boston has hit 22 home runs, distributed across the lineup. That lineup is hitting at .289, which shows that there’s room for improvement as different players heat up this season.
Pitching
The pitching staff has only given up 2.82 runs per game this season. Chris Sale’s innings are being watched to keep him fresh for the World Series run where they’ll sweep whatever scrub team the NL has to offer. David Price, barring cold weather and a numb hand, is looking a bit like his old self. Even Rick Porcello pitched his way out of a bases-loaded first inning. The rotation is missing two starters and hasn’t really let up. When Pomeranz gets healthy and Wright serves his 15-game suspension, Boston will have stacked the deck with five aces.
Meanwhile, the bullpen, which hiccuped in game one, has provided some sense of security in later innings. Led by recently immortalized Boston hero Joe “Machine Gun” Kelly, who can throw hands as fast as he throws strikes, there’s plenty of reason for optimism up and down the bullpen. This pitching staff is simply beating down teams left and right, literally and figuratively.
New Manager
Clearly, Alex Cora, a rookie manager, has gotten the Sox off to a franchise-best 15-2 start. He’s winning the battle between him and Evil Empire skipper Aaron Boone, a fellow rookie. Leading the season series against New York 2-1, Cora can get to his players in a way that Boone simply cannot. Cora has gotten outfielder Mookie Betts to swing on first pitches this year and hit some absolute rockets.
Not only is he outperforming Boone, but he’s blowing away former manager John Farrell as well, getting the slugging Sox to belt out three grand slams in the first month of the season. The team hit zero all of last season. That’s right they went all last season without a four-run moonshot. The players are having fun and are being lead effectively by a manager who can own up to his mistakes.
If you took all of this completely seriously, feel free to tell me how Boston hasn’t played any real competition yet, as they continue to mop the floor with your favorite team.