BETTS TURNS OFF HIS
Ortiz offered slump secret
The Red Sox’ worst stretch of the season showed opposing teams the blueprint. Contain Mookie Betts and have a great chance to beat them. It was no coincidence that Betts’ coldest stretch of the season happened while the Sox lost 6-of-8. He can’t account for the starting pitcher woes in that span, but the offensive problems surely began with the leadoff hitter not getting on base. But there is a silver lining in this story, and it’s the same silver lining that has revealed itself time and time again during Betts’ first five major league seasons: His slumps don’t happen often, and they don’t last long. For a nine-game stretch in mid-August, Betts went 6-for-35 with three walks, nine strikeouts and one double. The Sox went just 3-6, bottoming out when Tampa Bay swept them last weekend. Before Sunday’s game, Alex Cora could sense that the baseball fans in New England were getting nervous. “The sky’s falling,” Cora said with a wry smile. But Cora could see what others have identified during Betts’ career: Even when he’s slumping, his at-bats aren’t all that bad. He was 0-for-4 last Saturday, but smoked two balls hard to right-center field. His plate discipline was worse than normal, but his problem largely stemmed from his own swings on pitches he usually can handle. “He’s getting closer,” Cora warned. Since arriving in Boston in 2014, Betts has often seemed to put pres- sure on himself with his own expectations and desire to contribute. Even when things are going well, he identifies parts of his game that he isn’t doing well enough and focuses on fixing those. There was a watershed moment in May 2016, when he received some advice from David Ortiz after a 6-for-33 start to the month. Think less, Ortiz told him. As Betts turned his season around and put together a year in which he finished second in MVP voting, he felt Ortiz’ advice played a big role. Flash forward to last weekend, and the Red Sox noticed some of those same things with Betts during his slump. “I think part of it is pitch selection,” hitting coach Tim Hyers said. “I think he expanded the zone more than we’ve seen before, and when he got a pitch to hit he tried to do too much with it. We’ve been talking. Try to use less body and allow his hands to work. Take the middle of the field. And I think he got away from that a little bit. “With hitting, sometimes the harder he tries the more it went against him.” During Betts’ nine-game cold streak, he swung at 30 percent of the pitches he saw outside of the strike zone, according to Brooks Baseball. He still made contact a few times, even collecting some hits, but it was a drastic difference from his previous outside-the-zone swing rate of about 18 percent. Once Betts shows that he’s going to chase, opposing pitchers’ jobs get much easier. Why give him anything he can handle if he’ll swing at some bad ones? Corey Kluber started it when the Indians were in town, getting Betts to swing at five pitches out of the zone. Kluber is a unique example given his incredible breaking ball, but other pitchers seemed to follow his lead. The Indians got seven more chases from Betts in the next three games, and then the Rays got five out of him in a three-game series. After a Monday off day, Betts stopped doing that. He had a nondescript game on Tuesday, going 1-for-2 while walking three times, but he showed more discipline in those at-bats. The next night he was on base four more times with a home run. On Thursday, three times with a home run. In three games since the slump, he swung at just 16 percent of the pitches he saw outside the zone. “It feels good just to be able to go out and help the team win,” Betts said. “I think the guys have done a great job of picking up my slack. I’ve got to say thanks to them and just get back on track.” Betts blamed himself for the team’s struggles. He said he considers himself the “energy guy” and hadn’t been providing it for a little while. He thanked the team for picking up his slack. But as he’s shown throughout his career, the slumps are short, and then he mashes. When Betts first came back from the disabled list in early June after missing two
October shouldn’t be cause for anymore concern.
Race tightens
Chris Sale’s chances at his first career Cy Young Award aren’t looking good. It seems impossible that he’s yet to win one, given his 2.88 ERA across nine big league seasons and the best strikeout-towalk rate (5.27) in major league history, but he’s never finished better than his second place in 2017. He was looking like a lock this year until shoulder inflammation landed him on the disabled list a second time. Now it’s going to be tight. Despite leading the league in ERA (1.97), WHIP (0.85) and strikeouts per nine innings (13.5), Sale is already 20-40 innings behind most of his competitors and still without an expected return date. He still leads the American League in fWAR (as calculated by Fangraphs) with 6.1, but Trevor Bauer, Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander are within 1.0 WAR while passing him quickly in innings. Blake Snell is catching up, too. Sale: 146 IP, 12-4, 1.97 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, 219 strikeouts. Bauer: 166 IP, 12-6, 2.22 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 214 strikeouts. Cole: 170.2 IP, 12-5, 2.85 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 234 strikeouts. Verlander: 181 IP, 13-9, 2.78 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, 240 strikeouts. Snell: 145 IP, 16-5, 2.05 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 168 strikeouts. Kluber had 102⁄3 fewer innings than Sale last year but won the Cy Young while having a 2.35 ERA compared to Sale’s 2.90. Before that, it had been five years since a pitcher won the AL Cy with more than 10 innings fewer than somebody within five spots of them. The 2012 race looks like a good reference point. David Price edged Verlander by four points, getting 14 first-place votes to Verlander’s 13. But Price threw 211 innings with a 2.56 ERA and 1.10 WHIP compared to Verlander’s 2381⁄3 innings with a 2.64 ERA and 1.06 WHIP. Price’s 20-5 record edged Verlander’s 17-8, though the perceived value of a won-loss record continues to deflate.
In a pinch, little
For all the Red Sox offensive success this year, the bench has hardly provided any of it. Entering Friday, the Sox had just 58 plate appearances off the bench, fourth-fewest in the majors, and 13 hits. They have one pinch-hit home run, by Brock Holt on Aug. 14 in Philadelphia. Blake Swihart is starting to take to the role, with two singles his last two times off the bench. Because he’s a switch-hitter, Cora thinks it’s more difficult for other teams to match up out of the bullpen. “It’s a different bench when you have Brock Holt and Blake, and obviously it’s going to be different (when rosters expand),” Cora said. “We might do that a little bit more, start matching up. Not always, but in certain situations we will.”
Headed west
The Red Sox farm system will have some of its best members on display when the Arizona Fall League begins on Oct. 9. Rosters were released this week and the Sox are sending eight players to the Mesa Solar Sox: Lefties Darwinzon Hernandez and Josh Taylor; righties Mike Shawaryn and Teddy Stankiewicz; and infielders Esteban Quiroz, Bobby Dalbec, Josh Ockimey and Michael Chavis. They’ll be managed by former big league catcher Lou Marson. Hernandez (11.1 strikeouts per nine innings this year) has a live arm and could help the bullpen down the road. Shawaryn (8.0 strikeouts per nine) also projects as a reliever or a back-end starter. Dalbec (32 home runs in 2018), Ockimey (20) and Chavis (nine) are arguably the three best power hitters in the system. About half of the 4,500 players to participate in the Fall League over parts of three decades have made it to the big leagues, while 278 All-Stars and 17 MVPs are Fall League alumni. The 13th annual Fall Stars Game is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 3, at Surprise Stadium.