How the Sox became the league’s worst
Lose 20th game to lowly Baltimore
The unthinkable has happened. A month into the 2020 MLB season, the Red Sox became the first team to lose 20 games.
“Thanks for reminding me on the 20 losses,” manager Ron Roenicke said after the Sox’ fell to the Orioles, 5-4, on Sunday. “It’s tough when you expect to win and you don’t. And you start off poorly, which we did. … It’s hard when you look at the losses and look at your record. It doesn’t help anybody. So I don’t really look at it that much. I know we’re not playing well. I told the guys, ‘I’m really concerned about how we play. If we play well we’re going to win a lot of ballgames.’”
The Red Sox haven’t played well. The disastrous season can be summed up in seven categories:
1. The Alex Cora factor
Every time Rafael Devers swings at a pitch outside the zone — which is often —
there’s a good chance the NESN broadcast crew will mention Cora’s name. And for good reason.
Devers struck out twice more Sunday and is hitting .222 with an anemic .674 OPS. His strikeout rate is inching closer to 30% on the year after holding at 17% in 2019. He can’t stop chasing. He’s chasing a careerhigh 39% of the pitches he sees outside the zone, up from 38% and 35% in two years under Cora. His contact percentage has dipped, he’s swinging at the wrong pitches and he’s doing it consistently.
The entire offense seems to have lost their solid approach under Cora of attacking good pitches early in the count. They’re instead chasing bad pitches more often than every team but the Orioles. They’re chasing 35% of the time, up from 30% and 32% under Cora.
Mookie Betts is gone but most of these players were here under the previous manager, and it’s difficult not to wonder what kind of impact that’s had on the performance of some key players.
2. The Chaim Bloom factor
It’s no secret why Bloom was brought to Boston from Tampa, and we’re seeing it unfold in real time.
The Sox have used an opener seven times and have lost six of those games. Zack Godley, Ryan Weber and Kyle Hart have started 10 games and the Sox lost eight of them.
The pitchers Bloom has provided for Roenicke have made it difficult for any manager to find matchup advantages, much less a manager who has never used an opener for a franchise that’s never done it with any regularity.
There aren’t enough starting pitchers. Innings are hard to come by. And Bloom has been reluctant to bring up any of the organization’s top young starters like Jay Groome, Tanner Houck or Bryan Mata.
The offensive players Bloom brought in have done better, with Mitch Moreland and Kevin Pillar looking like nice signings, though Jose Peraza and Kevin Plawecki haven’t made much of an impact.
3. The John Henry factor
It’s hard to win when you’re trying to shed payroll.
As much as Dave Dombrowski is to blame for committing a huge chunk of the payroll to a mediocre Nathan Eovaldi and injured Chris Sale, Dombrowski also signed Christian Vazquez and Xander Bogaerts to bargain contracts.
The problem is the poor planning that led Dombrowski to think the team was still all-in for 2020 and 2021, while Henry clearly wanted to go in a different direction. It made it almost impossible to keep J.D. Martinez and Betts on the same team if the Sox were going to reset their payroll, which all big-market teams have been doing every three years or so.
The result was Henry providing Bloom with spare change to spend on a bridge year, and a request to focus on the future. Even if it’s the right move, it was done in a way that made the 2020 season a joke.
4. E-Rod and COVID-19
All that said, the Sox still should’ve been able to be one of the best 16 teams in baseball this year. There’s no excuse for failing to qualify for an expanded postseason with a payroll near $200 million, no matter the obstacles.
Would they have been a playoff team if it wasn’t for the coronavirus? Maybe.
Rodriguez caught the virus just before summer camp opened and never recovered. He suffered a heart condition that could cause long-term damage and now has bigger things to worry about than his absence from Red Sox.
Missing Josh Taylor and Darwinzon Hernandez for half the season due to the virus were losses that can’t be overstated. Taylor and Hernandez have big arms. They’re the two best lefties out of the bullpen. They can chomp innings and they provide other looks that don’t rely on curveballs, as most of the relievers in the Sox’ pen do.
Without the three of them, the Sox were well behind where they thought they’d be.
5. Sale and surgery
If Sale could go back in time, he said he wishes he had Tommy John surgery last August, when it was recommended he try a platelet-rich plasma injection instead.
The injection worked for a while, allowing his arm to recover and giving him a chance to come to spring training healthy. But he felt elbow soreness shortly into camp and Tommy John surgery was soon necessary.
It was a perfect season to miss, but there’s no starting rotation that can withstand the loss of Sale’s magnitude.
6. There’s no depth
Where’s the depth? That was often Dombrowski’s flaw, though he had no problem addressing it at the trade deadline, bringing in guys like Eduardo Nunez and Steve Pearce to give the Sox extra options off the bench and for matchup advantages.
The Red Sox don’t have depth. They have youngsters waiting at the alternate site who can help. Guys like Bobby Dalbec, Jeter Downs and Jarren Duran look like they’re close to big-league ready, but Bloom made little effort to provide Roenicke with quality depth off the bench.
Peraza hasn’t offered much. Rule 5 pick Jonathan Arauz shows promise, but is far from a finished product. Tzu-Wei Lin is struggling. And Michael Chavis’ aggressive approach is looking like a disaster.
7. Winning attitude is gone
The Red Sox don’t look confident. They don’t feel it, either. Xander Bogaerts has talked often about the team not having fun on the field. Kevin Pillar said they were too worried about the coronavirus protocols and if the season would be canceled. The team has complained often (too much, perhaps) about not having access to in-game video.
And when Brandon Workman and Heath Hembree got traded, morale took another hit.
“It’s obviously a gut-punch,” Pillar said. “It’s obviously a reality of where we put ourselves as a team, allowing the front office to make the moves they made. … The worse you play, the opportunity of trading some of your teammates and friends becomes more realistic. If you care about the guys next to you, the best thing to do is go out and try to turn this thing around.”
The concern now is the longterm attitude being built in the organization.
Is it one that says it’s OK to lose to get a better draft pick and focus more on the future? Or is it one that expects to win every year, no matter the circumstances?