SOX ARE PAINFUL TO WATCH
Team’s bad approach unfair to all involved
The team with the highest ERA in baseball handed the ball to the pitcher with the highest ERA in baseball in the seventh inning of a two-run game on Tuesday night.
And once again, Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke said he had no other options.
The choice was Kyle Hart. The rookie left-hander allowed six runs, including two of the hardesthit homers Fenway Park has seen in a long time on a hanging slider and an 89-mph fastball right down the pipe. Hart’s ERA is now 15.55 through 11 innings.
The Red Sox’ lost 10-3 to the Braves and here’s what Roenicke said after the game: “It was a good game there for a while. And we’re still playing hard. Sometimes at the end when you get a score like this, you look at it and you may say they were out of it from the beginning. But that wasn’t the case. It was a nice ballgame.”
Exactly. It was a nice ballgame for six innings. And then the Red Sox gave up.
Certainly Hart isn’t out there trying to lose, and anyone can feel for a kid in his rookie year who simply doesn’t have the stuff to compete with the best hitters on the planet. But if this is the best the Red Sox have to use in the seventh inning of a two-run game, what are they doing on the field at all?
Why are the games being played?
At this point the Red Sox should just show up to the park, forfeit the game, shake hands with the opponent, give them a tour around Fenway Park, say goodbye and then scrimmage themselves.
Because what the Red Sox are currently doing is wrong. It’s not fair to the fans. It’s not fair to the manager. And it’s not fair to the players.
Somebody is going to get hurt out there. Just look at what happened Tuesday. Hart tripped making a defensive play in the seventh inning, then the Sox sent him back out for the eighth. He threw noncompetitive pitch after non-competitive pitch, Marcell Ozuna homered twice off him in two innings and then Roenicke said after the game that Hart was actually injured.
“He tweaked a hip on that good play he made that first inning to end it, and I hope he’s OK,” the manager said. “But he’s pretty sore. That could’ve also added to that second inning not throwing the ball well. We went in to make sure he was OK and the trainers checked him out. He said he could go back out there. But I’m sure that didn’t help.”
You have to feel for Roenicke, who’s a company man who never complains and keeps rolling with whatever the front office gives him.
But what he’s doing doesn’t look like managing. He’s just reading a card provided to him by the training staff, who tell him who is available and unavailable that day, then putting the pitchers into the game who are available.
There aren’t many. Most of the decent ones are gone. Brandon Workman, Heath Hembree and even Josh Osich were traded. There isn’t a lot left to work with.
And there’s nothing fun about watching a team stretch out every available arm as far as possible with the mere hope of simply completing the game and recording 24 or 27 outs. There is no strategy in the pitching usage, which is one of the best parts of watching baseball. The strategy is throw as many pitches as you can and hopefully we will have another guy who can throw some pitches when you’re done.
Roenicke was asked if it’s frustrating to manage a game when he’s not exactly using his best pitchers, but simply the available ones.
“No doubt, it’s difficult,” Roenicke said. “When you feel like you’re in games, especially if you’re leading games and then you lose them, those are definitely difficult. It’s tough. You play hard, you play close, and all of a sudden you have a blowout.
“That game was a lot better game than the score was. It just got out of hand there at the end. To try to figure out the pieces, it’s hard, because we’re using these guys a lot. We know we can’t keep using them so much, so I make sure we go over before the game who’s down that night. We had a few guys down again (Tuesday night). We knew we have length in Kyle and knew we were going to use him somewhere. That’s what we had when we got to that point.”
It’d be one thing if the Red Sox at least called up some of their top prospects to get their fans through these final 24 games with something to watch.
They called up Bobby Dalbec, the power-hitting first baseman, but he wasn’t in the lineup Tuesday. Meanwhile, Triston Casas and Jarren Duran are torching the ball down in Pawtucket but won’t get the call because the organization thinks they need more development, which is probably true. But if service time weren’t a thing, the argument could be made that Casas and Duran would be more exciting than most of the guys the Red Sox have. They’d breathe life into the television.
Or if Jay Groome, Tanner Houck, Bryan Mata or Thad Ward were to get the call, the Sox could show off their pitchers of the future.
Alex Verdugo continues to impress. He’s exciting. He throws out runners from the outfield, steals bases and is hitting .310.
But what’s the fun in watching the offense when, even if the team is in the game late, there are few reliable relievers to turn it over to?
We’re watching the same game, over and over. The only logical explanation is chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is tanking for the No. 1 draft pick and using the pandemic-shortened season to do it quietly and without much impact on the owners’ pocketbooks. There are no fans anyways, so what’s the difference?
So sit down, grab a beer or a soda, make some popcorn and buckle up for 3 1/2 hours of Red Sox baseball.
It’s void of strategy. The manager is helpless. Every third game you might see an actual starting pitcher take the ball into the fifth or sixth inning.
If not, you know what’s going to happen.
The same thing that happened Tuesday.