The Red Sox Are Killing Me!

*I would like to formally apologize in advance for the post you are about to read but sometimes my love of sports makes me go a little crazy and the only way to alleviate the insanity is to release one whirlwind of a rant.

I am a huge Boston Red Sox fan, I can’t stress that enough. They are my favorite team in all of sports, I watch every single game on NESN and I have been to more games at Fenway than I can count. Unfortunately, I am also a realist and although I really hate to say this, they are doomed to a year of mediocrity. They just don’t have the “It factor” that they have had in the past. It is early, the season just got underway a mere five games ago, but the writing is clear on the walls. At 1-4 they clearly aren’t out of it, but it still doesn’t look too good. 

It all starts with what they didn’t do in the off-season. It would appear that management decided that no real roster moves were necessary and so the team is basically the same if not worse that it was last year. And this is a team that collapsed at the end of the year missing the playoffs in dramatic fashion. There were big free agents out there, ripe for the picking that would have had a tremendous effect on the outcome of the season. Instead, Red Sox fans are stuck with a team that really doesn’t have what it takes to contend in their league and now the season has all the makings for a ridiculously disappointing 162 games (If you didn’t know that’s how many games are played in a baseball season).

Beckett Has Struggled Lately

Too make things worse some of their go to guys just aren’t cutting it anymore. The pitching staff, which has always been a strong suit, in the past, is weak and patchy. Josh Beckett, normally a source of wins and game stability seems to be on his way out as an All-Star caliber pitcher in the MLB.  He got absolutely rocked in his first outing of the season. His velocity is down from where it used to be and the 3-time all-star and World Series MVP seems to be a bit more hittable than what I am used to. Clay Buchholz, who showed such promise as a starting pitcher two seasons ago also got off to a shaky start the other day when he allowed seven runs in just four innings pitched. He is coming off an injury-plagued season where he missed all of his scheduled appearances from June 16^th on. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one but for the Red Sox to make another trip to the post season they need him to pitch brilliantly. They also have two unproven young guys in the starting rotation in Felix Doubront and Daniel Bard, the latter, formally came out of the bullpen. Doubront seems comfortable enough in his role but Bard really seems to be having trouble making the transition from pitching one inning per game to six or seven. The other Red Sox starter is Jon Lester and I have no qualms with his performance. He is clearly the ace of the staff but if you only get one win every five games you are in for a long season.

I mentioned just before this that Daniel Bard was a member of the Red Sox bullpen last season and in my opinion he did a great job there. Now that they have moved him to the starting lineup the Red Sox may have the weakest relief pitching in all of baseball, It is not all due to the Bard move, other things have contributed to the lackluster late game pitching. The Red Sox had a stable closer in Jonathon Paplebon for the last seven seasons, but they parted ways this winter and now he plays for the Philadelphia Phillies. The man they got to replace him, Andrew Bailey, injured his thumb and is out for the better part of the summer.  Now they are left with basically no proven guys in the bullpen and it shows. In the five games so far this season the Red Sox relievers have relinquished three of them. Every time a starter hands off the ball to a reliever I start to feel a bit squeamish.

Youk Needs to Turn It Around

Lastly the Red Sox top-notch offense has looked anything but in the early going. In the five games they have only managed to hit two home runs. This is a team that had 203 homeruns last year, and led the league with 851 runs in 162 games. Again I know it is ridiculously early in the season but it’s hard to ignore such blatant signs of futility. Certain batters in particular are having a difficult time at the plate. Last year’s MVP runner-up Jacoby Ellsbury is batting an abysmal .100 so far this season and Kevin Youkilis, the picture of consistency, hardly beats out Ellsbury with his .125 average. The Sox simply can’t win games when their star players aren’t showing up to the park each day. To turn this season from something bad into something great players are going to have to step it up and deal with the fact that help is not on the way. I would like to think that the Sox are just shaking of some early season rust but it is hard to ignore what I have seen so far.

Phew, that was one heck of a rant, but I kind of feel a little better now.