I don’t care what Red Sox GM Theo Epstein is preaching. I say the Red Sox are a substantially weaker-hitting team and real underdogs in the American League East in 2010.
I challenge any fan to compare the starting lineups of the New York Yankees or Tampa Bay Rays to the Red Sox, and tell me, honestly, you believe the Red Sox come even close. You can add comparisons to the lineups of the Los Angeles Angels, Philadelphia Phillies or several other quality teams and the Sox hitting falls well short.
Spring Training has just begun, and, already, Red Sox players have been asked a ton of questions about perceptions of their weaker offense. Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote last week that the questions were already irritating a few players. Well, they better get used to it – - unless they defy the odds by hitting well from the outset.
In the off-season, the Red Sox lost Jason Bay, their best hitter last year, Mike Lowell, a good hitter, and Alex Gonzalez, a weak hitter. They replaced these three with Mike Cameron, Adrian Beltre and Marco Scutaro. While Beltre or Scutaro may supply limited “punch,” they’re not going to hit as well as Bay and Lowell did last year. So, the team will have to find new ways to produce runs, and, do so with less home runs, probably. They’ll have to run the bases better and advance runners better.
“I think we’re going to have a little bit of a different look this season,” hitting coach Dave Magadan told Sean McAdam in McAdam’s most recent column posted on CSNNE’s website. “Every guy in the lineup is capable of 15 homers, if not 20 homers. I think we’re going to have to some other things better this year.”
Magadan is right. If the Red Sox can reinvent themselves a bit, and produce more runs with timely singles and sacrifice flies and rely less on the long ball, they might find a way to scratch just enough runs across for their superb pitching staff. But, they have to do the “little things” right. They can’t strand nearly as many baserunners as they did in 2009.
Not one of the Red Sox starters hit 30 home runs last year. (That feels bizarre to acknowledge after years of Big Papi and Manny mashing the ball!) So, it’ll have to be a team greater than the sum of its parts – a team with guys who can get the bat on the ball in key situations.
Another “new” aspect of 2010, in my view, is the large uncertainty surrounding the performance of certain players in the first half of the season, and, the likelihood that if they perform badly, the team will have an even more active trading deadline period than in recent years. I refer most prominently to David Ortiz, who is in the last year of his contract. If Big Papi struggles badly again in the first half, I think the Sox could either demote him to a part-time DH, or, if he’s a total disaster, even contemplate trading him or releasing him before the end of the year. I don’t think he’ll be that bad, but, who knows? Also, if the team’s overall hitting is bad until July, I think Theo will try very hard to get a top-notch slugger here – whether it’s Adrian Gonzalez or someone else.
The 2010 Red Sox just feel much more “fragile” than in recent years. They’re without star hitters to “anchor” them. If a guy like Youkilis or Victor Martinez goes out with an injury, the impact will be far greater on this squad. For that matter, as I said in my last blog, if the starting pitching falters at all, the team won’t be able to “get by” long at all. (If the aging Tim Wakefield doesn’t perform well in the early months, I don’t expect him to get many more chances in the second half after his bad endings to the past few years).
I hope the hitters I question - Cameron, Scutaro, Beltre, Ellsbury, Ortiz – all do better than I anticipate and the Sox compete all summer. I think the pitching IS good enough to keep the Sox alive, but, right now, I don’t think the team is good enough to advance in the playoffs.
Late last week, Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe asked Kevin Youkilis about all the speculation regarding a potential dropoff in the Sox hitting in 2010.
“You guys also predicted the Cubs to win the World Series…,” Youkilis replied, in Shaughnessy’s column.
