Boston Red Sox: Just how good is this team?

After a 15-2 start, the Boston Red Sox lead the pack in the MLB standings. The offense is humming; the starting pitchers are cruising, even the bullpen is carrying its weight. This team is firing on all cylinders. How likely are they to keep it going?

I was really high on the Boston Red Sox coming into the season. Most people were, though many had the Yankees as the better team. Bleacher Report had the Yankees taking the division with 95 wins. USA TODAY had the Yankees winning it by four games.

Sporting News had 4 out of 4 writers pick the Yankees. ESPN had 21 out of 29 pick them. Yahoo had the Yankees by 5. All of the Sports Illustrated writers chose the Bronx Bombers. So did SBNation.

Pretty much everywhere you looked, the Yankees were expected to come out on top. But the Red Sox are off to a 15-2 start while the Yankees are languishing at 8-8. Were all of the projections wildly off base?

The old saying goes you can’t win the division in April, but you can lose it. The Yankees have dug themselves into a hole. While they are certainly capable of scratching and clawing their way out of it, the fact remains; they have dug themselves into a hole. The running projections at Fangraphs currently have the Red Sox finishing at 99-63 with the Yankees at 94-68. Fivethirtyeight.com has the Sox at 102 wins by season’s end and the Yankees matching their 2017 total at 91. But it’s only April.

Can they keep it up?

Instead of trying to guess exactly where the Red Sox will finish as October comes around, it might be better to look for signs that some of what they are doing on the field is sustainable. While having the best record in the majors is wonderful, how you got there is kind of important. After all, the Mets are only two games behind the Sox, and the Athletics have the second-best offense by wRC+, and neither was expected to be all that good.

Some other surprises include the Angels, who came into the current series with the Red Sox at 13-3 but who have been crushed in the first two games. Even after scoring just one run in the last two nights combined, their offense ranks third by wRC+. The Blue Jays are 12-5, the Dodgers are 8-9. Pittsburgh is 12-6 while the Cubs are 7-8. But as the other saying goes, you are never as good as your hot streaks or as bad as your cold streaks. It’s only April. So just how good are these Red Sox?

The Boston Red Sox offense looks elite.

Alex Speier made an interesting observation last night as the 9-0 win against the Los Angeles Angels was wrapping up.

The Astros offense in 2017 was incredibly dynamic, leading the majors in R, OBP, SLG and having the lowest K% and swinging strike rate. And to top it off, they finished a healthy 8th in stolen bases. They made significant contact, took walks, hit for power and could keep doing damage after they got on base.

As a comparison, the 2018 Red Sox slash of .287/.358/.485 leads the majors in all three categories, as well as runs (108), wOBA (.367) and wRC+ (130). They have the fourth lowest swinging strike rate at 9.2%, and the lowest strikeout rate at 16.6%. And similar to the Astros of 2017, they rank 11th in SB so far. That’s a far cry from the team that finished 26th in SLG and 11th in OBP last year.

Of course, the strikeout rate was very low last season, ranking 4th best at 19.3%, and the swinging strike rate of 9.0% was 3rd, so where does the difference come from?

Alex Cora made some changes.

Jeff Sullivan digs into that here. Alex Cora has been preaching selective aggression, meaning jumping at pitches you can drive even if it’s early in the count. Historically, the Red Sox have been a very patient team willing to take strikes early in the count. In fact, Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts ranked 1st and 4th for lowest in the zone swing rate in 2017.

Benintendi ranked 39th, Jackie Bradley Jr. ranked 82nd and Hanley Ramirez at 95th. That’s five hitters in the top 100, with two of the players least willing to swing at strikes in all of baseball.

This season? J.D. Martinez ranks third for highest in the zone swing percentage at 83.3%. Hanley is tied for 37th, Devers is 53rd, Benintendi at 107th increasing his rate by more than 2%. Mookie jumped from 53.8% to 58.3%, Bogaerts from 53% to 66.2% which is a massive shift. JBJ has gone up to 72.2%, an increase of 4.3% and a career high. Even Devers is swinging at 3.9% more pitches in the zone.

Only Betts and Benintendi remain in the top 100 for lowest in the zone swing rates, and Benintendi is at 84th on that list. There has been a seismic shift in approach, indicating that the jump in rate stats isn’t random noise. From the Sullivan piece linked above:

“Martinez loves to swing aggressively at pitches in the zone. Martinez’s early-count Z-Swing% this year ranks fourth-highest in baseball. But even he has gotten more selectively aggressive. So have Andrew Benintendi, Mookie Betts, Rafael Devers, and Christian Vazquez. There’s less working of the count taking place. Less taking of strikes, for patience’s sake. It would be hard for any Red Sox fan to complain.”

What’s the downside?

So what reasons do we have to worry? Well, the team’s BABIP is 2nd in the majors at .319 while the league average is generally around .300. The median BABIP so far is .2935. However, high line drive rates and hard contact will usually lead to higher BABIPs. The Red Sox have the 5th highest line drive rate and the 3rd lowest soft contact rate.

They are hitting the ball hard, and they are doing it at productive launch angles. They may not be a pure talent .319 BABIP team, but if they keep this up, you can expect their season BABIP to be above .300.

This offense may not lead the league in runs scored at the end of the year, but the Red Sox appear to have addressed their flaws from last season. Their offense will be plenty dangerous enough to be a serious playoff threat come October.

The Boston Red Sox starting rotation may also be elite.

Like the offense, the results from the starting rotation don’t seem to be without a measure of regression baked in. The staff ERA is a paltry 2.66, second only to the Astros at 2.48. Their collective FIP is 2.75, best in the bigs.

Red Sox starters also have the second highest soft contact rate allowed this season, and the second lowest line drive rate. They simply aren’t allowing good contact. On top of that, the starters have the 6th highest strikeout percentage in baseball and sport the 7th best swinging strike rate. Like the offense, the rotation is dynamic, generating outs in a variety of ways. This bodes well for their ability to remain one of the best rotations in the game.

In an article I wrote back in March I described the rotation as one of the deepest in the game. With Drew Pomeranz and Steven Wright still yet to make a start, the success of the starters seems to bearing that prediction out. This is a team that can go eight pitchers deep without having to throw up the white flag.

What has actually happened on the field?

Chris Sale came out of the gate hot again. His 1.23 ERA, 1.56 FIP, and 2.22 xFIP are all top five in the majors so far. The Red Sox have the two best FIPs in the league with Sale and Porcello (1.67). In fact, Jason Mastrodonato was kind enough to tweet out the ERA leaders with some relevant Sox names:

Speaking of Rick Porcello, he appears to be on track to repeat his Cy Young season so far. Mastrodonato touched on this as well:

With how deep this rotation was, to begin with, all the Red Sox needed from Porcello was to chew up innings at a league average rate or so and they’d have been in great shape. If they are looking at another 2016 type performance on top of having Chris Sale be Chris Sale, this rotation will be incredibly tough to match up against.

What about the guys recovering from injury?

That’s compounded by the fact that David Price appears healthy. While his ERA isn’t supported by his peripherals (his FIP is 2.16 runs higher), he’s gone seven innings in two of his four starts. He did come out of his third start after one inning, but it was due to an odd sensation in his hand and doesn’t seem to be bothering him since that night. He came back for his fourth starts throwing 5 IP while allowing just 1 ER and striking out 6.

He’s going to need to get his walks under control, and his four-seam fastball velocity is down 1.62 mph from last year. That said, his last two Aprils (2015 and 2016) have been his lowest velocity averages of each year, so we won’t know if that’s an indication of anything until mid-May or so.

How about Eduardo Rodriguez?

On the other end of the results, spectrum is Eduardo Rodriguez who has a much higher ERA than his FIP. His 3.72 ERA appears a touch unlucky compared to a 2.59 FIP, and his 13.78 K/9 is downright sexy. His 35.7% strikeout percentage would rank 7th in MLB if he had enough innings to qualify, right in front of Justin Verlander.

And that’s the reason we need to be a bit tempered with our enthusiasm about EdRo so far. He only has two starts, the first of which was less than encouraging. His outing against the Orioles, however, was exactly what you want to see after just 3.2 IP against the Rays in his season debut.

He kept the Buck Showalter Brigade to 1 ER while striking out 8 and walking two over six full innings. Recovering from a lesser known knee surgery, the hard-throwing lefty could be on the verge of his first healthy season in Boston.

While there are certainly some questions about the rotation’s success so far, with more reinforcements coming there is every reason to believe this will be one of the better units in the game this year.

Great stuff, inconsistent results.

Joe Kelly appears to be the same guy he’s always been. His stuff is tantalizing, and he has runs of dramatic success, but he is prone to melting down at the drop of a hat, as he did on opening day. He allowed 4 ER while logging just one out.

He hasn’t allowed a run since and has issued only one walk in that span, but you simply can’t have a guy who might be unable to hit the strike zone on any given night as your setup man.

That leaves Matt Barnes who is also having trouble with walks. In seven appearances he has avoided issuing a walk in just two of them. His strikeout rate is right in line with his 2017 figure, but he’s simply allowing too many free passes.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Despite the difficulties, the Red Sox pen is 16th in ERA at 3.74 and 5th in FIP at 3.00. This is built upon the success we’ve seen from Heath Hembree and Brian Johnson and the emergence of Bobby Poyner and Marcus Walden.

There likely isn’t an 8th inning reliever in that group, but they do provide a solid floor for the pen while Dombrowski sorts out the later innings.

And Dombrowski will sort out the later innings. This team is too good otherwise to not trade their way into a stable bullpen for the playoffs. Expect at least one Addison Reed type of trade in July. Maybe two.

The bullpen won’t match the likes of the Yankees (no, those struggles won’t continue), but it should be good enough, especially if a starter is moved there in October as Price did in 2017.

The defense isn’t half bad, but it almost is.

The other thing to consider with this team is that the defense was a fairly significant question at a few positions coming into the season. Xander Bogaerts has a limited ceiling with the glove, as does Rafael Devers. That leaves the left side of the infield vulnerable. Add to that the insistence of Alex Cora that J.D. Martinez play the outfield four out of every 10 games (so far), and the entire left side of the field can be problematic.

Additionally, Hanley Ramirez is no gold glover at first, despite some early season highlight plays. And Eduardo Nunez just isn’t a good defensive player. He’s capable with the glove at best, but his value as a utility fielder comes from his ability to hit at or above league average while not making a fool of himself bouncing around the field. That should be less of a problem once Dustin Pedroia returns and Mitch Moreland has seen plenty of late innings at first to mitigate Hanley’s limitations.

Fortunately, Benintendi manning left field when Martinez is at DH allows the Red Sox to put the best defensive outfield in the game on display. Jackie Bradley Jr. continues to be the smooth operator he’s always been in center (and now occasionally right), and Mookie Betts is apparently gunning for his third straight Gold Glove.

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And the Red Sox have two excellent defensive catchers on the roster in Christian Vazquez and Sandy Leon. Overall, the defense should be more of a strength than a weakness.

What does it all add up to?

Apparently, the Red Sox aren’t going to finish the season with an .882 winning percentage, but opening the year at that clip has put them in the driver’s seat for the division. And in the new Wild Card era, that’s a big deal. I probably wouldn’t bet on this team to end up with the best record in baseball, but they’ve got a shot at it which is more than most thought when the season started.

The offense has a shot to be the best in the game. So does the rotation. The chances of both happening are slim, though. The bullpen is okay and should get better in July. And the defense looks to be good enough to make a run.

The Yankees will get hot at some point and the Red Sox will eventually lose two in a row. And three. And probably four and five. Even if they win the World Series this year, it’s almost a certainty that they will have a thirty-day stretch or so where they play something around .500 baseball.

Next: Sox, Yankees rivalry is back with a bang!

That’s just how the sport works. It’s a marathon, not a sprint (that’s my third platitude!), and getting out to an early lead can only be described as a good thing. But there is a very long way to go. It’s only April.