Excuse me, but did you say 16-4 and 14-1?
Are you telling me that Jason Varitek hit a three-run homer; that John Lackey actually won a baseball game; that their present streak of nine straight games is the best in the majors this season; and that the Red Sox presently have the second best record in all of Major League Baseball?
Pardon me while I strike up the Twilight Zone Band, as they play their rendition of “Say it Ain’t So, Joe.” This is the same team that started the season by losing their first six games, including two straight three-game sweeps by the Rangers and Indians, right?
Much to the delight of Red Sox Nation, they woke up long enough to take two out of three against the Yankees, and then went right back to sleep, dropping two against the Rays (a third game was postponed).
It took them until the middle of May to break .500 at the 21-21 mark. Seems to me that if they’d started spring training around Christmas, they’d be unreachable at this point. But they didn’t, and they aren’t.
After a decidedly slow start, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez leads the American League in hits and RBI and is tied with Curtis Granderson (NYY) and Jose Bautista (TOR) with a batting average of .338. David Ortiz is just 13 points behind them at .325 and has a .616 slugging percentage that places him second in the AL.
Excuse me while I get that band going again.
David Ortiz? Did somebody say that this 6’4”, 230-pound, left-handed, 36-year-old batter couldn’t catch up with fastballs any more? Said ‘somebody’ forgot to tell Ortiz, who’s batting .421 for the month (and a day, encompassing the last 10 games), with 16 hits, five home runs and 15 RBI.
The Red Sox have lost just one game in the month of June; that being a third straight loss to the White Sox in a series sweep by them in the friendly confines of Fenway Park. OK, OK, we’re only 12 days into the month, but still. . .
They swept the Athletics at home and started a 10-game road trip by sweeping the Yankees in the Stadium, and have already taken two out of three against the Jays.
Let’s not get too excited here, though. They may be boasting the best overall batting average in the American League (.274), but they’re in the middle of the American League pack in pitching with a .413 ERA and are still the only team in the American League that has yet to chalk up a complete game victory for a single pitcher.
Once the Sox clear Toronto, they’ll head to Tampa for a go-round against the Rays, who’ll put Jamie Shields up against Tim Wakefield on Tuesday night and throw Jeremy Hellickson against Josh Beckett on Wednesday. Wakefield’s always a bit of a wild card on the mound, and though he’s won three of his last four starts, it’s probably for the best that he’ll oppose a pitcher (Shields) against whom Adrian Gonzalez is batting .667, Dustin Pedroia is batting .433 and Ortiz is hitting .364.
Sounds good to me.
Beckett seems to have settled down, and he hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in any outing since April. He has the lowest ERA (.206) in the American League and is second overall in major league baseball in that department, behind something of a mind-boggling .182 ERA by Jair Jurrjens of the Atlanta Braves.
All of this looks good on paper, of course, but if any team can figure out a way to turn it around and have us all depressed before the month is out, it’s the Boston Red Sox. We have been down this road before, so you’ll pardon us if we don’t break out the champagne quite yet.
We heard they were this good before the season started, what with the acquisition of Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, and watched them implode early. John Lackey disappointed us, Daisake Matsuzaka went off to undergo Tommy John surgery and it didn’t take long for the chants of “here we go again" to start echoing through Fenway Park.
To their credit, the Sox have scratched and clawed their way back into the AL East race, and from the look of things, they’re in it to stay. For the moment, at least. Barring any major injuries, they stand a good chance of staying on top of their division through at least the All-Star break.
Hard to know at this point whether Gonzalez is due for a slump, but unless some MLB version of the Fountain of Youth is flowing out of the Gatorade jugs in their dugout, you have to figure Ortiz is due for a little slide.
The chances of Varitek continuing to hit three-run homers on a regular basis would appear to be slim, as well. Dustin Pedroia’s pretty steady, though, and Jacoby Ellsbury’s still tearing ‘em up on the base paths, leading the AL in stolen bases (24), and second in baseball, behind Houston’s Michael Bourn (26).
“Wait a minute, it’s stopped hailing.
Guys are swimming, guys are sailing.
Playing baseball, gee that’s better
Muddah, fadduh, kindly disregard this letter”
—Allan Sherman (1963)
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