In what’s been a Cinderella summer for the Red Sox, the clock on the wall suddenly appears to read four minutes after midnight. No, the season is not over, but the magic carpet ride that transported this team through a wormhole and into the thick of the playoff race is almost certainly fading into the fabric of history. Now they have to do something with the opportunity and make July matter.
Instead of everything breaking Boston’s way and almost everybody being hot at the same time, we’re suddenly
seeing a brand of baseball where every mistake is magnified, every clutch play ripples, and every little thing makes a huge difference. In other words, welcome to meaningful baseball in August!
Nowhere is the reality check more evident than in the way the last four games have ended. They’re not just losses, they’re losses to subpar pitching performances all ending with with men on base in the ninth inning and the tying run either at the plate or stranded somewhere aboard the broken carousel.
Tonight in particular was filled with lowlights. Here’s some of the most glaring:
- The team was 0-7 with runners in scoring position (part of a 3-36 stretch with 38 men left on base over their last four games).
- Caleb Durbin, usually one of the more surehanded defenders, made a costly error that led to a pair of unearned runs in the fifth.
- Jarren Duran got thrown out representing the tying run trying to steal second base in the eighth inning.
- Willson Contreras went hitless again and looked like he belongs closer to the IL than the cleanup spot.
- Wilyer Abreu struck out in a key spot to end the seventh to a guy who trotted out from the bullpen with a 10.20 ERA.
- The team collectively failed to score a run against the soft underbelly of Toronto’s gassed bullpen despite the Blue Jays bullpen usage looking like this in terms of innings pitched over the last week:
- Tuesday (8/4): 6.0 innings
- Wednesday (8/5): 6.0 innings
- Thursday (8.6): 3.1 innings
- Friday (8/7): 4.1 innings
- Saturday (8/8): 5.2 innings
- Sunday (8/9): 5.2 innings
- Monday (8/10): 5.0 innings
- Speaking of bullpen work, how about this 0-2 pitch by Seth Martinez in the bottom of the eighth with a chance to get out of the inning without any damage?
But all of this doesn’t even get to what I think might be the biggest big picture problem from this game: Patrick Sandoval kind of sucks. He doesn’t throw enough strikes, he struggles to go deep into games, and he’s flirted with all out disaster in at least half his starts despite not yet having a signature meltdown.
Over The Monster’s own pitching guru Jake Roy noted during the game that “Sandoval’s fastball velocity was down about 1.5 mph, and he had a ton of arm side misses, which tells (him) he was probably fatigued.”
Well, that’s kind of an enormous problem, because he’s already not giving the Sox enough length, and they don’t really have anywhere else to go with Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett already at career highs in innings pitched, Connelly Early traded away, and reinforcements from the likes of Garrett Crochet, Johan Oviedo, Kutter Crawford, and Tanner Houck nowhere to be found on the immediate horizon.
Compare this to everything else that went wrong tonight: I know the Sox offense is going to be streaky. I know Caleb Durbin is a better defender than his misplay showed. I know Willson Contreras is a better hitter than the last week indicates, and I know Seth Martinez isn’t going to be pitching in the eighth inning all that often. You know what I don’t know? How the Sox are going to manage the bottom of this rotation over the next few weeks if anything else cracks.
One thing I think Chad Tracy knows is that he’s stuck with Sandoval for the foreseeable future, because oh boy was he putting lipstick on this pig after the game:
“I thought he was really good. Just two earned runs and a few walks. I thought he controlled counts much better. Didn’t have many spurts where he lost control. I thought he had a pretty good outing.”
I like Tracy and think he was just covering for his guy, but this here is not at all what I want to see from my starter:
Way too many uncompetitive balls that proved easy takes for the opponent, and not nearly enough swing and miss stuff. This is a ticking time bomb.
And yet, do you know what’s worse? The obvious second guess of leaving Sandoval in this game too long isn’t all that obvious. If this was a “gotta have it game” down the stretch, Tracy could’ve pulled Sandoval after five innings and just used some combination of Justin Slaten, Tyron Guerrero, Erik Miller, Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman for the final four frames.
But at some point, you need length out of your starters at this stage of the season, so Tracy took a chance with Sandoval in the sixth given his low pitch count (60 pitches entering the inning). There’s going to be nights where Tracy has to do this because he can’t get to the end of September with his bullpen completely gassed, but tonight is a good example of what’s generally going to happen whenever he has to ride with Sandoval too long.
So at this point, the second guess needs to branch further out. Specifically, did the front office add enough pitching at the deadline? One way or another, Sandoval is going to play a big role here for at least the next few weeks, and that feels like a very dangerous proposition.
Three Studs
Wilyer Abreu: Despite that crummy at bat against Little that proved extremely costly, we’ll still give it to him with a low bar tonight thanks to a home run in the fourth inning, a walk, and this outstanding throw to end the fifth.
Ceddanne Rafaela: A home run, a sac fly, and a bit unlucky on this very sharp ground ball in the ninth that could’ve made things really interesting. (Great play by Andres Gimenez’s)
Tyron Guerrero: Looked fantastic again in his scoreless inning of work in the seventh.
Three Duds
Patrick Sandoval: Unlike Chad Tracy, I thought this outing sucked. He coughed up a lead, got worse as the night went on, was bailed out early by an overaggressive Toronto lineup, still fell behind plenty of batters, and only generated five swing and misses the whole game. His velocity was also down, which is a huge problem for a guy who certainly won’t be getting people out from great command anytime soon.
Willson Contreras: 0-4 tonight and has just one hit since missing a few days with illness. He looks like a guy who should be on the IL right now and needs some time to refresh.
Caleb Durbin: 0-4 at the plate with two strikeouts and an uncharacteristic error in the field.
