During Saturday’s win in St. Louis, the Red Sox scored a season high seven runs. So with that established, let me stop and ask you a question: What player in a Boston uniform was most responsible for this offensive outburst?
Perhaps it was Willson Contreras, who went 2-4 with 3 RBI against his former team. Or maybe you’d give the nod to Jarren Duran, who picked up his first multi-hit game since Opening Day and seems to be a spark plug for this offense whenever he gets going. Heck, if you wanted to get cute,
you could even say Ceddanne Rafaela, who was on base twice in the final three innings, including a line drive RBI single in the ninth that knocked in the first of the five runs forfeited in the final frame by the Cardinals.
But do you know who I’m going with as an answer to this question? Ranger Suarez. Why? Because the biggest reason the Red Sox lineup woke up and managed six consecutive singles in that ninth inning is because they were facing a reliever whose career might be in crisis if he doesn’t figure things out soon. Matt Svanson, the man on the mound for the meltdown, has now pitched in seven games so far this year, and he’s given up at least three runs in four of those outings. His ERA on the season is up to 15.58.
You know the old adage of how good pitching generally beats good hitting? Well I’d argue the opposite is also true. Bad lineups generally smack around bad pitching.
So from a Red Sox perspective, the biggest hero of the night is the guy most responsible for putting this puddle of pitcher on the mound. And well, the only reason the Red Sox offense got to face this guy is because they were winning a game where the Cardinals had already leaned heavily on their high leverage relievers in recent days. And guess what? They weren’t winning this game because of their offense.
I know that sounds silly given it’s the game where the Sox scored a season high seven runs, but at the end of eight innings, the score was still only 2-1. The entire foundation of this victory is the six scoreless frames tossed by Ranger Suarez, who in some ways made his real Red Sox debut in this outing.
If the Sox’ starter went say the same six innings, but instead allowed two or three men to cross the plate, this lineup doesn’t sniff seven runs! The Cardinals manage it completely differently with a lead. But they didn’t one. They were down because of what Ranger Suarez did, and now they’re thinking “it’s a long season, and we’re going to have to beat Chapman anyway, so let’s just call off the dogs and let it burn. We’ll get ’em tomorrow.”
This is how you get a fool’s gold seven run game.
But here’s the good news for this offense: Tonight’s formula is repeatable! Not down to every detail of course (guys with double digit ERAs tend to be endangered species in the MLB ecosystem), but the general framework is actually the exact blueprint for this squad to win the division. Get a good start from the starter, get a lead, and then get to face the soft underbelly of the opponent’s bullpen.
Even though this lineup isn’t good — and oh boy might it stink! — the Sox probably don’t have to score all that much to have lots of leads in the middle innings. In fact, even though the Sox scored just three runs on Tuesday, five runs on Wednesday, two runs on Friday after an off day Thursday, and two runs in the first eight innings on Saturday, the starter walked off the mound in each of those four games with a lead. If the rotation is really this good, and it might be, that’s a winning formula.
The single best way to improve your offense is to face weaker pitching, and this rotation might actually be good enough to ensure that generally happens in the second half of most games. You’ve got to love baseball!
One last thought here because I think Alex Bregman and Ranger Suarez are forever linked as two possible paths the Red Sox could have taken last winter, and Saturday was a big day on both fronts. Here’s Bregman with a game tying single in the for Cubs in their afternoon game:
These are the types of hits Alex Bregman gets, and these are the hits the Red Sox desperately need right now. But you know what? When you add up everything on Saturday’s scorecard, what Ranger Suarez did for his offense in the ninth inning (getting them in position to face Matt Svanson) was more valuable than what Bregman did for his offense in the ninth inning. (And that’s a pretty impressive bar considering Bregman came through with a clutch, two out, two strike, game tying RBI knock).
This is the calculus we’re going to keep revisiting. That second week of January changed everything when it comes to how these Red Sox are built, and for at least one Saturday night, it was actually for the better. We’ll keep checking back in.
