Massarotti: Red Sox Putting 'Line Of Demarcation' To The Test
BOSTON (CBS) – In Major League Baseball, especially in the American League, the line of demarcation comes at five runs. If you score less than five, you usually lose. If you score five or more, you usually win.
But the 2016 Boston Red sox are putting this to the test.
Entering last night's game against the Baltimore Orioles, the Red Sox had the most prolific offense in baseball, averaging just under six runs per game. The Sox then went out and scored five more against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, where their output, in theory, should have been enough for a victory. For the second night in a row, it wasn't.
Which brings us to the following rather alarming reality:
Already this season, the Red Sox have lost nine games in which they have scored at least five runs, including a pair in the last week in which they scored nine. That is the highest total in the league. Admittedly, some of this is the cost of doing business as a high-powered offense because, quite simply, the Red Sox score at least five runs more frequently than anyone else does. But a deeper look reveals something more worrisome.
Entering yesterday, according to Baseball Reference, here were the records of all 15 American League teams when scoring five or more runs:
See where the Red Sox are ranked based on winning percentage? Ninth. Ninth. The average AL team has a winning percentage of .790 when scoring five or more runs this season. With last night's loss – not reflected in the above chart, which was before last night's games – the Red Sox have a winning percentage of .757, which could rank as low as 12th when all statistics are compiled.
And there is this: when scoring six runs or more, the Red Sox have lost seven games, again the most in the league. Entering last night, no other AL team had lost more than three. The Texas Rangers were 20-1. The Orioles are now 16-1. The Kansas Royals are 15-1.
Get the picture? When you score six runs, you should win 94-95 percent of the time. Unless you're the 2016 Red Sox. Then you only win 76 percent of the time.
Were the Red Sox a team that excelled in low-scoring games, this might all be palatable. But they're not. Here's the same kind of chart that ranks teams by winning percentage when scoring four runs or fewer entering June 2:
Of course, all of this is a fancy way of highlighting something that concerned all of us entering this season: the shortage of quality pitching on the Boston roster. We knew the Red Sox might struggle in low-scoring games because they didn't have the pitching to sufficiently stifle opposing offenses. But when the Sox score, we expect them to win – and we expect them to win at a rate that is consistent with the rest of the league, if not better, to offset their weaknesses in lower-scoring games.
In the last six days, against the Toronto Blue Jays and Orioles, the Red Sox haven't done that.
And as we get deeper and deeper into the 2016 season, one can't help but wonder if the acidic Red Sox pitching staff is now eating into an offense that already is deserving of a far, far better fate.
