Massarotti: Has The Red Sox' First Half Been A Success Or Failure?
BOSTON (CBS) -- Eighty-four games down, 78 games to play, three days until the All-Star break. The Red Sox are essentially on pace for 89 wins and currently hold the fifth and final playoff spot, albeit amid unrelenting questions about their starting pitching, manager, and bullpen.
So here's a simple question:
Has the first half been a success or a failure?
The right answer is both, of course, but let's be fair here, folks. We knew this Sox team should be better. We also knew it was still flawed. In the end, the Red Sox have given us precisely what we wanted thus far – a baseball season – and they are the position to be buyers, not sellers, for the first time since 2013. In the overly simplistic world of pass/fail, the Red Sox currently pass, and whether they do with or without flying colors is largely irrelevant.
At least for now.
From here on out, the real question is whether the Red Sox can get better, something that is now in doubt. Since July 1, the Red Sox are 14-18 with a team ERA of 5.19. In the last week or so, the Sox have three wins by a combined score of 33-16, two losses by the combined score of 28-4. The only game with any real late-inning tension came on Tuesday, when closer Craig Kimbrel imploded when the handed the ball facing a 3-2 deficit in the top of the ninth.
Fact: the Red Sox this season have failed to win the tough games, at least consistently. An already thin bullpen – no Carson Smith and a bad Koji Uehara – also has had to deal with Kimbrel's inconsistencies, especially in key situations. The Sox are just 10-8 when David Price has started. Clay Buchholz, Joe Kelly and Eduardo Rodriguez have been complete busts. (That's 60 percent of the projected rotation to start the year.) The catching position, once regarded as among the deepest and most promising in baseball, has been turned over to 27-year-old Sandy Leon, a classic backup with a career minor league batting average of .238.
And yet, the Sox are in it, which should tell you plenty about the explosive nature of their offense.
As much as the onus will now turn to president Dave Dombrowski and the trade deadline – this is Dombrowski's first deadline with the Sox, remember – know this: the 2016 Red Sox will only go as far as their in-house starting pitching will take them. For the long-term as much as the short, the Red Sox need to acquire a young, talented and proven starter because they don't have anything close in the pipeline. But that alone will not save them. If the Sox are to truly make a run at the playoffs in the second half, they will need to get Price and at least one other pitcher back to a far more expected level of performance, all while maintaining the performance of Steven Wright and stabilizing the bullpen.
Seems like a lot, right?
Yesterday, for what it's worth, the Sox acquired right-handed-hitting infielder Aaron Hill in a trade with the Milwaukee Brewers. On some level, Hill should help. But no team in baseball ever really bashes its way to success, and the Sox are just 6-11 against left-handed pitching. Simply put, you just cannot pitch poorly and win, and the 2016 Red Sox have pitched poorly.
Can they change? Certainly. The Sox have the talent to be better, even if they are not necessarily good. (With this offense, average would be acceptable.) The one thing we know for sure is that the challenge will intensify as the Red Sox play 45 of their final 75 games on the road, including a whopping 19 in September.
By then, the pressure will have intensified. The tough games will have gotten even tougher. The workload will be at its peak. And then, once again, we can decide whether the 2016 Red Sox season has met our expectations or failed to.
But so far, so good.
Or at least good enough.
