Red Sox

Fangraphs’ weekly power rankings has the Red Sox firmly in “The Melee,” and does that feel right.

COMMENTARY

On Saturday, I hoofed it to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox live, in all their yellow glory. A real “dog bites man” happening, yes, but I brought the family and finally checked the Green Monster seats off my personal ledger.

In brief: A good time! The concept remains a trip two decades on, though you will inevitably see some percentage of the game via context clues from the rest of the crowd. Especially if, as we did, you spend multiple innings seeking something beyond the basic concessions they sell up there.

Your tolerance for this will depend on how well you handle the idea of a $90 standing-room ticket to see two second-tier teams on a nice-for-April weekend. No judgment here, but I found sitting in an empty seat helped, the 4x it cost beyond what we paid meaning we’d saved money.

It was, as you may have surmised, a Fenway Experience trip more than a pure baseball one. There is still some currency in that, though like so much else, it’s depreciating by the day.

By Marathon Monday, the Red Sox are five shortstops deep. Monday’s starter was Ceddanne Rafaela, whose move from center field denied everyone his stellar defense there, but did free up an outfield spot for Wilyer Abreu.

“Against righties, he will play every day. We’ll find a way,” manager Alex Cora told reporters about Abreu before the shutout loss. “We’ll move people around, but he will play against righties.”

Of course, Tyler O’Neill busting his head open on Rafael Devers might have freed a spot as well. The two most dangerous hitters on a struggling offensive team, barreling each other up.

Fangraphs’ weekly power rankings has the Red Sox firmly in “The Melee,” and does that feel right. It took three weeks for it to already be a year.

What to make of it all? Let’s look at three numbers, extracted from a 17-game roller coaster that has summed in an essentially .500 start.

The league-leading 2.74 ERA and 3.46 FIP

FIP is ERA focused on walks, strikeouts, and home runs — the things pitchers have most control over, and which aren’t affected by the defense behind them.

Put another way, welcome to the world in which Kutter Crawford has an argument as the top starter in the majors. Four outings, nine hits, one earned run. With, at a time of emphasis on breaking balls and spin rate, a low-90s four-seamer as his putaway pitch.

Five-inning starts? The Red Sox have 14 from 17 games, with one of the misses Cooper Criswell’s fill-in for Nick Pivetta on Saturday. Giving the offense a chance to win is the most basic ask of any starter, and Boston’s are doing it four days out of five.

How sustainable is it? Pivetta’s loss, even just for a couple starts, is a concern. Tanner Houck’s numbers (2.04 ERA, 19 strikeouts) come with him suddenly walking no one, attacking the zone and hitters barreling him up less. (They’re also swinging significantly less early in the count.)

The surprise has been on the bullpen side, which has been relatively blah almost entirely due to — as noted by the excellent Red Sox Stats — allowing its own inherited runners to score at easily the worst rate in the majors.

The two sides likely balance out and end up somewhere around where we are. Which, frankly, would be enough to keep things interesting into the late summer.

The bottom-third .226/.303/.372 slash line

That adds up to a .675 OPS that’s 22nd in the majors, for an organization that’s finished outside the top 10 in OPS once (2017) in the last decade. They’ve been held under two runs six times already and shut out three, losing 2-1 and 1-0 games on the season-opening trip.

The most bizarre stat might be Boston being 13th in the American League in doubles; they routinely lead the league, playing 81 games at Fenway.

Devers is obviously at the core of the struggles, opening 8 for 42 (.190) despite still being one of the league’s best barreling the ball. He’s plated just one of the 23 runners on base when he’s batted the first 17 games, his two homers both being solo shots.

What’s stunning is the same can be said of O’Neill. Despite a MLB-leading 1.209 OPS, just two of the 29 men on when he batted scored. All seven of his homers have been solo shots, as have 13 of Boston’s 20 — the latter total seventh best in the majors.

Triston Casas, second on the team with six extra-base hits? Just four runners knocked in out of 51, the most chances of any Red Sox hitter. (League average is knocking in about 14 percent of your runners, twice Casas’s rate to date.)

It’s another thing that feels likely to better itself as the sample increases. If only we could say the same about Rafaela’s free swinging (though his issues have been deeper than that).

Pick your favorite defensive metric

Fangraphs’ defensive value has the Red Sox 28th out of 30, as does their Outs Below Average calculation. Baseball Reference’s Defensive WAR says 29th. Baseball Savant, tied for 26th overall and tied for 27th in the infield.

It is a profound failing that makes everything harder. That it fell apart so quickly with the subtraction of Trevor Story makes it feel a little skewed, but we have a sample of years to point back to.

They’re trying to fix it, with the team ramping up its defensive work both this spring and into the season. Some things can’t be coached up, though, and stationing Masataka Yoshida at designated hitter hasn’t produced a team that looks any better on the whole.

It’s the only part of all this that really feels dispiriting, because it’s the part of it that feels chronic. It has lost them winnable games, it will lose them more, and the only way to not see it happen is to just stop watching.

Or, alternately, to station yourself in the Green Monster standing room by a light tower and hope the ugly happens out of your eyeline.