With Sunday’s extension of the wild card lead to four games on the back of the doubleheader sweep [Jon Lester is the beast of all beasts], Boston’s entrance into the playoffs as the wild card winner is all but assured. (But at seven games behind New York, it ain’t over!)
This is problematic.
Don’t get me wrong, making the playoffs is great, and I’d pick that over missing the playoffs. But the Red Sox don’t seem as well-equipped to advance far in the playoffs as many (including I) would like to think.
A couple days ago, I buoyed some of your spirits by talking about how dominant the Red Sox bullpen is; coupled with a shorter rotation, the Red Sox are primed to mean business in October.
Allow me to drop anchor just a bit: the Red Sox have the majors’ best home record at 50-21. Just behind the Sox are the Yankees at 50-22 — no other team comes close to the record.
The downside? The Sox are below .500 on the road at 34-37. They would join Detroit as the only two teams below .500 on the road if the playoffs began today. Other teams in the hunt for a spot such as Texas, San Francisco, Atlanta and Florida do not have this conundrum. (Side tidbit: Tampa is 43-26 at home, 29-45 on the road.)
As the wild card winner (fingers crossed), that number doesn’t look so presentable given the wild card is the de facto road team in the playoffs (except for the World Series, if they make it that far, thanks to the All-Star Game.
This means we would have to do battle with the Angels on their turf, and win on their turf. We’d have to do battle with, and win, on Detroit’s turf. (What’s that? Oh, okay. I guess I should mention the possibility of doing battle on Yankee turf too.)
When the Red Sox suffered through their rough stretch from mid-July to August, they lost 13 of 18 (thank you for three wins, Baltimore) on the road. Toss Baltimore out, and the Sox lost 13 of 15. That is not pretty, at all. They did that losing against Texas, Toronto, Tampa Bay and New York.
You could look at it one of two ways:
1) The Sox are completely screwed. They don’t know how to win under pressure on the road.
2) The Sox endured a rough stretch, where they were losing left and right regardless, and this is a different team.
If you subscribe to the latter notion, that 34-37 record shouldn’t scare you.
The Sox are a completely different team with an emerging Clay Buchholz, a Boston-loving Alex Gonzalez and firebreathing and ballin’ Billy Wagner slamming doors shut. This is not the same team that racked up those road records.
Still, I get nervous. So how about we make up those seven games and go in the playoffs as division champions instead? Works for me.
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Whether or not this is a different team than the one that looked so weak at the time, I don’t put much stock into regular season trends when October begins. Last year the Angels bludgeoned the Sox all year long, but when the second season started the old Sox-Angels dynamic returned in a hurry.
Hitting BABIP
Home – .316
Away – .285
Pitching BABIP
Home – .306
Away – .317
The pitching could be a part of their poor defense, but just another sign that their road record is slightly deceiving.
Before the rough stretch through mid-July and early Aug (mind you, when the Sox weren’t hitting and were dealing with distractions – i.e. trade rumors, steroid allegations), the Sox were 29-24 on the road, which coupled with their home success put them in the top of the AL at the time. I have to believe that sans-distractions and with the subsequent additions of Vic, Gonzo, Wags and Buch, this is a dangerous team no matter where they play.
Further, from a historical perspective, we’ve pwned the Angels in the postseason since ‘86 and the Tigers haven’t looked good against us anywhere this year. Add to that, I like our top 3 against any other team in the league (no bias, I promise!), and we should have a happy postseason, whoever we stack up against.
The July 1 team that slid from 1st & kept sliding couldn’t hit, couldn’t pitch, had a porous defense, had a difficult schedule, and awful luck . Adding Buchholz, Martinez, Gonzales, Wagner, Kotchman, & Ellsbury thriving at leadoff changed all that.
Those issues were resolved just in time, and the Sox are now a much better team than they were in July, and the shocker vs Chicago might have been the shock they needed. My concern it that this Angels series will set the stage for the next road trip with the O’s, KC, NYY. I’ m hopeful Daisuke & Byrd can continue the dominance shown this weekend by Beckett, Buchholz & Lester. Even if they keep us in the game, the road trip looks promising
“So how about we make up those seven games and go in the playoffs as division champions instead?”
I want a pony.
Anyway, even if the Sox were three down with five games left…the FO would still concede the division if they had the WC wrapped up. That’s just their mentality.