Following another putrid night of situational hitting, the Red Sox find themselves today in a rather unenviable position. And that is starring up at the ENTIRE league when it comes to hitting with runners in scoring position. That’s right. The Red Sox are currently 30th in the major leagues when it comes to hitting with RISP. Worse than the Dodgers (.202). Worse than the Mariners (.198). And worse than the putrid Padres (.196).
By going 2-18 last night, the Sox now sport a RISP average of just .190. To put that in laymen’s terms, through 18 games, the Boston bats basically turn into Francisco Cervelli when runners are standing at either second or third.
Now you might say that this number has been weighed down by a couple of horrifying games and if you back out last night and the April 9th disaster against the Yankees, things don’t look so bad. The hell they don’t! Back those two games out and the Sox are still hitting just .218, which is good for tenth in the AL.
The culprits behind this mess are many. Ortiz is hacking away at a .176 clip. Cameron is 1-6. Drew is buried at .143. Youk is just 2-18. And both Tek and Carl Crawford are flailing away at .100. Needless to say, there is plenty of blame to go around.
Thankfully, there is nothing in Boston’s file to suggest that this is anything but a highly anomalous stretch. So it should smooth itself out at some point. And the reversion, assuming it is powerful enough to recapture Boston’s three-year mean, should yield a stretch where the Sox offense is scoring tons of runs.
How many runs are we talking about? Well, this is just my two cents, but by my count, it looks like the Sox have about 12-15 EXTRA runs coming their way. And strategically placed, those runs could turn a good month into a great month.
