Red Sox
Are we really past what Alex Cora called “the last struggle” prior to a much-hyped, hey-look-we’re-trying Red Sox offseason?
COMMENTARY
By midweek, 20 percent of the Major League Baseball regular season will be in the books. Mildly crazy, given I haven’t yet won the battle to turn the house furnace off for the season.
In such a span last year, the also-ran Diamondbacks went 24-6 and the pennant-winning Yankees went 9-21. It’s time enough for a definitive stretch, but also for a hiccup on the way to something else.
The Red Sox? Last year’s perpetual .500s are . . . 16-14. They’d allowed one more run than they’d scored until Sunday, when they mashed five Guardians pitchers for 13 runs and 15 hits.
“Hopefully, we can continue improving in certain areas,” manager Alex Cora told reporters Sunday on the way out of Cleveland. “I think we did a good job over the course of the series.”
They are, in the same breath, on a forgettable 86-win pace and one of only four teams — with the Tigers, Mets, and Giants — to win 15 games in April. The latter’s no fluke, either. Boston’s hitters are fourth this month for collective Fangraphs’ WAR, and its pitchers are fifth.
Surprised? It’s OK. I remember barely winning half of seven games with the still-awful White Sox, too.
So what’s happening here? Are we really past what Cora called “the last struggle” prior to a much-hyped, hey-look-we’re-trying Red Sox offseason? Let’s look at four names from these opening 30 and try to puzzle some things out.
Alex Bregman
Who’s been the most dynamic offensive player in baseball this season? Aaron Judge is generally a safe guess on such questions, and this year he’s the clear correct answer. A 3-for-8 doubleheader on Sunday, including his eighth home run, dropped his average to .406, with a 1.217 OPS 120 points clear of the field.
It’s been a very modern Yankees start. No Gerrit Cole, no Giancarlo Stanton, just demoted closer Devin Williams, and still leading the AL East with the fifth-best record in baseball.
On the Red Sox? Wilyer Abreu’s go-ahead homer was the highlight of the opening weekend, and he’s continued to hit the ball hard while playing Gold Glove-defense, but has cooled to a .716 OPS in April. Kristian Campbell has reached base in 25 of 27 games and piled up five hits against the Guardians, but a lack of hard contact and high chase rate is a quibble. (He’s 22, debuting, and forgiven.)
It’s been Bregman, who’s looked relatively rough in the field — five errors matches half his total with Houston a year ago — but has a .937 OPS with a team-high 22 RBIs as a solid No. 3 hitter. His already excellent feel for the strike zone has been even better, and he’s made pitchers pay for their mistakes, with four of his five home runs on middle-middle pitches.
“What a perfect fit,” Yahoo’s Jake Mintz declared last week.
Also of note: Devers, he of the 0-for-21 start? Still a terror when he makes contact, sitting in the 98th percentile of MLB hitters for Hard Hit rate, and has drawn 19 walks this month — fifth-most in baseball, and already the most he’s ever had in a month. A sign he’s searching, sure, but it counts as something for a swing-at-anything maniac. (Who, like Campbell, had a five-hit weekend.)
Triston Casas
On the flip side, we have Boston’s only true first baseman, and perhaps the only player in baseball whose eccentricities are enough on which to build a commercial where he annoys a team mascot with them.
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Casas debuted during the September 2022 roster expansion, had a decidedly average .749 OPS 100 games into his career, made a run at Rookie of the Year with a white-hot second half of 2023, and was off to a pretty good start a year ago when he tore cartilage in his rib cage. It is, frankly, a reasonably flimsy résumé given how key most of us consider Casas to the franchise’s return to October.
That’s notable given his 2025 to date — .172/.273/.310, with his usual underwhelming defense. The three-run homers on a pair of 0-2 mistake pitches during last week’s Seattle series were a sign of life, with Casas telling The Athletic they came after a swing tweak. His general quality of contact, even amid the worst month of his career, suggests he’s owed some better luck.
Still, he’s been a free swinger who hasn’t squared up enough baseballs, and Cora sat him against a pair of lefties to end the Cleveland series. That’s a long fall from the cleanup hitter he was the season’s first two weeks, and a notable one when career backup Romy Gonzalez is the next most viable option at first.
Aroldis Chapman
There is at least one simplicity in the Red Sox, who are 14-1 when leading after six innings and 0-11 when trailing after six. This is, to some degree, just how it goes in baseball, though it usually doesn’t go as it has here so far.
Red Sox relievers have allowed 15 of their first 30 inherited runners to score, the worst rate in baseball. Four times, the bullpen has squandered a lead handed it by a starter in position to win. (The Sox still won two of the four.)
Chapman hasn’t truly felt tested yet, but the winter’s big bullpen add has been Cora’s top choice for high leverage spots. He’s done what’s been asked — 4 of 4 on save chances, 2 for 2 coming in with men on and getting the Sox out of the inning, and 8 for 9 producing a clean inning when asked. (April 12 against the White Sox, he was done in by a leadoff walk and the legendary Brooks Baldwin.)
They were all multi-run save spots, though. His lower walk rate also feels like an aberration, given he sported one of the game’s worst each of the last four years, and the little contact he’s given up has generally been hard. Things to keep an eye on.
Also of note: Justin Slaten has the lone one-run save for the Red Sox this season, Cora turning to the 27-year-old when Chapman had pitched three of the previous four games.
Tanner Houck
Houck officially learned he’d made his first All-Star team last July 7. He’s made 18 starts since, and among the 70 pitchers to make at least that many in that span, only six have a worse ERA than Houck’s 4.99.
A rotation that has outperformed expectations given the injuries to Lucas Giolito, Brayan Bello, and Kutter Crawford has done it with almost nothing from the righthander, who’s allowed nine first-inning runs across six 2025 starts. That includes four in Saturday’s opener, when he was handed a 3-0 lead and promptly gave up five first-inning hits, four on his splitter.
He deemphasized the split, his best pitch a year ago, and shut out Cleveland the next four innings, but the Sox lost, 5-4. They are 1-5 in Houck games this season, though Saturday was the fourth time in six starts he left with the game either tied or the Sox ahead.
The story is not surprising. Houck’s splitter was arguably the best individual pitch from any Red Sox pitcher a year ago, and the key to his career season. An inability to locate it this year has it drawing far more hard contact. It’s part of a larger problem, with Houck’s walk rate up by nearly 50 percent.
“It’s kind of like that in-between pitch where I’ve gotta be a little bit more fine with it, get it under there in advantage counts,” he told reporters Saturday. “But take that away, take that information away and keep storing it.”
It’s been a process since the spring, when poor stats — particularly an inability to miss bats — was chalked up to just getting his work in. With the lights on, that’s kept being a problem.
And it’s been among the bigger drags on a positive start for the new-look Sox.
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