As of Independence Day, the Boston Red Sox, as a club, had hit 102 homeruns on the season. That’s not a bad number: right now, it puts us 10th in all of baseball and 6th in the American League.
All the same, it’s a number that worries me. Not so much for its own sake, mind you, but for the sake of the context that another number gives it: of those 102 homeruns, not less than 48 of them belong to David Ortiz (26) and Manny Ramirez (22). Now, I’m no math whiz, but I think that 48 is just a little less than half of 102.
Manny & Ortiz are mashing, but where are the rest of the slugging Red Sox?
Nearly a week later, our two primary homerun hitters continue to pound the ball. Ortiz now leads the world with 31 homeruns before the All-Star Break, becoming the first player in club history to accomplish the feat. Manny sits at 24, and that total puts him 8th in all of baseball. Youkilis has 10 homers. Besides those three players, nobody else on the team has reached 10 homers yet. Lowell and Varitek have 9 apiece, Nixon 6, Gonzalez 5, Loretta 3.
Now I’ll grant you that homers aren’t everything. Myself, I’ve always tended to think of the Red Sox as more of a doubles-hitting team. Well, OK, that’s the way I think of us, anyway, although it seems (upon review) that we aren’t doing so well in that category, either, only being 12th in baseball in total team doubles. But 12th isn’t bad, I guess. It would be hard to complain about Lowell, who’s tied for the major-league lead with Texas teammates Michael Young & Mark Teixeira at 31. Youkilis has 22, Nixon a very respectable 20, Loretta 19, and Ramirez & Ortiz 15 apiece.
All in all, not bad. There’s some extra-base hitting going there. But we’re not the ’27 Yankees. Or the ’03 Red Sox either. Those Red Sox, in case you forget, either set or tied a record for most players on a team to hit at least 20 homers. Manny & Ortiz did it, Nixon and Varitek did it, and now-departed Sox Nomar and Kevin Millar both did it as well. Six players, at least 20 dingers apiece.
I can’t lie to you, it’s not as if our offense has been bad. Not what I’m saying. Coming into the season, we knew that the offense wasn’t going to be as strong as it had been in recent years. But it was still expected to be pretty strong, and so far it has been, good for 4th best in all of baseball as measured by Equivalent Average. We hit for good average with respectable power, and we’re tops in baseball in OBP.
But it’s not the dominant offense of a couple of years ago. It’s not a lineup that could endure significant losses — as, for example, both the ’03 and ’04 Sox had to make do without Trot Nixon for significant stretches of time, a month in ’03 and about three-fourths of the season in ’04. Both of those clubs managed to lead the league in total offense, even without a hitter as good as Trot.
We couldn’t do that this year. We haven’t had great luck with injuries so far, losing both Crisp and Pena to the DL. But in a sense, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that we’ve been lucky, in that Crisp and Pena timed their injuries well. Crisp suffered his injury early, and that afforded Pena lots of playing time while Crispy healed up. Then Pena became disabled just as Crisp was ready to come back. Our depth has suffered somewhat, but we haven’t really (knock on wood) suffered the loss of a frontline player to this point in the season — as our adversaries the Yankees have, losing both Matsui and Sheffield to the DL for long stretches of time.
Our foes the Yankees have a well-balanced offense and have borne up remarkably well under the burden of those losses. Even without those two key players, the Yankees’ offense has been better than ours, or every bit as good (when you consider park factors), by just about any measure you wish to choose, Runs, Equivalent Average, OPS, whatever.
What if we had suffered a serious loss in our starting lineup? Or more to the point, what if we do suffer such an injury? And what worries me most, what if either Ortiz or Ramirez goes down to injury? Manny’s (usually minor) bouts with injury are much-chronicled in Boston media, but all has been quiet on the Ramirez front so far this year, so much so that I’ve heard several Sox fans joke that he’s due. And let’s not forget that Ortiz, before he joined the Red Sox, was considered injury-prone.
A broken finger, a pulled hamstring, a hairline fracture, a mysterious foot soreness, a strained oblique — that’s all it takes, and our season is down the drain.
Is it a legitimate concern? Sure.
Is it concern so pressing that we need to rush out and make a trade? Absolutely not. We can expect Wily Mo to return soon, I believe, which would be some insurance against injury — although, granted, not much consolation in the dreaded event that we lose either Ortiz or Ramirez for any length of time. For another thing, what trades could we possibly make, and at what price?
That, by the way, was a rhetorical question. But if it just occurred to you to ask what will available on the FA market, you might perhaps find some food for thought here. I don’t see much of interest on that list — nothing that’s likely to be available, that is.
Anyway, it’s certainly something to think about. Again, knock on wood, but if any injuries were to occur, I would actually think it preferable that they occur sooner rather than later. Not that I would hope for great things from the trade market, but an injury now could perhaps be surmounted by a timely acquisition, whereas an injury after July 31st could leave us virtually powerless — no pun intended.
I’m not complaining, and I’m not saying the sky is falling. But it’s something for you gentlemen to reflect on, as the All-Star Game approaches.
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