Lately, June has seen the Red Sox offense go in opposite directions in terms of what players had done previously in the year. Mike Lowell, Jason Varitek, and yes, even Julio Lugo, are backsliding. In Lugo’s case, he’s backsliding … big time.
But what about those that have picked it up? Well, would you believe that every single starting outfielder for the Red Sox is starting to turn it around?
The most extreme (and most pleasing, to me) is Coco Crisp. He bashed two home-runs last night in the loss to the Atlanta Braves, tripling his homerun output on the year.
Without even factoring in his four-hit performance last night with two solo homers, he had been making contact a lot more lately in June. In June, without last night’s numbers factored in, he was hitting .250/.291/.269. The OBP and the SLG? Abysmal. The contact ratio? Well, it was his highest of all year if you look at his month by month totals: .235, .224, .250. The last seven days prior to last night gave him a line of .353/.421/.412. Heating up? I think so!
I’m not going to count my chickens before they’re hatched. Coco still has a long way to go to prove he can hit consistently for us. This could be just a hot streak that ends tonight … but it’s certainly reason for optimism, is it not? If Coco can keep this up, perhaps the Coco we all thought we acquired in the winter of 2005/2006 will have finally arrived … and with that Coco arriving, there’s one less hole to plug come trading time.
If Coco can continue hitting, that’s quite a force to have at the bottom of the lineup. We all forgot how good Crisp could be. In his last season for Cleveland, he hit .300./.345/.465 with 16 HR and 42 doubles. That is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. Combined with his speed, that’s the best #9 hitter in the business, and potentially a leadoff hitter for the second-half of the year.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s enjoy Coco the hitting machine … and hope that he continues hitting.
Speaking of homeruns and leadoff hitters, J.D. Drew bashed a homerun last night in four trips to the plate, doing nothing his other three times up. Not including last night, he’s hitting .302/.367/.512, easily his best mark in a month so far this year. Good for an .879 OPS, I’m flat out thrilled to see these numbers. Drew has quickly become a favorite of mine, and everyone knew he’d start hitting again eventually. Is J.D. Drew “back” after what was probably the worst slump of his career? Maybe, but not coincidentally, his hot streak coincided with the start of interleague play. Let’s hope that confidence transcends back to American League pitching, or the results won’t be pretty.
Drew is too good not to hit. We all know this, but I hesitate to deem him “back” until I see sustained success against American League hitting. When that happens, I’ll declare him back. Until then, I’m just going to sit back and enjoy J.D. Drew hitting, a sight that we all enjoyed in early April but quickly forgot.
How about Manny Ramirez? Zach covered his progression yesterday:
In the month of May, Ramirez has slugged his way back to Manny being Manny mode, piling up the doubles to a line of .327/.393/.577. Then in June, Manny
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
