Random thoughts from the Red Sox week that just finished:
- The Yankees are in last place and while that’s unlikely to last, the Sox are capitalizing on New York’s slow start, taking the first two games of this weekend’s series. Saturday night’s shut out win over New York was historical for a number of reasons.
- Regardless of Sunday’s outcome, Saturday’s win ended a string of 6 straight series win at Fenway for the Bombers over the Sox dating back to 2014.
- Saturday’s game featured two triples by Jackie Bradley, Jr., making the Red Sox the first team since the 1962 Cardinals to have two different players with two triples in a game before the end of April, according to Elias. Mookie Betts also had two triples on April 22.
- Saturday’s shutout of the Yankees was the first by the Red sox since June 2, 2013 at Yankee Stadium and the first at Fenway in over five years (May 14, 2011).
- The 8-0 win was the widest margin of victory by the Red Sox in a shutout of the Yankees since an 11-0 win on September 6, 2003 in the Bronx. The Sox hadn’t shutout the Yanks in Boston by that margin since a 10-0 win at Fenway on August 2, 1973.
- It’s impossible not to be impressed with the way David Ortiz is going in this, his final MLB season. Last Wednesday, April 27, Papi became just the 11th player in baseball history (and first Red Sox player ever) to collect three doubles in a game at age 40 or older. Before Ortiz, the last MLB player to accomplish that feat was the Giants’ Omar Vizquel on August 1, 2007.
- Sox pitcher Steven Wright is in some elite company. Wright started this season working at least 6.0 innings in four starts without allowing more than two earned runs. The only other Red Sox pitchers to do that in the past 20 seasons are Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, and Clay Buchholz. If you count his work in the 2015 season, Wright has pitched at least 5.0 innings and allowed two runs-or-fewer in each of his last seven starts, the longest active streak in the Majors.
- Happily, Hanley Ramirez has settled in nicely at first base, error-free in 150 total chances going into Saturday’s game. Ramirez does, however, lead the club in strikeouts with at least one SO in 17 games of the first 24 games of the season, the most since Mike Napoli collected 19 such games in that span of time during the 2014 campaign. In 2014 Napoli tied the team record for strikeouts over the first 24 Red Sox games (21, also Dick Stuart in 1963).
- Cardinals rookie shortstop Aledmys Diaz enters May with a .423 batting average after 71 at-bats. Earlier in the week Elias reported said Diaz was the first rookie in Major League Baseball’s modern era (post 1900) to post a .500 batting average after 50-or-more career at-bats.
- Though largely reduced over the past couple seasons, doubles have long been a major part of the Red Sox offensive toolbox. In fact, no club has led MLB for doubles in a season more frequently than the Sox, who’ve topped baseball’s Doubles List for 45 non-consecutive seasons starting in 1912 and ending in 2013. In 2016, doubles appear to be back in style for Boston, which starts the month of May with 66, the most in the majors and the club’s most in a first month since 2003 (71). The Red Sox have five players with six or more doubles thus far (Xander Bogaerts, Bradley, Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, and Travis Shaw). No other club has more than four such players.
- The Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen produced three home runs in one game last Tuesday for the second time in his career. He joins Hall of Famers Ralph Kiner (who had four such games), Willie Stargell (4), and Roberto Clemente (2) as the only players in Pittsburgh history with multiple three-HR games. In Red Sox history since 1913, Hall of Famer Ted Williams had three career games with three HRs each. Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, and Hall of Famer Jim Rice each had two such games. Dustin Pedroia is one of 17 Sox players with one such game.
- Good starts: No American League club has more first inning runs than the Red Sox (29). The nearest AL competitor has just 17. In all of baseball, only the Nationals have more first-inning runs (30) than the Sox. There’s still a long way to go, but for all of 2015, the Sox had the fourth fewest such runs in the AL.
- We keep hearing that this Red Sox lineup will hit home runs when the weather warms. We’ll see. Their 19 in the first month is the club’s fewest over a first month of play since the 1974 team also had 19. Interestingly, the Sox’ 21 stolen bases are the club’s second most ever for the first month of a campaign. Only the 2013 team had more (22).