In his first 20 games last year, Sale threw 100-plus pitches 19 times and 97 in the other game this year, he’s reached triple digits just 12 times in 20 outings.īeyond Sale, Eduardo Rodríguez (3.44 ERA) has been Boston’s second-best starter, but David Price and Rick Porcello have been merely OK and the oft-injured Drew Pomeranz downright awful. Sale also looks to benefit from first-year manager Alex Cora’s more cautious workload plan, designed to give the Boston ace a more even pace throughout the season and prevent a second-half burnout. The latter leads the majors with a 37.2 percent strikeout rate, has an AL-best 2.23 ERA, and is pitching even better than he did in his remarkable first half in Boston last season. In 2018, Speaker and Wood have been replaced by Mookie Betts and Chris Sale, respectively. Beyond Speaker, though, only one Boston regular managed a three-WAR season, and the Sox surrounded Wood with a group of solid but not spectacular starters. Speaker paced the lineup with a four-digit OPS and league-leading WAR total, while Wood led the rotation with an MLB-best 34-5 record, hurling 10 shutouts and amassing a 1.91 ERA. Mainly, the 1912 Sox relied heavily on a handful of star performers rather than immense depth. Boston is striving toward its third straight division title, but it’s never aimed this high before.Īlthough the actual connections between the 19 Red Sox are tenuous-again, the former played so long ago that Babe Ruth wasn’t even in the majors yet-the modern bunch is not too dissimilar from its ancestral group in terms of roster composition. If they continue at their overall rate, they’ll reach 112. If they duplicate their May performance the rest of the way, they’ll win 108. 500 clip after the All-Star break, the Red Sox will still finish with exactly 100 wins. In other words, the worst month Boston has had in 2018 would still put them on pace for the franchise’s most successful season in decades. 423/.500/.692 since coming to Boston in a late-June trade.īoston’s worst month thus far was May, when it went 18-11 over a full season, that winning percentage still translates to 101 wins. They also have the best record against right-handed pitchers, and their only relative weakness-their record against lefty starters is just 14-11-might now be fixed, with platoon masher Steve Pearce hitting. They have the best record in the majors at home, and the second-best on the road they have the second-best record against teams with a losing record, and the second-best record against teams that are. In just about every possible permutation, the Red Sox are a top team. Yankees manager Aaron Boone wasn’t much exaggerating when he said the Red Sox “win every day”-Boston’s won 12 of its last 13 and has lost three games in a row just once all season. 694 rate), an illustrious run differential to match, and a season-high 4.5-game lead over the Yankees in the AL East. At least in the regular season, though, no Boston team has ever been better than the 2018 Red Sox have been through 98 games, as they wait at the All-Star break with a league-best 68-30 record (that’s a. That’s not a minor thing for a franchise with eight World Series trophies and 13 total pennants. Until, perhaps, this season, as the 2018 Sox are more than halfway to making their claim as the most successful Boston squad ever. No other team in Boston’s history has won so many games, even in a 162-game season, and no Boston team since integration has won even 100. The 1912 Red Sox won 105 regular-season games, lost 47, and tied 2, good for a cumulative. It won the World Series in a Game 8 after Game 2 was deemed a tie on account of darkness its best pitcher, Smoky Joe Wood, threw 344 innings its center fielder, Tris Speaker, won the second-ever AL MVP award. The most successful regular-season Red Sox team ever played so long ago that it christened Fenway Park.
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