Moral of the Story

 

In any other division, a team jumping from below-.500 to 32-29 in a month's time would be bigger news.

The Red Sox, thanks to the arrival of Trevor Story's classic numbers, have eradicated their scarily-awful start, and are back to something of a contender in the AL East. But...they are still 12.5 games behind the Yankees and 4.5 games behind Toronto. So while they're definitely in it now, they're not as much of a threat to the top of the division as they would be if they'd have done this leap in the AL Central or AL West. 

There's still lots of things to write about now. Trevor Story, while he is batting .222, has 9 home runs and a team-leading 41 RBIs. The man has turned things around after a crummy start, and while he's not completely where he was in Denver, he's a reliable mid-lineup bat and a worthy double play partner to Xander Bogaerts. Story being on means that Bogaerts, Devers, Martinez and Vazquez can make a pretty powerful top of the lineup. Beyond that, though, there's a lot of disappointing seasons going on the further down you go, like Alex Verdugo doing very okay, Bobby Dalbec hitting below the Mendoza line, JBJ, you know...doing his thing at the plate, and the bench players sort of shrugging. Jarren Duran was hitting .300 when he was up, but he's lower on the depth chart than Franchy Cordero, so he's getting starts. It just seems like the Sox' plan of lining the bench with excellent utility infield bats, like Christian Arroyo, Jonathan Arauz and Yairo Munoz, seems to have caved in now. 

The rotation is now without Garrett Whitlock or Nate Eovaldi, and they may need to look into getting a reliever to start to fill the void. Pivetta, Houck, Wacha and Hill are a compact enough bunch right now, though it is admittedly odd to say that out loud. Michael Wacha's been having a great year, Nick Pivetta still seems to be back, but once again...the lack of depth is concerning me. I don't know what else they have to throw in. Kutter Crawford? Maybe Sale's ready? I don't know.

From the way the Sox's schedule looks, they'll go .500 for the next few weeks and probably drop some big division series' right before the ASG break, which will be a showcase for several starters as well as maybe Story in the HRD. And then after that we'll see if they can fix their depth issues and squeak into a playoff spot. It's been done before, and the way the Sox are run right now, it's definitely possible. I just wanna see how they do it.

Coming Tomorrow- A home run hitter for a team going toe-to-toe with my hometown crew this week.