Red Sox pitchers are Elite at Being Bad

Red Sox pitchers are Elite at Being Bad

The Red Sox are in the middle of a playoff race. The MLB All-Star Game is now behind us, and the second half of the MLB season is in full swing. There’s plenty of time between now and October for teams to cement their spot in the Postseason this year.

The Red Sox have been a welcomed surprise with the production of many of their young players. Jarren Duran broke out with an All-Star season. Tanner Houck has had some of the most productive outings of his career. Young players like Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu are also mainstays in a good Red Sox offense.

The problem is not the hitting side. The Red Sox bats have gone from a top-10 offense before the All-Star break to a top-5 since then. The Red Sox sit 6th overall in offense. Their bats have significantly improved in the power department. 163 home runs and counting this season compared to 182 overall last season. The defense is a different story, with a league-leading 92 errors this season. 

However, the problem stems primarily from their pitching staff, which looks night and day compared to the first half of the season. 

In the first half of the 2024 season, the Red Sox had a Top-Five pitching staff in baseball, near the league’s top in ERA, WHIP, and limiting walks. Tanner Houck and Kutter Crawford were the two surprise stories in the Red Sox starting rotation. Both had ERAs around or under 3, and Houck was in the top 5 in the league with his 2.54 ERA in the first half. Since the break, Houck has had an ERA north of 4 in six starts and has been searching for his first win since July 11th. His most recent start was today against Arizona; the offense gave him a 4-run lead, and he eventually gave up six runs and walked four.

Kutter Crawford has been getting shelled. In 7 starts in the second half, he has an ERA over 8. More concerning is that his opponent’s Slugging percentage has doubled. Overall, opponents have been making better contact against him. The worst was his August 2nd start vs Texas, where he gave up four home runs in 5.1 innings. A stat that sums up Kutter Crawford’s second half so far: in 112.2 innings pre-All-Star game, he gave up 14 home runs, and in his last 34.1 innings, he has given up 14 home runs.

Nick Pivetta and Brayan Bello have been underwhelming, with 4.90-plus ERAs all season. The Red Sox bullpen outside Kenley Jansen and Chris Martin have been a daily mystery in production. Even the arms they brought in through trade have yet to put them in a better position in the Wild Card race. 

The main culprit to this bad second half has been the Red Sox’s inability to limit the home run ball. In the first half, the Red Sox were the seventh-best team at limiting home runs in 853.1 innings, giving up 96 homers. Since the second half started, they are the worst in baseball, with 65 bombs in 306.1 innings.

As they fall to the Diamondbacks today, the Red Sox are 4.5 games back of the last Wild Card spot, as the Royals and Twins are ahead of them. There are about five weeks left in the MLB season, and the Red Sox are still within striking distance of a playoff spot. However, they have an early spot on the offseason couch if they do not clean up the pitching woes soon.  

Going from one of the best pitching staffs in baseball to the absolute worst is alarming. Let’s see what the next month and a half holds for the Red Sox.

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