With the half way point of the 2009 season approaching, the American League is nearly decided. The Red Sox are bullet-proof. Despite spending almost half-a-billion dollars in the off-season the New York Yankees have failed to catch up, and will not catch up in the A.L. East Race.
The Red Sox now sit on a 44-27 record, 5 games up, and yet they are only beginning to fire on all cylinders.
Starting Pitching: The Sox have gotten where they are now with what for the majority of the season so far has been inconsistent starting pitching. Beckett and Lester looked somewhat lost with plus-5 ERAs in April and May, Matsusaka was a train wreck and the most reliable starter was Tim Wakefield. Now they are starting to click. The early season woes of Josh Beckett, who last year was never himself due to injury, have passed. He is now clearly the dominant ace the team expects him to be, the one who's Gibson-esque postseason effort brought them their second championship in four years in 2007. In fact, he looks even better than that pitcher. Beckett has been mixing in his two-seem fastball much more regularly than ever before and has been putting it wherever he wants. When he throws to lefties it starts inside and moves away to hit the inside corner, at 96 miles per hour, a pitch that is un-hittable. If this was the Josh Beckett that had shown up up in last years postseason, as opposed to the one with a 90 mph fastball (the speed his changeup has been clocked at this season), the Red Sox would have celebrated their third title of the Theo Epstein/Terry Francona era.
Beckett is not all this incredibly deep rotation has to offer though. Tonight in Washington they will be joined by another all-time great postseason performer in John Smoltz, who looked strong and healthy in his minor league rehab stint. Expect the move into Red Sox Nation to re-energize one of baseball's greatest competitors, much like it did to Curt Schilling in 2004.
The Red Sox rotation is so good that, as Bob Ryan points out, losing a pitcher who went 18-3 last year with a .210 opponents batting average may actually be a blessing. If Dice-K never throws another pitch this season the Red Sox won't miss a beat. At the back of the rotation, Brad Penny has been clocked at 96 and is looking more and more like the pitcher that finished fourth in the Cy Young voting two years ago. If they want, the Red Sox could trade him to a desperate National League team, build for the future, and possibly make their rotation now even better by calling up Clay Buchholz, whose been nearly unhittable in triple-A and has consistently looked that way since the start of spring training.
At the front of the Rotation Jon Lester is once again looking like the ace that he was much of last year. I don't see a team in baseball that could beat a playoff rotation featuring him, Josh Beckett and if healthy, John Smoltz.
The Offense: Not only did the Red Sox get to the best record in the A.L. so far with inconsistent starting pitching, they did it with a gaping hole in the DH spot. It appeared to all watching, including myself, that David Ortiz was done. Strikeout by strikeout, pop-up by pop-up, weak ground ball by weak ground ball, it had become painful to watch Ortiz' decline. Well it may be to early to say for sure, but now it appears Big Papi is back. That means the best team in the league are only now adding one of the most fearsome left handed bats of the decade to hit behind Kevin Youkilis and MVP candidate Jason Bay. Since June 6, Ortiz is batting .357 with a .480 on-base percentage and an .833 slugging percentage. If anything encapsulated his return, it was his bomb off a 96 mph fastball from A.J. Burnett. The YES Network booth played it off as a mistake down the middle from Burnett and argued it was no sign that Ortiz is back. However he had been seeing many lesser fastballs down the middle of the plate all season that he could do nothing with, now he is destroying such pitches. Last night he hit a three-run shot about 440 feet to center field in the Nation's capital. He stood at home plate, tossed his bat into the air and slowly began to walk into his home run trot. The old Big Papi was back.
Defense: The Red Sox defense has been impeccable this season with the exception of shortstop (although Nick Green has been decent of late). This is about to change with the addition of Jed Lowrie. Hopefully the absolutely terrible Julio Lugo will be released despite a large salary. Right now Lugo is one of the worst players in baseball both offensively and defensively. Getting him off the team no matter what Lowrie does at the plate, will be a great boost and deepen the bench.
The Bullpen: It has been much spoken-of that the Red Sox bullpen has been their strength thus far. It seems Francona can pick any reliever out of a hat and throw them in as a reliable eighth inning setup man. The only relief dilemma for the Sox perhaps is figuring out just who is the best guy to setup Papelbon. Clearly that man is still Okajima. Francona seems to put a lot of trust in Delcarman, who I don't like in a big spot. I'd like to see Masterson as the go-to guy after Okajima, with Saito and Ramirez behind him. Daniel Bard has struggled in moments and shown his potential at other times. If grows throughout the season, it is possible with his 98 mph+ stuff, he could anchor the eighth inning making the bullpen even deeper. What did I mean when I said earlier the Red Sox are bulletproof? The could sustain almost any injury to any player. Even if Jonathan Papelbon were to go down, the Sox could simply plug John Smoltz in as the closer and the bullpen would hardly take a hit.
So the Red Sox will get better in all these categories, but their biggest advantage over the Yankees comes from the Manager. Terry Francona is amazing in his ability to do everything right. His incredible patience with Ortiz is now paying off. Recently he moved Ellsbury down in the lineup from leadoff to seventh despite the fact that he was coming off a 22 game hit-streak. The result? Ellsbury has caught fire. He's been able to be more agressive on the base paths. He has even been walking much more. The other day against Washington, Ellsbury was 4-4 with two triples, three RBIs and a stolen base. Now that's nice box score. Pedroia on the other hand is the perfect lead-off guy. He sees a ton of pitches and never strikes out. This season he has swung the bat 469 times. He has failed to make contact on only 33 of those swings.
The Yankees used to have a great manager, but they decided to let him go for the dim-witted Joe Girardi. By the way, the Joe who will be in Cooperstown is now managing a team that has the best record in baseball and will be getting Manny Ramirez back in about a week. Oops.
