The State of the Red Sox

We are almost through with 40% of the season and I figured this was as good a time as any to take a long look at the state of the Boston Red Sox. In this first installment- I'll take a look at the offense.

Going into tonight's game the Red Sox are 40-22 and are not only 9.5 games up in the AL East they also have the best record in baseball. The Red Sox have to be feeling pretty good about themselves but there are areas of concern.

As a team on offense the Red Sox are fifth in the AL - averaging 5.21 runs per game. That puts them behind Detroit (6.03), the Yankees (5.61), Cleveland (5.55) and Seattle (5.27). They are not hitting a ton of home runs (they are 7th in the AL in HR) but are top 5 in doubles, triples (surprisingly), batting average, total bases, OBP and slugging percentage. Not bad really.

There are a couple of guys hitting above what you'd consider to be their level - Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis. I've long thought that Youkilis could be a 20 HR guy and even though I consider Youk to be a .300 hitter - you still have to think his batting average will come down from its current .338. Mike Lowell is on pace for career highs in batting average, OBP and slugging percentage. I just don't think Lowell's level of production in the second half will come close to matching his first half production.

If these two guys drop in production - who can step up and take their slack in the second half?

Are the Red Sox actually lucky that their two big MLB free agents they signed in the offseason have been under-performing in the first 40% of 2007? Both JD Drew and Julio Lugo have been disappointing. Drew is down 40 points from both his career batting average and OBP while his slugging percentage is down a whopping 140 points. Prior to coming to Boston Drew averaged a HR once every 19.5 at bats. This season Drew has averaged one HR every 44 at bats - more than double his career rate.

Julio Lugo was supposed to be penciled in for 2007 as the lead-off guy but tonight he was dropped down to 9th in the batting order. This was a move that was perhaps long overdue. It took a 3-4 road trip to convince Terry Francona that having a guy hitting .213 with a .274 OBP maybe wasn't a good idea. I'm hoping that the drop in the order maybe takes some pressure off Lugo and that allows him to get back closer to his career .272 average.

There's two additional points I'd like to make about Lugo. First - I blame Theo Epstein for the fact that Lugo was the leadoff guy in the first place. Lugo was signed with the idea by the front office that he'd be the leadoff guy for 2007 and beyond. What made them think that a guy with a career .335 OBP was the ideal leadoff guy in the first place? I credit Francona for making a the obvious move by taking Lugo out of the #1 slot in the order. Secondly - let me say that Lugo has always impressed me as a "clutch" player. The bigger the batting situation - the bigger Lugo seems to come up. I guess that was his biggest attraction. This year Lugo is hitting .283 with RISP and .333 with RISP with 2 outs. Even though he was batting leadoff for most of the season - Lugo is on pace to break his career high for RBI (Lugo's career high is 75 and he's on pace for 88).

The Red Sox have two players doing pretty much what you'd expect as far as offense is concerned. Jason Varitek is right at his career averages for batting, OBP and slugging. Meanwhile, the player John Kerry likes to call Manny Ortiz is also about where you'd expect. Of course there is no such player but if you combine the numbers of the Red Sox two-headed 3-4 punch (David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez) - the duo is right where you'd expect. Sure the HR numbers are down but the rest of the numbers combined are fairly close to what you'd expect. Ortiz's numbers are above his career averages and Manny's are below his. They are sure to level out to their career levels. As far as HR are concerned - I'm sure when the temperatures heat up in July and August that the HR's will come in bunches.

That leaves two players who really nobody knew what to expect - Coco Crisp and Dustin Pedroia. Crisp is hitting 50 points below his career average and has a slugging percentage that only a pitcher would be proud of. Dustin Pedroia has been a very pleasant surprise and I would have to say that he's in a very good position to win the AL Rookie of the Year.

Overall - I expect the Red Sox will be fairly constant for the rest of the year with some of the slack from players who were over-performing and dropped off made up by players who so far have been under performing. The one big danger to the Red Sox offence is if either David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez gets hurt for an extended period of time. If that does happen before the trade-deadline it may force the Red Sox to trade away some of their top prospects.