Boston Red Sox: The Statistics behind an early season success story
Folks, the Boston Red Sox are a surprising contender in the AL East.
Despite being less than a month into the 2021 MLB Season, the Red Sox are boasting a 14-9 record, 2 games ahead of the second place Tampa Bay Rays.
Heading into the season, the home team was ranked in the bottom half of the league with 60-1 odds of making it to the World Series.
Against those expectations (or lack thereof), this 2021 Sox squad are off to a very quick start and unbelievable start to the season that no one was expecting. The statistics show how the Red Sox have been attaining their success across the league.
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There are a few reasons as to why Boston is off to such a great start to the season. The pillars include hitting and pitching.
Not only are these two very important facets of baseball, but they are aspects that were not expected to be where they are at the start of the season. Many of the statistics shown are from Baseball Reference and ESPN in order to show the strength of this Red Sox team.
Boston Red Sox Pitching
The Sox starting rotation has been playing fairly well with headlines of Eduardo Rodriguez, Nick Pivetta, and Nathan Eovaidi boasting sub-4 ERA to accompany the team’s 10th best ERA of 3.84.
Overall, the Red Sox pitching staff has accumulated 187 strike outs (8th best in the MLB). This is only a start for the rotation as the team is still waiting on Chris Sale to return from Tommy John Surgery.
Though the bullpen has been struggling there is a silver lining with closer, Matt Barnes who is continuing to close out close games with a 100 percent success rate in save situations.
Barnes closes out the pitching rotation with what has been, 11 great innings pitched with only 4 earned runs while facing 41 total batters. He has only allowed 5 hits and 3 walks in his appearances on the mound.
The Boston Red Sox X-Factors in the batting order
The Boston Red Sox have the top two ranked offensive players in J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts. They are at the top of the league in the MLB in batting average, OBP, slugging, total bases, and runs scored.
Martinez and Bogaerts are a dynamic duo that encompasses the high levels of success for the Red Sox. The team is going through the batting order at an impressive speed.
The Sox are averaging 9.45 hits per game (best in the MLB). Notably the Red Sox are proceeding to force their opponents to look to their bullpens earlier in the game than many other teams. Opposing teams are looking to the bullpen between the 4th and 6th innings at an extremely quick pace.
The Red Sox are seeing increased production in the bats of Bogaerts and Martinez. Both of which are ranking in the top 10 in the MLB in batting average with Alex Verdugo and Rafael Devers also ranking in the top 50.
With that said, it isn’t surprising to see the beginning of the order as a force to be reckoned with.
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A lot of fans are highlighting the comeback season of J.D. Martinez as a major reason for the Red Sox being so successful, but that’s not all of it. Boston has a very successful rotation full of strong pitching and even stronger batting.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora has made many correct calls with his team’s batting order and pitching assignments as there has been a winning environment to advance the success of the Boston Red Sox.