Marc Bertrand: Red Sox need Rafael Devers to be a leader

The Red Sox were swept in their first home series of the season by the Baltimore Orioles, and the hits keep coming, with slugger Rafael Devers dealing with a ngging injury. And while Devers may need an IL stint, Marc Bertrand says the Red Sox need Devers to be a leader right now before the season spins out of control:

"I believe Devers at this moment in time, should set the example of getting in the lineup and battling through it, because I think it would go a long way because I think they need that. I think these younger guys on this team need to see that, that 'no, you're not allowed Jarren Duran to start kicking your chairs around and crying in the locker room in the first week. No, we're going to go out and we're going to compete. We're not going to shut it down and have the meltdown.'.

"They've already melted down, right? We're already seeing it there. Their team is a puddle. They have no mental toughness. Someone has to have the mental toughness and physical toughness in this situation to set the example there, because they now sorely lack leadership with Trevor Story falling apart as he already has done. They need somebody. He's got to be that guy. They pay him to be that guy. I just worry that they do desperately need some sort of thing right now that shows we're not folding and quitting right now. We're going to try and tough it out. We're going to try and get through April. The schedule's a little soft. Let's try and being competitive as possible right now. They should be panicking. I don't blame them for panicking because I from the outside look at this team and say, oh God, they're I already said they're dead. This team is dead. If they start thinking they're dead or knowing they're dead, this is going to be a really bad season."

Results matter most, but the 2024 Red Sox do have their share of flaws.

Nonetheless, as the Red Sox return home from a season-opening 10-game road trip to Seattle, Oakland and Anaheim, they sport a 7-3 record that translates into a nifty .700 winning percentage, a figure that places them ahead of all but five teams in major league baseball. Will we take it? Of course. And pending free agent manager Alex Cora will celebrate that as much as anyone given what the Sox have deteriorated into over the last few seasons.

“It was a great road trip,” Cora told reporters yesterday after the Sox' 12-2 pounding of the (wannabe) Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim). “Going into the season, we recognized how challenging it is to come to the West Coast right away. The organization did everything possible to put these guys in a situation where they were going to be fresh and ready to go. Credit to [the players]. They did an outstanding job.”

So there you go.

Tomorrow's home opener will be a reason to celebrate, after all.

Yah, Mazz, so what's the %$*&!@! problem? No problem - at least not yet. Let's just call them observations that have been pretty apparent and could become issues as time goes. The major league season, as we all know, is very, very long and will feature thousands of pitches, plays and situations. Nobody gets them all right. But there are always patterns and tendencies that bear watching, particularly with a roster that already has suffered some injuries (Trevor Story, Lucas Giolito, Vaughn Grissom) and was hardly awe-inspiring to begin with. So when we saw the Red Sox still have their share of flaws - and the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers do, too - that is merely a statement of fact and reality of life for each of the 30 major league teams.

But here are some things to keep an eye on:

Lament all you want about the simplistic nature of traditional metrics, but errors are still errors. The Red Sox have eight of them, which is tied for the fourth-most in baseball. More importantly, they have come at costly times. Wilyer Abreu had a sloppy outfield misplay in Seattle that was a key element in one of the Sox' three losses. Ditto for Rafael Devers' misplay with two outs in the sixth innings of the Sox' eventual 2-1 loss on Saturday night. (The Sox led 1-0 at the time.) While the Sox have allowed a major league low 24 runs thus far, a whopping nine of them (37.5 percent) have been unearned. (Ceddanne Rafaela, of all people, dropped a routine fly on Friday that helped lead to four of them.) Yes, the Sox are better afield. But if the A's and Angels were good teams, the Sox might have two more losses at least.

True fact: As of this morning, newcomer Tyler O'Neill leads the majors - yes, the majors - in OPS, one place ahead of Mookie Betts. (Who needs him, anyway?) The problem is that the Red Sox still look vulnerable against left-handed pitching, the most obvious example being Saturday's 2-1 loss to lefty Reid Detmers and the Angels. Of the Sox' 13 home runs this season, only one has come against a left-handed pitcher. (Interestingly, the left-handed-hitting Reese McGuire provided it yesterday.) Obviously, it's early. But with Trevor Story (a career .299 hitter against lefties) now out, too, the Sox lean even more heavily to the left.

If you've watched any Sox game this season, you're likely to have seen a lot of strikeouts. From the pitching perspective, this has been a pleasant surprising. From the hitting perspective, it's starting to get worrisome. Red Sox batters right now have the third-most strikeouts in baseball, which obviously flies in the face of Alex Cora's mantra to put the ball in play. Triston Casas leads the Sox with 12 strikeouts, but there are low-contact hitters splattered throughout the Sox lineup. (Jarren Duran is batting .349 but has 11 strikeouts.) With a man on third and less than two outs - when contact is critical - the Sox are 2-for-20 with eight strikeouts. That won't hurt too much against teams like the A's and Angels. It will when the opponents are better.