Mazz: The Red Sox defense is currently a clown show
The Red Sox defense is a clown show. In fact, it has gone from bad to worse to funny to downright sad.
It’s now bad enough that it warrants pity.
As our own Tyler Milliken noted on Friday’s edition of The Baseball Hour that also included Matt McCarthy, the Red Sox ranked among the top 25 percent of all teams in defense after their first week of the season. Since that time – a period that generally coincides the injury to starting shortstop Trevor Story – the Sox have dipped all the way into the bottom third, a precipitous drop that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of their ineptitude.
The numbers are one thing. The visuals are something altogether different and now warrant a soundtrack meant for heartache:
Now, thanks to a performance on Friday night that evoked images of the Sox’ victory over the inept Oakland A’s in the opener of a series to start the month, the Sox are tied for the major league in errors with 16. Boston is currently on a pace to commit 185 errors, which seems like an impossible number. (To offer some perspective, the San Francisco Giants led the majors least season with 117. The Sox finished tied for second with 102.) And yes, the team the Sox are tied with this year is none other than the A’s.
Remember this?
If the advanced metrics are more your speed, the Sox now rank 25th in the major leagues in defensive runs saved and 26th in outs above average, both courtesy of fangraphs. Boston basically ranks among the worst team in baseball at every infield position but first base – a damning statistic that includes the catcher position. Last night, however, Triston Casas missed a foul pop near the Boston dugout because he was unable to accurately assess how more more space he had to catch a foul popup.
The good news? The season is young. As poorly as the Sox have played of late, their current pace seems impossible to maintain. Purely based on the law of averages, one has to assume that the defense can’t get much worse.
Right?
