On Thursday night, the Boston Red Sox wrapped up one of the ugliest stretches of baseball you will ever see. Random rookie starter Kyle Hart gave up seven runs (five earned) in two innings as Boston fell to the Rays 17-8. Tampa wrapped up a four-game sweep of the Sox at Fenway in which they scored 42 runs.
Hart’s ignominious debut performance came a night after bargain bin pickup Zack Godley allowed eight earned runs in three innings. Yikes.
Nearly a third of the way through this pandemic-shortened season, Boston starting pitchers have posted a 6.47 ERA. In a year when starters are averaging less than five innings per start, Sox starters are averaging less than four. They have the worst strikeout-to-walk rate, the worst batting average against and the worst WHIP in all of Major League Baseball.
What’s been most apparent is just how bad the back-of-the-rotations starters have been. Boston’s top two hurlers, Nathan Eovaldi and Martin Perez, have both posted better than league average ERAs. Eovaldi has among the best strikeout-to-walk rates in baseball and Perez has vastly outperformed his career averages through his first four starts. Both have allowed Boston to compete in nearly every game they’ve started, with the team going 5-and-3 in those outings. The problem is after that the bottom drops out completely.
Eovaldi/Perez: 43.1 IP, 3.74 ERA
All other starters: 29.0 IP, 10.55 ERA
In games not started by Eovaldi or Perez, the Red Sox are 1-and-10.
What’s ironic is that given all the anomalies of the 2020 season, it’s never been a better year to try to get by with very little starting pitching depth.
Take the Yankees, for example. The Bronx Bombers are in first place with the second best record in the American League despite having just two starters with ERAs under five! New York has been able to rely heavily on an above average relief corps and a lineup that absolutely mashes to make up for the poor performance of their back-of-the-rotation starters.
In the National League East, the second-place Braves have had success with a similar strategy. Atlanta has only two regular starters with ERAs under six, but they have five regular-use relievers with ERAs below two.
Since enduring a number of injuries, the AL Central-leading Twins have basically employed a three-man rotation and used a patchwork of extra arms to get them to their above average bullpen. The 12-and-8 Rays have a bullpen that’s won 10 games and thrown 20 more innings than their starters and openers.
Teams with All-Star caliber relievers are relying on those guys more often and maximizing their number of appearances in the shortened season. While last year only one player appeared in at least half his team’s games, a number of players are on pace to do it this year. That includes New York’s Adam Ottavino (9 games, 1.29 ERA), Oakland’s Yusmeiro Petit (11 games, 3.12 ERA) and Kansas City’s Scott Barlow (12 games, 2.25 ERA).
This year more than ever, you can get away with a pretty thin starting staff and still compete. But you can’t get away with historically bad, which is what the Red Sox have been. The 2012 Sox posted the highest ERA in franchise history. That was almost a run and a half lower than this year’s club (albeit with a much larger sample size). This year’s Sox starters are on pace to post all time highs in walks and home runs allowed per nine innings.
Another irony of this strange season is that offense is down across the board. The league batting average is a measly .239 and the rate stats for nearly every meaningful offensive statistic are lower than last year. Boston’s pitching has been terrible in a season in which hitters are struggling more than most. That makes for a scary thought for Red Sox fans: if this were a normal year, things for Boston hurlers could actually be worse.