Red Sox Report: Trouble Brewing?
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Two weeks from today (Thursday), the games will be for real. Are the Red Sox ready?
Wednesday, Boston’s opening day starter Jon Lester got cuffed around by the Pittsburgh Pirates in a 6-5 loss to the Bucs in Bradenton, Florida.
For Lester, it was his second straight subpar outing. Wednesday he threw 80 pitches in just 3 innings of work. He gave up 8 hits and 4 runs while walking two and striking out one. This followed up his last outing against Minnesota where he threw 81 pitches in 4 innings of work. He gave up 5 hits and 2 runs in that game but he hit two batters, walked one and struck out one.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe big concern with Lester is, an always has been, his control which seems to be lacking at times. That lack of control has a tendency to run up his pitch count early allowing opponents to get into the Boston bullpen much earlier than the Red Sox would like them to.
If Lester is going to accept the assignment as this team’s opening day starter, he also needs to start pitching somewhat like an ace. He did that in 2010 when he went (19-9) and this team is going to need something close to that in 2012 if they hope to compete with the Yankees and Rays atop the AL East.
NOTES:
-There could be trouble brewing between new manager Bobby Valentine and new general manager Ben Cherrington. It appears that the two may have different ideas when it comes to what to do with shortstop Jose Iglesias.
Valentine proclaimed the 22-year old Iglesias ready to play in the Majors now when the consensus amongst Red Sox brass is that he needs more seasoning in the minors.
The book on Iglesias coming into spring training was that he was a stellar defensive shortstop but a liability on offense. While those two perceptions haven’t changed a great deal over the last month, what has is the overall strength (or in the Red Sox case – weakness) of the shortstop position.
Mike Aviles was assumed to be the top candidate to be the everyday shortstop once the season started even though the former Kansas City Royal hasn’t played shortstop regularly in three years. The same goes for Nick Punto who has bounced around from position to position in his years with the Minnesota Twins.
What impresses Valentine is the defense of Iglesias which is far superior to that of both Aviles and Punto. And while the latter two are considered better offensive players than Iglesias at the moment, the gap between their bats in that of Iglesias isn’t as wide as the gap Iglesias has over them with the glove.
It will be interesting to see if Valentine can convince the Red Sox front office that the team may be better off with Iglesias at short to start the season rather than Aviles or Punto. After all, not only would the team’s defense up the middle be significantly stronger, Boston could also afford to “hide” his bat at the bottom of the order and still manage to score a lot of runs with their line-up.
-No swinging of the bat for Carl Crawford on Wednesday. Instead he simply ran the bases. Crawford will have balls soft-tossed to him tomorrow when he puts a bat back in his hands.
-Jarrod Saltalamacchia (homerun, double, 2 RBI) and Adrian Gonzalez (2-3 with 2 doubles, 1 run, 1 RBI) were the offensive stars for Boston in their loss to the Pirates Wednesday.
-New closer Andrew Bailey, like Lester, had a forgettable outing suffering a blown save and the loss to Pittsburgh. Bailey gave up 3 hits and 2 runs in the 7th to the Bucs.
-Boston has now lost 3 straight Grapefruit League games to drop their record to (9-7-2) this spring. In those 3 losses, Boston has given up a total of 23 runs.
