Monday Morning Brushback: Momentum, please

The Red Sox week in review dives into starting pitching struggles, a lack of fundamentals, and Roman Anthony.

Man, I dunno how many more times we can do this song and dance.

That song and dance, of course, being dealing with this mediocrity on the field (we can do the MMBB all year long, baby).

The 2025 Boston Red Sox rip off an encouraging win here or there—such as Wednesday’s walk off at Fenways against the Angels or Saturday night’s slugfest against the Yankees—interspersed with stretches of underwhelming performance. What should’ve been a series victory in one set actually ends up being a series loss. What should’ve been used as the jumping off point to get back into the real swing of things off the back of a big win turns into another missed opportunity.

That’s the story of this team through the first third of June: a team that cannot build any momentum.

I’m not the first person to point that out, but that’s become evident thus far. It’s getting tiring to write about, frankly.

They’ve got a chance to flip that narrative once again this week, though. A series victory on the road against your biggest nemesis—the defending American League champions and current leaders in the division, mind you—opens the door to build some of that momentum. It’s either that or me blabbing about the same nonsense next week on this website.

It’s Monday Morning Brushback time, y’all.

Two Strikes Against the Starters

Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images

In last week’s edition of the Brushback, I pointed out that Boston starters outside of Boss Hog Extraordinaire Garrett Crochet haven’t been providing enough volume in terms of sheer innings pitched. The bullpen—bless them—has been worked to the bone in recent weeks, and the team would’ve really stood to have some prolonged outings from the guys initially toeing the rubber each night.

So what did they do this past week in response? They have multiple complete implosions, of course.

Six runs—five of which were earned—in Dick Fitts’ lone inning of work on Monday. Seven earned runs in 1.2 innings from Lucas Giolito on Wednesday (which was, perhaps, the dumbest game in baseball history; we’ll take it, though). Another seven spot—five of which were earned—on Friday from Walker Buehler. You don’t have to be Theo Epstein to know that this is some unacceptable shit we’ve seen in recent days.

Yet instead of rehashing the stuff I wrote seven days ago, I wanted to look at another issue that’s made itself clear as of late: Red Sox starters’ trouble in (oddly enough) two-strike counts as well as opponents’ performance on breaking and offspeed pitches.

The two-strike point first: in that trio of blowups against LA and the Yankees, a fair amount of the damage was done when batters were down to their last strike of the at-bat. Zach Neto’s leadoff homer on Monday was on a 2-2 pitch. A pair of guys later got on that inning in two-strike counts (although one of them reached on that error by Toro at third, or at least it should’ve been ruled as an error; I don’t know what they called it and I’m too lazy to check). The last out Giolito registered on Wednesday—a sac fly to center—was on a payoff pitch. Jazz Chisholm’s three-run homer to open the scoring on Friday was on an 0-2 offering.

Of course, you could say that this is me just cherry picking instances out of a small sample size. Maybe that’s fair, but the season-long data doesn’t exactly exonerate the pitching staff in these samples.

Entering Sunday, the Red Sox as a team (so, including the bullpen—couldn’t find starter-specific stats for this and again: I’m too lazy) had surrendered hits in two-strike counts at a .180 clip; that might not sound like a high average, but that’s 20th in the league. Their 0.98 WHIP (again: that sounds good in a vacuum with no other context) in those situations was also 20th in MLB, while they had given up the 10th most homers in two-strike counts (23, though they tied with three other teams in that stat). They were ninth in the league in strikeouts—having Crochet on your team goes a long way there—but Boston had also walked the 12th most amount of hitters in two-strike counts.

These are supposed to be the easier situations! You’ve got just one more strike to retire the guy entirely! The hard part is arguably over by that point! Maybe I’m overstating the problem here—there has to be some scenario when runs score—but two-strike damage can really drive me up a wall.

Then there are the issues with the non-fastballs.

Let’s take it back once again to the trio of suck earlier this week. Neto’s leadoff homer was off a Fitts slider. Taylor Ward’s round tripper on Wednesday was off of a Giolito changeup, and Neto’s triple off of another change from Giolito. Jazz took Buehler’s curve deep on Friday, and he later drove in another run off of a slider from Buehler.

Again, these are indicative of larger trends. Fitts’ slider and sweeper—his two most common pitches besides his heater—have expected slugging numbers of .431 and .564 respectively, according to Baseball Savant. A quick rundown of some notable, non-fastball expected slugging metrics for Red Sox starters outside of Crochet: .595 and .516 for Giolito’s changeup and slider, .590 and .499 for Brayan Bello’s sweeper and changeup, and (prior to Sunday night) .627 and .448 for Hunter Dobbins’ slider and curveball.

All of those expected slugging numbers are above the league-average slugging percentage (as of Sunday morning) of .395, for the record. I forget who said it on the WEEI broadcast the other day, but it’s a good point to consider: teams know that they sit on the soft stuff when they face the Red Sox. The numbers seem to prove that.

How can the team fix these two-strike and non-fastball woes? Well… don’t look at me, I’m not the pitching coach. I have no clue—I just thought these trends were worth pointing out.

Fundamentally Unsound

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Less fancy dancy numbers and more vibes in this section, for what it’s worth.

What the hell is up with this team’s fundamentals? It feels like every week over the past few years, someone makes a cartoonish blunder on the bases—Devers being thrown out at the plate on Saturday takes the cake this past week. I appreciate how willing they’ve been to be aggressive on the bases via steals, but “aggressive” and “stupid” are different things.

Also: I know that simple errors are a bit of an antiquated measuring stick for defense, but having the most errors in MLB since the start of 2023 (as my lovely Pod On Lansdowne co-host Liam Fennessy pointed out last week) says something. On average, the Red Sox make damn near one error a game.

At what point does some of the criticism be levied to the coaching staff? I’m not a “Fire Cora” guy (although I’ve seen home some of you commenters have felt in recent weeks!), but these are things that should’ve been worked out in Fort Myers back in February…and the February before that…and the February before that…and the February before that…and so on.

Like, what else can I even say? I don’t have a bunch more in this section other than pointing out the very obvious lack of fundamentals. Chalk some of that up to the youth of the roster, I suppose, but even then: these are not new developments. I’ve been tweeting out this video on the POL account whenever the Sox run into an out for multiple years now. The cast of characters on the field has changed multiple times over even since the COVID season. The fundamental shortcomings remain the same, though.

I’m sick of that being an identifying trait of this team.

Your Weekly Roman Anthony Check-In

Photo by Bailey O’Neill/Minor League Baseball via Getty Images

Update on Roman Anthony: he’s still really good.

I’d like to open the floor to y’all in the comments: when do we actually think Roman Anthony gets called up? Obviously he should’ve been called up by now, but we’re way past that. It’s evidently clear that he doesn’t have anything left to prove with the WooSox, though I know that service time questions pop up around these situations.

To me, my guess (based off of nothing) is late June. I think it will continue to get to a point where the noise cannot be ignored. Absolute latest I believe is the All-Star break; I think holding Anthony down there into late July and onward is legitimate malpractice. I’ll be on a cruise June 20 through 27; my luck would have it that I’m unable to watch Anthony’s MLB debut because I’m on a catamaran in Bermuda with a margarita in my hand…oh, the horror.

And no: I don’t think Kristian Campbell gets sent down to AAA in a corresponding move, unlike some certain national baseball writer. Not even going to waste my time fully addressing that point.

Song of the Week: “Bigmouth Strikes Again” by The Smiths

The Cure’s still better, though.

Same time and same place next week, friends! Go Sox.