In the month of April, the Red Sox scored almost as many runs in the first three innings of the game (69) as they did from the fourth inning onward (75).
Over the last three weeks, a troubling trend has emerged in the Red Sox dugout: They don’t protect leads. Not in the traditional sense. The bullpen, with the obvious exception of last night, has actually been pretty solid. Instead, the source of the failure is coming from their bats, which curdle like a glass of milk left out in the sun too long as the game progresses.
In just the last five games encompassing this road trip, the Red Sox have jumped out to leads of 3-0, 6-0, 9-0, 7-0, and 6-0, and they’ve only won three of them. Expanding out further over the last three weeks, the Sox are 11-9 in their last 20 games, but just like the last five contests, the real story here isn’t so much their overall mediocre record, but rather how many games they’ve left on the table and why.
In five of those nine losses, their win expectancy peaked at over 75% before they failed to lock it up. Let’s take a brief but closer look at them:
April 9th vs. the Blue Jays: The Sox had an 83% win expectancy when Trevor Story came up in the bottom of the tenth inning with a man on third representing the winning run. All he had to do was get the ball in play. Instead, he struck out, and the Sox lost the next inning.
April 12th in Chicago vs. the White Sox: The Sox led 2-0 going into the 6th inning after a solid outing from Richard Fitts. Their win expectancy was 79% (and probably would have been higher if the metric took into consideration who they were playing), but they didn’t score another run the rest of the way and lost on a ninth-inning walk off 3-2.
April 20th vs. the White Sox: This time the win expectancy peaked at 84% when Boston came to bat up 4-2 in the bottom of the sixth. Once again, Zack Kelly came in and blew a two run lead, and once again the offense didn’t score the rest of the way.
April 26th on Saturday in Cleveland: When the Sox jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning, the had a 76% win expectancy. The lead was gone by the bottom of the first, and the lineup only scored one run the rest of the game on the way to a 5-4 loss.
Last night in Toronto: When Carlos Narvaez hit the home run to go up 6-0, the win expectancy was a colossal 98.4%. As we know, the Sox blew it again, and surprise, surprise, the offense didn’t score any more runs the moment Toronto started punching back.
If you add this all up, it comes to 22.1 innings worth of at-bats in the closing stages of these five losses (three of which started with a runner in scoring position in extra innings) and they only scored one measly run. Abysmal!
This is also probably a fair time to mention they almost added a sixth game to this list on Saturday April 19 against the White Sox when they had a 3-0 lead with Garrett Crochet on the mound through five innings and then didn’t score another natural run the rest of the way. In what should be a familiar theme, they blew the lead and struggled to score all the way to the finish line. They only barely managed to squeak out the win in the tenth with the help of a runner starting on second base. But once again, they failed the send a runner all the way around the bases for the entire second half of a tight game.
When you look at the overall metrics relating to this topic, they’re just as ugly. In late and close situations, as defined by baseball reference as at-bats from the seventh inning onward when the game is either tied or the batting team is ahead by a run or trailing by three runs or less, the Sox are hitting an appalling .178 with a .566 OPS and striking out 29% of the time.
Most teams get better the more times they face a pitcher. Not the 2025 Red Sox! Their OPS against opposing pitchers goes from .879 the first time they see them to .764 the second time to .750 the third. Then when the relievers come into the game, their OPS drops to .694.
Want to break it down by inning? Boston has a .908 OPS in the first three innings of games this year, and then it’s just .673 the rest of the way. In the month of April, the Sox scored almost as many runs in the first three innings of games (69) as they did from the fourth inning onward (75). Do they take Unisom in the fourth inning every day?
Not surprisingly, their bats also specifically get worse when the leverage rises. In low leverage at bats, their OPS is a solid .804. In medium leverage, it drops off slightly to .758. But in high leverage moments, it’s just .637. Even worse, the Red Sox are batting just .195 in those high leverage plate appearance. And yes, I’m aware that batting average doesn’t really matter anymore, except that in many of these specific situations, it absolutely does.
Unlike most of the game, a walk is not as good as a hit when you need to actually drive in the winning run from scoring position. These high leverage at bats are full of moments where a simple single is exactly what you need, and while they represent a tiny portion of the gargantuan 162-game season, they also carry orders of magnitude more weight in determining game outcomes. You know, the thing that actually matters. You’re not playing for large production over a large sample here. You’re playing for small specific production in small specific moments, and the Red Sox stink at this!
So now the obvious question is why is this happening, and what can be done about it? Most lineups will see some drop-off in production when the best relievers in the game are specifically inserted to quell rallies, but nothing like this. Is the problem the approach at the plate? Are their swings too designed for the large sample and not tailored to the situation? Are they bad at making adjustments? Are they just incapable of hitting top notch pitchers and they gang up and bully the lousy ones? Do they choke? Are they just unlucky?
Whatever the answer, they better figure it out quickly and make the necessary adjustments because eventually other leaks will start springing against better competition. When those storm clouds roll in, they’re really going to lament letting the little things unravel. And if the bullpen starts to consistently crack, the steady stream of games they’re letting slip away will rapidly become a torrent.