Starts and stops for Sox

Performance uneven but results are OK

June 02, 2009|Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff

The Red Sox, two months into the season, are a hard team to figure. They won 11 games in a row but three times have lost four out of six. Their starting rotation, an expected point of might, staggered toward the bottom of the league and then made a U-turn back to respectability. Their designated hitter skipped right past the shell-of-himself part and turned into a ghost.

Their most durable infielder has been a 33-year-old who endured major hip surgery in the offseason. The most effective stroke by their manager might have been taking a hitter fresh off a 22-game hitting streak and moving him down seven spots in the lineup. Aside from a lights-out bullpen, little has gone precisely to plan.

The uneven pattern of the season's first third - one unexpected difficulty replaced by the next - made for a mostly pleasant ultimate result. The Red Sox stand seven games over .500 and are one game behind the first-place Yankees in perhaps baseball's most rugged division.

Last week was a nice microcosm for the first two months. The Red Sox staggered to a 2-5 start on their road trip, which continues tonight in Detroit. Then they got 12 strikeouts from Jon Lester and four home runs from a revamped lineup Sunday and beat Toronto, 8-2.

After that win, Lester said, "I feel a little bit better with the way things are going. But I don't really think our team has hit its stride yet. I think our team has played some good baseball. We've played some OK baseball to be where we're at in the division."

The success of the season so far depends on perspective. The Red Sox' starters bottomed out May 15 with a collective 5.85 ERA, the worst mark in the major leagues. The next day, Josh Beckett allowed two earned runs in seven innings. Since then, the rotation has a 3.66 ERA.

While the starters improved, the offense hit its roughest stretch of the season. The Red Sox scored three or fewer runs for five straight games before their four-homer breakout Sunday. David Ortiz's vicious slump remains the team's most pressing issue. Still, as punchless as the offense has seemed at times, it has scored more runs per game - 5.2 - than all but four American League teams.

"Yes and no," said third baseman Mike Lowell, the lone everyday infielder to miss zero games because of injury, when asked if he was pleased with the team's state. "I certainly think we can play better. I don't think we're upset with where we're at, considering we really haven't played to the best of our abilities yet."

One certainty can be drawn: The most difficult portion of the schedule is behind them. They've concluded their West Coast trips, and they will travel west of the Mississippi River only three times, for a total of 10 games, against the Texas Rangers (two visits)and Kansas City Royals.