Considering the Red Sox Thus Far

It has been a strange season.  And it is less than 2 months old.

We have yet to see the 2010 Red Sox.  In the next few days we’ll see something close to the 2010 Red Sox.  If you were to remove 2 starting outfielders from any MLB team, they would struggle.  When they are players like Ellsbury and Cameron, you can understand why the Red Sox have struggled this year.

The players roaming LF and CF in their stead, while driving in some runs, have given up quite a few runs with abysmal defense.  The game against the Yankees earlier this week was marred by missed plays that Ellsbury and Cameron would have made.

Scutaro has done reasonably well as the leadoff man, but Ellsbury adds a whole different dimension.  With the threat of the stolen base, he messes with a pitcher’s head.  The loss of Ellsbury for most of this season has been tremendous.  You take Crawford and Upton out of the Rays’ line up for over and month and they are tanking it.  The only significant injury, if you want to call it that, the Rays have endured is to the bullpen.  Not quite the same as 2 everyday guys.

Their loss put a big strain on the pitching staff.  Here’s hoping that the pitchers not named Lester, Clay and Bard benefit from that increased defensive presence.

So, I think the Red Sox will look very different from this point on.  They will look far more like we expected them to look (except the offense has been better than some people thought it would be).  They are in the running for the Wild Card as the Yankees start to deal with multiple injuries as well.

While we can’t push the reset button, I think we’ll see a much improved team in the weeks and months ahead.  Maybe joy will return to some of the unrealistic fans of Fenway.