Early pros and cons of the Sox, unexpected start to the season

Baseball season is only just beginning but already the Red Sox aren’t meeting preseason expectations. Some are playing unexpectedly well, others unexpectedly badly. Here are some of the biggest surprises of the young Red Sox season so far.

“Pedroia’s power”
When the Sox lost Jason Bay to the Mets in free agency, there was a significant concern about where the power would come from in the new lineup. Chances are, nobody thought it would come from the smallest guy on the team. Maybe we should have because he definitely has the biggest swing. Sure enough, Pedroia has disproved doubters again, shown by his team leading four homeruns through eight games. Maybe it’s a small sample size but, if Pedroia and a few other guys who usually don’t hit many homers, hit a few more, the Sox won’t be missing Bay and the Papi of old as much.
“Lackey’s not lacking”

Newly acquired John Lackey was signed to be the number three pitcher in the rotation behind Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, so there weren’t crazy expectations for him. But while Lester and Beckett have struggled in their first two starts, Lackey, excluding his last start, has been dependable and worked quickly in his two starts thus far. His only problem has been his tendency to concede walks, which is pretty surprising because he has had relatively decent control over his career.
While I’m surprised Lackey’s doing this well, maybe Sox General Manager Theo Epstein isn’t so surprised. He has to feel pretty smart right now for signing Lackey in the first place, which many people (including myself) questioned at the time.

“Bad bullpen”
While Theo is sitting pretty after the Lackey signing, the “pitching and defense” model the Sox were going to run this year hasn’t worked out so well for the bullpen thus far. Through nine games, the bullpen had a 4.93 earned run average. Most troubling is the high amount of walks, 4.93 per nine innings. In particular, Ramon Ramirez, who last year came in and had a really good year (2.84 ERA) has had a disastrous start to the season.
Maybe the most surprising aspect of the bullpen is some of the people who actually made the team. Scott Schoeneweis is on his eighth team in seven years and people believed he was at the end of his career. Scott Atchison is just back from exile in Japan and somehow won a spot in the bullpen. Both have struggled so far, but maybe they will bring some positive surprises as the season progresses.

“Tek’s towering shots”
Judging a player on just one game is an admittedly crazy overreaction, but Jason Varitek’s first game of the season was really surprising. Tek’s hitting over the last two years, when he played almost every day, was apocalyptically bad. The team only brought him back this year as the backup and that is only out of respect for all the good years he had with the Sox. Realistically, Tek should have been the bullpen catcher and not be anywhere near the plate.

Or so we thought.
When Tek did get to the plate this year in his first game, he hit two inexplicable towering homers. This is just one game, but it isn’t just surprising, it’s truly shocking. The only good thing about Tek’s awful last few seasons is no one expects anything at all from him. If he can pull off a few games like his first, he may be able to go out with a bang instead of a flop.

“Striking out Ortiz”
Speaking of  sad endings, it’s not a huge surprise Papi is struggling. Before the season, many people (including myself) were worried the problems he had last year would carry over into this one. But I don’t think anyone expected him to struggle as much at the plate as he has so far. Through seven games Papi has had 26 at-bats. In those 26 at-bats, Papi has only four hits. His OPS (On-Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage, also known as the new favorite statistic to analyze), is only .510. Compare that to Papi’s 2005-2007 seasons, when his OPS was 1.001, 1.049 and 1.066, some of the best numbers in the majors. The most amazing and depressing stat about Papi’s start is the number of times he has struck out. Over his whole career, Papi has struck out about 22 percent of the time.
In the first 26 at bats of this season, he has struck out 13 times, a staggering 50 percent of the time. Maybe this is just a short-term slump and maybe Papi’s hitting will pick back up. But right now, it’s pretty clear the big guy is having some serious trouble at the plate. And as much as no one wants to talk about it, the end of the Big Papi era is coming and it looks like it will be sooner rather than later.

Sean McKinley can be contacted at smckinley@keeneequinox.com