Tonight, the Red Sox beat the White Sox 3-1. The Red Sox only managed four hits, and they struck out a season-high 17 times. While those sound like surefire ways to lose, the Red Sox continued their great run of starting pitching, made some important defensive web gems, and scored just enough runs off White Sox errors to secure a Game One win. With tonight’s win and losses from both the Yankees and the Blue Jays, the Red Sox sit just one game behind the Jays for fourth place in the AL East, and 1.5 games behind the Yankees for the third wild card spot.
Tonight’s Red Sox starter, Bryan Bello, was fantastic once again. Coming off of Sunday’s performance where Bello allowed only one Yankee to score in seven innings, Bello only allowed one White Sox batter to score in 6 2/3 innings. This performance continued a streak of great outings from Red Sox starters. During the month of June, the Red Sox hold the seventh-lowest starters’ ERA in the MLB. Red Sox starters are also doing a much better job of giving Alex Cora length. Between the beginning of the season and June 1, the Red Sox starters went the eighth fewest innings in baseball. After June 1, Red Sox starters have pitched the tenth-most innings in the MLB. Even though the Red Sox are now missing two key arms in the rotation, Chris Sale and Tanner Houck, currently they are piecing things together excellently.
Tonight, the Red Sox defense made some incredible plays in big spots. The first one was with a White Sox runner at first in the fourth inning with nobody out. Andrew Vaughn hit a ball 92 MPH down the third base line. Raffy dove to his right, threw it to Arroyo at second, who threw to Turner to complete the double play. If that ball gets past Devers, the White Sox would, at the very least, have second and third with nobody out. There is a good chance the White Sox would have then tied the game, and considering tonight’s offensive struggles, this game could have had a different result. The second important defensive play was made was in the ninth inning with one out and nobody on. The Red Sox needed only two more outs to secure tonight’s victory when Elvis Andrus ripped a ball that looked like it was ticketed for right-center field. Instead, Christian Arroyo dove to his right, got up, and made a strong throw to first base that beat Andrus. If Arroyo doesn’t make that play and the White Sox have a one-out baserunner, this game could have been a lot tenser than it ended up being.
Rafael Devers continues to have the weirdest season of his career. Tonight, he hit a 443-foot homer in the fourth inning, and those runs would end up being the difference in the game. Devers leads the entire MLB in RBIs, with 60 of them. On the other hand, Raffy’s batting average has dipped below .240. As Raffy is a career .278 hitter, this would lead us to believe that he is having the worst season of his career. Similarly, Devers has a .789 OPS, which is also down from his career .847 number. The biggest difference that I see in Devers is his ability to hit the off-speed pitch. In 2022 and 2021, Raffy had batting averages of .319 and .296 against off-speed pitches. This year, Devers has a batting average of .175 against those pitches. While last year Raffy only swung and missed at the off-speed pitch 21.5% of the time, this year his whiff% against off-speed pitches is up to 27.6%. So while Red Sox fans continue to enjoy the run production, they would like to see Rafael Devers return to his usual form in many other ways.
The Red Sox will try to win the series tomorrow as they play Game Two in Chicago at 4:10 PM. A win would not only give them the series win, but it would also secure a winning road trip.
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