The Red Sox beat the Mets 6-1 on Sunday Night Baseball. With tonight’s win, the Red Sox took the series, despite losing the opener on Saturday. The Red Sox have won five out of their last six series and still hold the MLB’s best record in July. They are two games back of the Blue Jays for the last wildcard spot, as well as third place in the AL East. Since the Blue Jays will now play a three-game series against the first-place Dodgers, the Red Sox should have a chance to leapfrog them in the standings. However, this will still be tough, as the Red Sox will face the team with the best record in baseball, the Atlanta Braves.
In my opinion, the Red Sox have one of the best lineups in baseball, or at least one of the best lineups 1-6. For this example, we will look at the lineup Alex Cora put out for the nightcap on Saturday. The top six guys were Duran, Yoshida, Turner, Devers, Verdugo, and Casas. I’ll start from the top, with Jarren Duran. On the season, Jarren is now hitting .317 and has the second-most doubles in the MLB since his debut. He also has 19 stolen bases and a whopping 134 OPS+. Masataka Yoshida is hitting .315 and .375 with a .972 OPS in July. We move on to Justin Turner, who since June 1st has been one of the MLB’s best hitters. Since that date, he leads the MLB in RBI’s while hitting .314. Rafael Devers of late is looking a lot like the Rafael Devers that the Red Sox decided to pay $300 million. In his last 24 games, he is hitting .348 with a 1.077 OPS. His four home runs since the all-star break are tied for the third most in the MLB. Now we move on to Triston Casas, who this weekend opened the eyes of a lot of Red Sox fans. He did that by hitting two home runs against Max Scherzer on Saturday, as well as two hits in each of the other games. While his performance this weekend was maybe more flashy than usual, these results have been coming for months from Triston. Casas has the third-highest OPS in the MLB in July, and his five home runs rank second since the all-star break. The only guy who is in a slump is Alex Verdugo. Alex is hitting .127 in July with a depressing 27 wRC+. So even with Verdugo having one of the worst offensive stretches of his career, the Red Sox offense hasn’t skipped a beat. That shows the incredible depth of this lineup. They have so many excellent hitters that it doesn’t matter when one of them is going bad.
Assuming the Red Sox stay hot and end up buying at the trade deadline, what should they acquire? If you ask anybody around this team, they would all say the same thing: the need is starting pitching. Right now, the Red Sox have three starters on the IL – Whitlock, Sale, and Houlk. Every time through the rotation, they have to do two bullpen games. While last night was another example of the Sox pitching well in these games, it’s not sustainable if they want to make a playoff push. The solution to this would obviously be for Chaim Bloom to go out and get a starter. Then, once your injured starters come back, you may even have too many starters, which will then lead to more bullpen depth.
As for specific guys to target, I think they should look at White Sox starter Dylan Cease. The White Sox are definitely going to be sellers. They have a record of 41-60 and are 5-12 in July. As for Cease, he is having a bit of a down year. In 21 games, he has a 4.04 ERA and an opponent’s batting average of .234. However, we saw just how talented Cease was last year when he finished second in Cy Young voting. He had a 2.20 ERA with 11.10 K/9. The way I see it, this is an incredible talent just having a down year. While there will certainly be other suitors, Dylan Cease would be a perfect fit.
The Red Sox will have an off day on Monday before taking on the best team in baseball, the Atlanta Braves. Offensively, the Braves lead baseball by more than 20 home runs, rank third in runs scored, and have the second-highest team batting average. They also have the fifth-lowest team ERA, and they will showcase two of their best starters against the Red Sox. On Tuesday, it will be Charlie Morton, who is 10-7 with a 3.36 ERA. On Wednesday, it will be Spencer Strider, who has a 3.78 ERA and a K% of nearly 40%. The Red Sox will begin a crucial stretch against the challenging Braves team, starting Tuesday night.
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