Some Things I Think I Think: Red Sox' biggest problem is plain to see

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a day ago

*Everyone's got a theory about what ails the Red Sox
Is it poor defensive play? Well, yes, that's certainly been a factor. The Red Sox lead the American League in both errors and unearned runs and that's not good.
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Then there's their struggles with runners in scoring position, where they're ranked 23rd overall in batting average. Constantly squandering scoring opportunities is almost always injurious to a team's won-loss record.
But those — and other issues — pale in comparison to the team's starting pitching deficiencies.
The Red Sox gave up four top prospects to get Garrett Crochet, then locked him for six years and $170 million and don't regret either commitment for a moment. Crochet has been everything for which the Sox could have possibly hoped — as his 1.98 ERA and 1.061 WHIP prior to Saturday night's start attests.
Problem is, after Crochet, the Red Sox starting pitching drops off the proverbial cliff.
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Subtract Crochet's numbers from the rotation and it's ugly: the remainder of Red Sox starters have a combined ERA of 5.38.
Put another way, the team's ERA without Crochet would rank them last in the American League, and isn't much better than the Colorado Rockies (6.53), a team which plays half of its games in a launching bad and who, as a team, are on pace to set records for overall futility.
Too often, the Red Sox find themselves behind by multiple runs after the first couple of innings. Lucas Giolito has had three starts in which he's been shelled for six or more runs; Tanner Houck, before being injured, had two starts in which he allowed 11 (!).
Bryan Bello hasn't provided length. Walker Buehler has been entirely too inconsistent.
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Naturally, the underperformance of the rotation has led to overwork of the bullpen at times and that's something from which a team can't recover.
It's not a good sign when you score 26 runs over four games — as the Red Sox did earlier this week — and only go 2-2 in those contests.
Even if they fix the other weaknesses, they stand no chance of climbing back into contention if their rotation continues to falter. It's that simple.
*How can you be a Bruins fan and not be rooting for Brad Marchand to win his second Stanley Cup?
Marchand wanted to to spend his entire career with the Bruins and was willing to compromise to get a contract extension done back in March, just before the NHL trade deadline. The Bruins, however, held firm and ended up dealing him to Florida for conditional draft pick.
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Marchand's play in the postseason has proved that he's still got plenty left in the tank. He's already got three goals through the first two games of the Final, including one in double-overtime to win Game 2.
Should the Panthers win a second straight Cup, Marchand will be in the conversation for the Conn Smythe trophy. Not a good look for the Bruins.
*If Stefon Diggs was the first real rest for Mike Vrabel, it appears the new head coach passed. Behind closed doors and without a lot of public back-and-forth, Vrabel seemed to deliver the proper message.
*I like the hiring of Marco Sturm and from all I've seen and heard, he's got a chance to be a fine coach at the NHL level.
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But I can't help but wonder if the Bruins might have acted differently if Pete DeBoer had been fired by Dallas last week instead of the day after Sturm's hiring was announced.
*Major League Baseball is close to announcing a new TV deal for the package that ESPN opted out of from 2026-2028, and a source indicates that Apple TV+ is currently the highest bidder.
The package includes the Home Run Derby, Sunday Night Baseball and the wild card round of the postseason.
Baseball is, like most sports, out to make a deal for the most revenue possible, but if MLB puts an entire round of its postseason on a streaming service with just 45 million subscribers, it's deserves all the grief it's going to catch.
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*I'm a sucker for those videos in which minor leaguers are told they're going to the big leagues for the first time.
But I can do without the ones in spring training where the major league manager awards Opening Day honors to the starting pitcher. Sorry, it's just not the same.
*It's fashionable to scream 'Nerds!' whenever the topic of analytics is broached, but the more information the better, I say, and if advanced metrics offers additional ways to evaluate players, then teams would be silly to not use them.
However, the suggestion in the analytics community that there's no such thing as clutch players loses me. Some players seem to rise to the occasion. And Marchand and Tyrese Haliburton are reminding us all this spring.
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*I fully understand Alex Cora's decision to use his entire roster and give the depth players the occasional start. But I can't get behind the idea of David Hamilton starting more than a third (23) of the Red Sox' first 64 games.
Hamilton may have great infield range and plus-plus speed on the bases, but he owns a .647 career OPS and there's nothing to suggest that, from an offensive standpoint, he's going to get any better.
*Roman Anthony doesn't deserve the backlash he's getting for being hidden in a laundry cart to escape some autograph hunters.
By all accounts, Anthony is generous with his time with fans at the ballpark. So if a few professional 'collectors,'' holding their beloved binders with dollar signs in their eyes got stiffed last week, we'll all survive.
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*Separated at birth: Red Sox starter Hunter Dobbins and actor Kieran Mulroney — the actor who played Timmy, who rebuked George Costanza after the latter 'double-dipped the chip' in the famed Seinfeld episode.
*Good luck, Mike Tomlin. You're going to need it.
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Read the original article on MassLive.