The Boston Red Sox are off to one of the hottest starts in Major League Baseball this season, something that no one could have predicted—not even me.
Entering the third week of the season, the Red Sox are 8-4; good enough for first place in the American League East— a full game and a half ahead of the New York Yankees.
What is the key to Boston’s early success this season?
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Right-handed pitcher Clay Buchholz is off to one of the best starts for a starting pitcher in the league, with a record of 3-0 with a 0.41 earned run average and 23 strikeouts.
Buchholz’s last start was the best of his career, pitching eight complete shut out innings only giving up two hits and striking out a career-high at 11.
On top of Buchholz’s early success, left-handed pitcher Jon Lester is also having a great start to his “bounce back” season. He has started off the season with a 2-0 record with a 1.42 ERA and a team best 0.95 walks-per-hits-per-inning pitched ratio.
The Buchholz and Lester duo gives Boston a deadly 1-2 punch- one that that can keep them atop the AL East for the remainder of the season.
On the offensive side, the Red Sox are led by newly acquired outfielder Shane Victorino’s bat. Victorino is batting .326 with seven RBI’s and six runs scored.
The combination of Victorino and Jacoby Ellsbury at the top of the lineup has produced 15 of the team’s total 53 runs scored, making them the lethal tandem that the front office was hoping for when they signed Victorino.
Boston is in the top half of all the offensive statistical categories in the major leagues; they are 12th in runs scored, 13th in batting average (.260), 10th in base percentage (.335), and 13th slugging percentage (.416).
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Defensively the Red Sox are in the top 10 in all statistical categories in the MLB; they are 3rd in earned run average (2.76), 5th in walks-hits-per-inning-pitched ratio (1.18), and 3rd in opponents’ batting average (.218).
This combination of hitting and pitching has Boston in position for a much better season that anyone could have foreseen. With the injuries that have happened to the rest of the division and if the Red Sox stay healthy, they could gain some serious ground on their competition early in the season.
For the rest of April, Boston’s schedule favors them, most notably a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals and a four-game series against the Houston Astros. With more optimism now, I foresee the Red Sox winning at least eight (more) games to finish off the month.
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