For some players, it’s a chance to head to Kansas City with the honor (or burden) of playing in the Midsummer Classic. For the rest of the league, it’s a chance to rest and recharge the batteries.
For fans, it’s a boring few days.
There’s a lot to look back on, though, which is exactly what this week’s All-Star break edition of 6-4-3 will do.
Six Thoughts From the First Half of the Red Sox Season
1. Who are these guys?
Here we are at the All-Star break. The Red Sox are a .500 team, and that makes all the sense in the world when you look at how the first half has gone. Streaky doesn’t even begin to describe this team. In the first half alone the Red Sox had seven losing streaks of three games or more. However, they also went on five winning streaks of three games or more. Their 43-43 record at the break marks the 10th time already this season they’ve been at the .500 mark. They’ve never been more than five games over .500, and their low-water mark was seven games below earlier in the season. The few times that the starting pitching has been really good, the lineup has been anemic. When the offense has been good, the pitching has made the opposing offense even better. Add it all up, and you’ve got a .500 record.
2. Starting pitching remains a problem
Red Sox starting pitching has picked up where it left off last September, and that is not a good thing. Jon Lester summed up his first half following another poor outing on Sunday as “horse [expletive].” He’s probably his toughest critic, but the results have been far from impressive. In fact, if you go back and look at his last 30 starts — roughly the equivalent of an entire season — Lester is just 11-10 with a 4.24 ERA and a 1.33 WHIP. He hasn’t turned in a stretch of dominance all season, and he continues to falter when needed the most like on Sunday night. Josh Beckett, who has had a tumultuous go of it as well, hasn’t fared much better. Clay Buchholz has been inconsistent and now hurt. Daisuke Matsuzaka has been a train wreck since returning from Tommy John surgery. Daniel Bard failed as a starter, and he remains in Triple-A trying to find himself again as a reliever. Felix Doubront, Franklin Morales and Aaron Cook have all been impressive at times, but you probably can’t rely on them to give you meaningful innings down the stretch if you want to stay in the race. The top-line guys must be better.
3. Big Papi
David Ortiz has said some head-scratching things already this season, as he has been known to do from time to time. His contract situation is what it is, and it looks like that’s going to be an issue as long as he’s in Boston. But man, it’s tough to say that he’s been anything else than fantastic this season. If he’s embarrassed by making $14 million, he’s certainly not showing it. The lone All-Star representative heading into the break, Ortiz is hitting .312 with 22 home runs and 57 RBIs. His on-base percentage is over .400 and his OPS is over 1.000. He hasn’t had surpassed one of those marks, let alone both, since 2007 when he finished fourth in MVP voting.
4. Doctor, doctor, give me some better news
Beckett, Buchholz, Matsuzaka, Dustin Pedroia, Carl Crawford, Jacoby Ellsbury, Cody Ross, Ryan Sweeney, Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Kalish, Rich Hill, Andrew Bailey and John Lackey. That would be a list of Red Sox players who have spent or are spending time on the disabled list this season. That doesn’t even count Will Middlebrooks, who hasn’t played in a week because of a nagging hamstring injury. As a team, the Red Sox have underperformed, and the injury thing doesn’t always fly as an excuse. But it’s so difficult to get any sort of momentum going when you’re without some of your premier players. Just think of what a guy like Ellsbury can do when he’s atop that lineup. Pedroia hasn’t been his usual self this year, and you have to think a lot of that stems from the thumb. People don’t want to hear excuses any more, but it’s ignorant to think that injuries haven’t played a major role this season.
5. The pen is still pretty mighty
If you’re looking for a first-half MVP, aside from Ortiz, you might as well give it to the entire bullpen. When you combined Bailey’s injury with the utter disaster that was the season’s first series in Detroit, you would have been totally justified in thinking the bullpen was going to be a major, major weakness this season. Things have turned around, however, with Alfredo Aceves doing an adequate job as closer and everyone else falling into place.The relief corps, which has already had to work 270 1/3 innings, has a 3.13 ERA on the season, and opposing batters are hitting just .235 against them. You can’t say enough about the jobs that guys like Scott Atchison, Andrew Miller and Vicente Padilla have done. The only question, though, will be how long they can do this for. The starting pitchers will need to work later in the games to make sure that this already overworked pen isn’t driven into the ground.
6. Grading Bobby V.
The Bobby Valentine thing has been fascinating to watch. He’s been a pretty polarizing guy in Boston, with what seems to be a majority of fans willing to blame him for the club’s struggles. That’s probably a little bit unfair. Valentine has had to deal with two glaring things, both of which he really can’t do much about, with the injuries and poor starting pitching. He has been a little bit reserved so far, which is kind of weird, but the genesis of that may be the backlash (which came from within his own clubhouse) after his Youkilis comments on April 15. We’ve heard reports of a “toxic” clubhouse and that there’s a lot of disdain from the players toward Valentine. We likely won’t know that for sure for a while, but at the end of the day, this season is hardly Valentine’s fault. His bullpen management has been fantastic, and he’s done everything that he could while juggling an injury-riddled lineup. If we’re serving up blame pie for a .500 record at the All-Star break, Valentine probably deserves just a sliver.
Four Observations From the First Half of the Season
1. Bizarro world
Raise your hand if you had the Nationals, Pirates and Dodgers all in first place in their respective divisions at the All-Star break. If you raised your hand, put it down because you are a dirty liar. It’s not ground-breaking that the Nationals are in first. Any team with that kind of starting rotation, especially if it’s healthy, should contend in just about any division. The Pirates and the Dodgers, though? That’s a bit of a surprise, especially this season. Both clubs have done some encouraging things and are building around two of the best young players in the game (Andrew McCutchen and Matt Kemp), but it looked like they may have been a couple of years off. It will be fun to watch in the second half to see if they can keep it up.
2. R.A. for Cy?
The R.A. Dickey story has really been spectacular. Dickey has battled through so much adversity, both in his personal life and in baseball, so it’s pretty awesome to see the success he’s had this year. His story will be told over and over again this week at the All-Star game, and he deserves that. In terms of on-the-field performance go, it will be worth keeping an eye on him the rest of the way. Knuckleballers traditionally struggle with consistency, a fact that has made his 12-1 start even more impressive. It wouldn’t be shocking if he comes back to earth, but if he keeps it up, he’ll be a legitimate Cy Young contender.
3. Youth movement
It’s always awesome to see young players get the call and then just take off, and we’ve seen that on multiple occasions already this season. Mike Trout has all but wrapped up the AL Rookie of the Year already, and if he keeps playing like this and the Angels make the playoffs after a slow start, he will get MVP votes. The Bryce Harper era has begun, and it’s been breathtaking at times. Just as impressively, Harper has been humble and carried himself like a professional all season. From there, you look at players like Yu Darvish, Wade Miley, Will Middlebrooks and a handful of others and it’s tough not to get excited about the future of the game.
4. Trouble for Timmy
Say what you want about the starting pitching issues in Boston, but Tim Lincecum‘s crummy year may be the most difficult to explain. The two-time Cy Young winner got lit up like a pinball machine on Sunday against the Pirates, and he heads to the break with a 3-10 record to go along with a 6.42 ERA. He’s been just miserable so far. Despite that, though, the Giants are hanging around in the NL West. If Lincecum can get it together at all, they’ll be dangerous in the second half.
Three Things to Watch in the Second Half
1. Deadline dealing?
The new playoff format may ultimately ruin life for baseball fans who can’t get enough of the trade deadline. In the American League, there are five teams within two games of the wild card spots. That means there are at least 11 teams in the league who think they’re in playoff contention in some sort of capacity. So we’re looking at a trade market where you have a majority of teams who think they can still make a push. You’re going to have all of those teams calling clubs that have no chance and asking about players. That gives the “sellers” all the leverage in the world, and those high prices may limit the movement this July.
2. Buccos changing their luck-o?
We already touched on the Pirates, but they have the potential to be one of the biggest stories of this season. It has been 20 years since they finished with a record above .500, let alone made the playoffs. Two decades. They enter the break 11 games above that mark, so their chances are looking pretty good. Of course, until it actually happens, it might be tough to believe it can. But if A.J. Burnett and James McDonald can keep it up in that rotation and McCutchen continues his MVP season, the Bucs may not only finish .500, but they could be playing in October.
3. …and Baltimore, too?
If the playoffs started today, not only would it mean we would have a very boring August, September and October in front of us, it would also mean the Baltimore Orioles would be headed back to the playoffs. If that happens, it will be the first time since 1997 that the O’s would be playing postseason baseball. And while their drought isn’t as prolonged as the one they’re suffering through in Pittsburgh, ’97 was also the last time the Birds finished above .500. It’s the long shot of long shots, but who knows, maybe those two cities will be partying like it’s 1979 come October. Stranger things have happened.
