The Boston Red Sox are off to such a historic start, even Dave Dombrowski couldn’t have predicted it.
With a 16-2 record, the Sox are the best team in baseball and outscored the Los Angeles Angels 27-3 in their recent three-game sweep of the leagues’ second-best team.
Ahead of Friday’s matchup against the Oakland Athletics, Boston’s offense leads the league in four different categories: runs (118), doubles (55), batting average (.292) and OPS (.859), per the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato.
It’s no secret the Sox are clicking on all cylinders. The starting pitching is unstoppable, posting a 1.98 ERA, and the offense is on fire, hitting 11 home runs in their series against the Angels.
“Well, we’re really playing good ball right now, so I don’t think you can ever say that you’re anticipating this type of play,” the president of baseball operations said Thursday night after the 8-2 rout of Los Angeles, per the Herald. “But we knew they had the ability to be better, to bounce back. We have very good players and they’ve done a nice job of doing that. We thought the capabilities were there. But for me to say we expected it to this point, that would be a bit much.”
The team also is doing this without Dustin Pedroia, Xander Bogaerts, Steven Wright and Drew Pomeranz, who will make his 2018 debut Friday against the Athletics.
A season after the Sox finished last in the league in home runs, Dombrowski believed the offense didn’t need any new players because it would “improve on its own.”
“I know a lot of people didn’t believe it,” Dombrowski said, per the Herald. “But we believed it.”
Aside from J.D. Martinez signing a multi-year deal during Spring Training, the offense is the same. “Of the 10 returning position players with more than 25 at-bats, seven of them have an OPS higher than their OPS last year,” Mastrodonato writes.
And now, on April 20th, 2018, the Red Sox are 16-2, something no other team has done since the Milwaukee Brewers in 1987. But Dombrowski won’t get complacent.
“It’s nice to see. You enjoy when you’re playing well and we’re playing very well right now. You don’t get on these type of runs very often,” Dombrowski told the Herald. “Not only are we winning but we’re winning by some big scores in some of these games. There are a lot of things going well for us. But you don’t get carried away and know you have a long way to go.”
It may only be April, but this Red Sox team is making history and their lineup isn’t even at full strength.
