It goes without saying that to win baseball games, you have to score runs.
But good baseball teams often find ways to win games even when they are not firing on all cylinders. Sometimes, the offense picks up the pitching staff, sometimes the pitching staff chucks a shutout or bails out the bats in a pitching duel.
Then there’s the 2019 Boston Red Sox, who have been unfathomably reliant on the offense putting up big numbers.
The Red Sox have won just 16 games when the offense has scored five or fewer runs. Last season, Boston played .500 ball in that same scenario.
Red Sox
when scoring ≤ 5 runs2019 – (16-52, .235)
2018 – (46-46, .500)
similar
— Boston Sports Info (@bostonsportsinf) August 21, 2019
It’s pretty tough to make the playoffs when you’re pitching staff isn’t capable of picking things up every now and then, especially when the bullpen has turned things around of late. That was the story in Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, and if the Sox miss the playoffs, you can likely point to this stat as one of the major reasons why.
