Alex Cora wants the base paths when the Boston Red Sox are up at bat to look like Route 128 at rush hour.
The more traffic, the better in this sense for the Red Sox manager and he saw plenty of it Wednesday night when Boston’s bats bested Alek Manoah and belted out a season-high 15 hits en route to an 8-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park.
Continuously putting the ball in play and making opposing pitchers sweat a little harder may seem like a Little League approach, but it’s working out just fine for the Red Sox and is a big part of their early-season success.
“It’s been the key to the first 32 games of the season,” Cora told reporters following his team’s fifth straight win, as seen on NESN postgame coverage. “Two-strike hits, grinding at-bats. (Manoah) is one of the best pitchers in the big leagues and he went five. And then you get a chance to face relievers. We’ve been doing that since day one. Just moving the ball forward, hitting behind runners, running the bases well. And then here and there we hit it out of the ballpark. But there’s a lot of traffic all the time and that’s very important for us.”
The Red Sox entered Thursday second in the entire league in hits and struck out the sixth-fewest times in Major League Baseball — the five teams in front of them have all played less games than Boston, too. Add in that the Red Sox are fifth in the league with 44 home runs and they have a great offensive recipe.
The Red Sox didn’t hit any baseballs out of the park Wednesday, but all the contact certainly paid dividends with the Red Sox benefitting from four errors committed by the Blue Jays.
And the Red Sox didn’t let up after Manoah came out of the game, either, as getting to an opponent’s bullpen is just as important to Boston.
“You see more relievers, try to put them in a bad spot, too,” Cora said. “They needed to use three or four more and then there’s one more game in the series. That’s what good teams do. It’s not only a one-game series, it’s three or four. What you do over the course of the series with their pitching staff and then at the end, it can benefit you.”
The Red Sox look for a sixth straight win and a sweep against the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday. First pitch from Fenway Park is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. ET, and you can watch the game, plus an hour of pregame coverage, on NESN.
