Three Red Sox thoughts as the team's 13-games-in-13-days comes to an end with a travel day to Florida.
1. Home field disadvantage. For the third straight season, the Red Sox are having difficulty exerting their dominance at Fenway Park. It was a failure of the 2019 team - one which Alex Cora acknowledged -- and it didn't get any better in 2020 when, let's face it, the Red Sox were wretched both home and away.
And now that the Sox have gotten off to a strong overall start, tied for the best record in the American League and in first place in the East, they're succeeding in spite of their problems at Fenway.
The team recently concluded a week at home with Oakland and Los Angeles, going 3-3, enough for Cora to label it an "OK'' homestand. The Sox are currently 13-12 at Fenway, and a far better 12-5 mark on the road as they embark on a six-game road trip.
Essentially, the Sox are doing the reverse of the usual recipe, which is to beat up on teams in your own ballpark and hold your own away from home. There are different ways to win, of course, but that one would seem particularly hard to sustain over the course of the season.
It remains a mystery why the team has stumbled in its own ballpark. They own the league's best offense and it would stand to reason that would become even more of an advantage at home. And indeed, the Sox are averaging 5.28 runs per home game vs. 5.0 on the road. Their OPS at Fenway is .789 vs. .747 on the road.
Actually, it's been the pitching that's been the culprit. At Fenway, the staff has pitched to a 4.10 ERA , while on the road, it's a far better 3.41. That's a difference of almost three-quarters of a run, as clear an explanation as any for their better road record.
As the Sox trudged off the field Sunday, Fenway organist Josh Kantor subtly saluted the team's early season theme song, delivering a sprightly version of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again,'' the chorus of which adds: "Just can't wait to get back on the road again.''
Then again, Monday brought some news which might help turn things around at Fenway.....
2. State of Massachusetts set to lift COVID restrictions May 29. The Red Sox had been informally planning on Aug. 1 as the date on which they would be permitted to have full capacity back at Fenway, but Monday's announcement from Gov. Charlie Baker sped that up by about two months.
Massachusetts will allow all industries to open May 29 at 100 percent capacity, a ruling which seem to apply to sporting events. That likely means that, three games into their next homestand, the Sox will able to fill Fenway to the brim with about 37,000.
There's no way to predict how much impact a full house might have on the team's on-field performance -- if any. After all, the Sox played before sellout crowd after sellout crowd in 2019 and that resulted in a 38-43 home record.
But on Friday night, when the team stormed back to edge the Angels 4-3 on Bobby Dalbec's two-run homer in the seventh, Cora and several players mentioned the energy in the ballpark and the general atmosphere which might have enabled the comeback.
It should also be noted that there's no guarantee that Fenway will be immediately filled once capacity is allowed to reach its full capacity again. Some fans may be -- initially, at least -- wary of being shoehorned back into Fenway's unforgiving confines, sitting inches from strangers in the immediate aftermath of a pandemic -- vaccinations or no vaccinations.
Still, it would seem a safe bet that bigger crowds and a general return to normalcy can't hurt the home team and will likely, in ways that perhaps can't quite be quantified, help -- at least somewhat.
3. Roster moves begin. On Monday, the Red Sox announced that they had optioned infielder Jonathan Arauz back to Triple A Worcester. There was no corresponding move, but that transaction surely anticipates the imminent return of Kike Hernandez.
Hernandez began a quick rehab assignment with Worcester Saturday, serving as the DH Saturday before moving to the outfield Sunday. He hit a grand slam in his first at-bat Sunday. Hernandez was placed on the IL on May 7 with a strained right hamstring and all along, the feeling was he would be ready to rejoin the team in time for its upcoming six-game road trip.
Meanwhile, Christian Arroyo, who had been placed on the IL on the same day as Hernandez, is coming along somewhat more slowly from a left hand contusion -- probably because he's been hit on the same spot twice in the early portion of the season. Still, Arroyo is set to take some batting practice Wednesday and could be in line to rejoin the parent club Friday when the Sox begin an interleague series in Philadelphia.