When Major League Baseball issued a memo early last month that it planned to step up its enforcement of rules forbidding the use of foreign substances on balls, the Red Sox appeared to be in the crosshairs.
A Sports Illustrated story revealed that the Red Sox were third in all of MLB when it comes to spin rate on their pitches. Thus, it wasn't hard to project that the Sox pitching staff would see its effectiveness reduced with the crackdown on goop.
And, sure enough, the Sox took their lumps in the process. One weekend, a week or so before the enforcement went into effect, the Sox surrendered 30 runs in the span of three games to Toronto, and it looked like everything the club had built for the first two and a half months was about to come crashing down.
Even now, several weeks into the crackdown, Garrett Richards remains a mess -- unable to throw his assortment of breaking pitches without a sufficient grip, his confidence shaken and forced to re-make himself on the fly.
But in general, the Red Sox have survived quite nicely in the pitching department. Even as Richards struggles mightily, as a staff, the Sox have compiled a 3.22 ERA in the last 16 games. In their last eight games, meanwhile, they have a 2.13 ERA.
That means either the Red Sox weren't loading up as much as suspected -- or, other than Richards, the rest of the staff has made a pretty seamless and immediate transition under the new guidelines. Either way, the pitching in general has gotten better -- not worse -- since MLB sent out the goo cops.
That wasn't at all what people expected.
Moreover, few had considered the possibility Red Sox hitters would benefit from the crackdown. But the numbers suggest that's been precisely the case.
Before their 3-2 win 10 innings in Oakland Friday night, the Red Sox were batting .335 with a .981 OPS, 14 HR, and 14 doubles over their seven previous wins, scoring 52 runs -- an average of 7.4 runs per game -- while striking out just 45 times.
The real contrast comes in the runs scored department.
Prior to MLB's release of a memo outlining enhanced enforcement and warning of suspensions, the Red Sox had played 67 games and averaged 4.43 runs per games.
Since the release of the June 15 memo, Red Sox have scored 96 runs in their 16 games prior to Friday night for an average of exactly six runs per game.
Obviously, the post-memo numbers come from a relatively small sample size. Still, they remain telling.
The strikeout drop-off is particularly noteworthy, since it means that the Red Sox are putting the ball in play on a far more consistent basis. And as Alex Cora has stressed since the start of spring training, sometimes a groundball to the right side, or a flyball anywhere can be enough to score a run, or, at the very least, advance a baserunner.
There's little doubt in Cora's mind that the improved control of the strike zone -- fewer strikeouts, more walks -- has been the result of opposing pitchers not having foreign substances on the ball. While everyone fixated on Richards and the adjustments Red Sox pitchers would be forced to make in-season, the notion that Sox hitters would be the beneficiaries on the other side apparently never dawned on anyone.
"There's a lot of stuff going on right now,'' said Cora, with a slight grin evident on his face. "I don't think the fastballs are as hoppy as they were a few weeks ago. That's true. The stuff that we were facing early on, it was, at times, unhittable. We might go through a stretch again of a week, striking out 10 times (per game). But you see the difference. You see the difference in stuff. The fastball is the difference. That vertical hop that we saw the first few months is not there. It's not there anymore.
"You've seen the quality of the at-bats in Tampa, the quality of the at-bats against New York. (Our hitting coaches) have been preaching (the importance) of staying on top of fastballs. To get to that fastball, getting under it is hard to do. You're going to swing and miss, you're going to pop it up, or you're going to foul it off. But when you start thinking about getting on top of it, you're going to put it in play and we've been doing that lately.''
It goes without saying that, without that late ride on the high fastball that was common when substance use was unchecked, getting to the fastball up in the zone is easier than it was a few weeks ago.
The Red Sox were already known as one of the league's best fastball-hitting team. The increased policing has only helped them in that regard.
That, and the improved discipline shown by the hitters -- their chase rate is down, too -- has made the Boston lineup that much more formidable.
"If we keep controlling the strike zone,'' said Cora, "we can be up there with the elite teams.''