With all the attention paid to the Red Sox moves -- and non-moves -- at the trade deadline -- it's easy to forget that, in the middle of the chaos earlier this week, the Red Sox added two new bats to their lineup.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom didn't upgrade the team's bullpen, and that's likely to be a factor over the next few weeks as the team's few trustworthy high-leverage relievers hit something of a wall during the late summer dog days.
And the decision to trade away the team's starting catcher, Christian Vazquez, for two prospects is more difficult to understand with each passing day -- in the lineup and in the clubhouse.
But Bloom did manage to import two usable pieces for the team's everyday lineup: outfielder Tommy Pham and first baseman Eric Hosmer.
Already, Pham's presence resulted in Jackie Bradley Jr. being bumped from a regular spot in the outfield, and soon after, his outright release. Pham is nowhere near the defender that Bradley is, of course, but he does represent a decent upgrade over Bradley's minimal offensive contributions -- enough, in fact, that Alex Cora said Friday that he planned to take a look at Pham in the leadoff spot.
The latter has been a weak spot for the Red Sox since the beginning of the season. First, Kike Hernandez performed poorly at the top of the order, with a woeful .272 on-base percentage. When Hernandez got hurt in early June, the Sox turned to Jarren Duran, hoping that he could utilize his speed to generate some offense in the leadoff spot.
But to do that, Duran needed to get on base, and he hasn't.
Pham has hit second since he arrived, including in Friday's 7-4 win over the Kansas City Royals. Pham didn't have a hit in five plate appearances, but he did work a two-out walk in the fifth that resulted in a run when Xander Bogaerts singled him home.
This year at least, Pham hardly profiles as your prototypical leadoff option, with a .318 OBP. But in his career, he's put up an OBP of .358, and he plays with undeniable energy. Bloom saw how Pham provided that edge while with the Tampa Bay in 2018-19. Pham is three years older now, having bounced around to three more teams, but he has an urgency to his game still.
In four games with the Sox since the trade was made, he's reached base in all four and scored runs in three of them. That's not a bad start. It's likely he'll be installed in the leadoff spot this weekend, and could remain there at least until Hernandez is healthy and ready to return.
It isn't as if the Sox have a lot of other choices at this point.
Further down in the order, there's Hosmer, who hit sixth in his debut Thursday and was dropped one spot further, to seventh, on Friday. Hosmer has seven at-bats and just one hit, but his at-bats have made an impression already. Two have been hit to the warning track in straightaway center for frustrating outs; on Friday, the one he hit there would have been out of half the ballparks in the game.
On Thursday, he showed himself capable of working pitchers, seeing 30 pitches over four plate appearances. On Friday, it was more of the same, as he fouled off pitches, showed some discipline and worked himself into hitter's counts. He's walked twice in two games, and his first hit as a member of the Red Sox - a second-inning double -- plated Boston's first run.
Again, however, it's the quality of the at-bats that have stood out. Try imagining, say, Bobby Dalbec manipulating a nine-pitch walk.
"At one point, he had seen 20 pitches and he only swung at three of them,'' marveled Cora of Hosmer.
Cora is hopeful that Hosmer's willingness to work at-bats and be selective can rub off on others in the lineup. At times this season, the entire Sox lineup has been way too aggressive, swinging at pitchers' pitches at the edges of the strike zone or worse, balls outside the strike zone, resulting in bad contact: lazy flyballs, rollover groundouts and quick at-bats. They've also shown a strange reluctance to take walks.
It's perhaps not a coincidence that since Pham and Hosmer joined the Sox, there's been an uptick in walks -- three on Thursday and five more Friday, with three of those walks eventually resulting in runs.
"It's something we've got to keep talking about,'' said Cora. "We've got to stay in the zone. When we do that, we become a really good offensive club. I told Tommy and I told Hos they have to help the group -- keep talking to them. It's a very talented group, but sometimes, they get very aggressive at the plate and frustrated, too. It's a different lineup and a deeper lineup with them, and that's what we're looking for.''
Already, from top to bottom, they've had some impact.