FanPost Friday: Fixing the bottom of the order

The Red Sox may have put on a hitting clinic on Thursday against the Tigers, but there’s still some concern regarding the less than stellar performance by the bottom half of the Red Sox batting lineup.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And in this case, none of them are good when it comes to the bottom half of the Red Sox order. Pictured above is a snapshot of how well on the whole the 6-9 hitters are performing for each team. As you can see, the Red Sox are the third worst unit in baseball offensively as far as the 6-9 hitters are concerned. The only other American League team in the bottom five is the Angels.

The Sox have played well, largely because the 1-5 hitters are performing well (first in the league in wRC+, and by a pretty decent margin), but they cannot rely on five hitters carrying the other four all season, especially if they have designs on contending.

The goal is simple: improve the bottom half of the order.

Your task is more complicated: find a reasonable way to improve this.

For FanPost Friday, the prompt is to find a way to reasonably improve the offensive production from the bottom half of the order. You can accomplish this via trade, free agency, the minor leagues, but no voodoo magic. That’s a Yankee specialty and we will have none of it.

Never done a FanPost and want to try one? Follow this handy link for a comprehensive guide, and we will see you on the other side!