Red Sox 2, Guardians 5: Gritty Guardians Outlast Sloppy Sox

I’m fairly sure I could copy and paste what I wrote for Sunday’s game for today’s bout with Cleveland.

Kiké Hernandez, Rafael Devers, and Enmanuel Valdez have a combined 25 errors as a trio. There are whole TEAMS that have fewer combined errors than those guys do. Something has to change. Seeing Kiké in the infield is sucking the soul out of all of us at this point. Valdez might end up being the odd man out with Christian Arroyo back and Yu Chang not too far behind. I’m fairly sure Rafael Devers worked with Cesar Izturis one off-season, and whatever Izturis taught him is really starting to fall apart here. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Devers should be a DH first, and third baseman second, but there aren’t any teammates doing him favors to mask any errors he’s making right now.

The bats are frighteningly cold. The Sox even got a gift of their own, with Josh Naylor completely bungling a routine groundout by Enmanuel Valdez to give the Red Sox a 2-1 lead in the 4th inning. Why couldn’t they do anything with that? Why couldn't they do anything more with the chance they had in the first inning and give Crawford a multi-run cushion to come out to the bump with? Are we insane thinking Adam Duvall’s impending return is going to do anything to save this lineup? It’s frustrating as a viewer looking back at what they did in late-April and early May to see how timid and unthreatening they look in the box now.

31-31 would make them top of the AL Central, tied for first place with the Minnesota Twins. It puts them last in the AL East. At some point, we have to call this unacceptable. Treading water just isn’t good enough.

FanGraphs

Three Studs

Rafael Devers (.089 WPA, 2-for-4, 1 RBI)

Credit to Devers, despite his own defensive miscue that led to a Guardians run, he at least put his bat where his mouth is and got the Red Sox an early lead. For the most part, Devers has been hot and cold at the plate this season but still can show up.

Brennan Bernardino (.067 WPA, 1.0 IP)

One clean inning in relief when the Red Sox really needed it. Not sure why Crawford came out after only 3 innings, but the less we hear about any member of the bullpen making mistakes, the better.

Chris Murphy (.048 WPA, 3.1 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 3 K)

Welcome to the Majors, Chris! While he did give up a run, it was very welcome to watch him work the rest of the game, giving other bullpen arms a big rest.

Three Duds

Kutter Crawford (-.249 WPA, 3.0 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 3 K)

I mean Kutter wasn’t great...but it’s not like he was that bad. I think the poor defense behind Crawford is severely inflating his WPA here.

Justin Garza (-.172 WPA, 0.2 IP, 3 H, 2 ER)

Garza gave up runs on his own accord, so there are no excuses for him here. Very lucky he had Murphy behind him to clean up and go the distance.

Justin Turner (-.121 WPA, 0-for-4)

JT had one major at-bat today in the first inning with two on and no outs, yet fouled out to Josh Naylor. Every other at-bat was negligible, either leading off the inning with an out or just continuing to bring a lack of momentum to the lineup.

Play of the Game

With a WPA of .142, it’s Jose Ramirez reaching on an error from both Enmanuel Valdez and Triston Casas in the bottom of the 4th inning.