Finally, after almost a year of Alex Cora publicly pleading for his hitters to show a little more discipline and make a little more contact, the Red Sox’ manager seems to have gotten through.
And saved the 2022 season in the process.
Remarkably, the Sox entered Monday 10 games back of the first-place Yankees in the American League East, just as they were two weeks ago on May 10, when they finished a homestand with a five-game losing streak.
They’ve made no ground in the division in that time, but by going 9-3 over the last 12 games, the Red Sox at least kept themselves afloat.
More importantly, they look alive.
Fenway Park was lifeless during the last homestand, but looked as loud as ever as they cheered Franchy Cordero’s walk-off grand slam on Sunday.
Cora has a theory.
“I had this conversation with my mother,” he said. “She watches the game and now she’s able to compare teams. ‘Oh, the Mets are playing with energy and you guys are not playing with energy.’ I’m like, ‘well, they’ve got 25 wins, we only have 12. That’s how it works.’
“One thing (former Sox manager) Ron Roenicke always told us, ‘they get along, regardless’. If it’s a good team or a team that’s’ struggling, the clubhouse is the clubhouse. It’s just the perception, right? They’re not winning, well, obviously if they’re not winning they’re going to be quiet. When they’re winning, the other things come into play. I think energy comes from offense.”
The Red Sox offense woke up and the numbers are simple: when they stop chasing bad pitches, they score more runs.
They were the worst team in baseball at chasing bad pitches through May 9, swinging at 32% of the junk they saw. Starting with the series in Atlanta on May 10, they cut that number down to 29%. Low and behold, their contact rate jumped from 74%, 24th in baseball, to 77%.
You guessed it, they started scoring more runs, too.
Since May 10, the Sox rank first in baseball with an .854 OPS, second with 32 doubles and third with 19 homers in 12 games.
“That off-day, after when we went to Atlanta, after Mother’s Day, that was a good day for them,” Cora said. “They showed up here early and talked and all that. They had a team dinner that night. I think it was the first time they were able to do something off the field… That trip kind of helped them out to do more stuff and then the off-day in Texas, they were able to play golf.”
Cora said the team had big plans for their off-day this Monday,too.
“That helps,” he said. “We always preach that. Just get together.”
Scoring more runs helps, too.
Since May 10, the Sox have three players who rank in the top-10 among all MLB hitters in OPS: No. 3, Rafael Devers, 1.314; No. 7, J.D. Martinez, 1.194; and No. 8, Trevor Story, 1.173.
Story’s resurgence has been the story of the year thus far.
“He’s been really good,” Cora said. “You can see in the meetings, more vocal. You see him on the field talking to players. Off the field, he’s been great. In Dallas he took them to the Mavericks game. That was good. That’s what ballplayers do.”
Since May 10, the Sox have averaged 6.6 runs per game. They’ve earned their first extra-innings win of the year. They’ve five in a row, including four come-from-behind victories. They completed their first series sweep of the year. And they’ve homered in seven consecutive games.
In that time, the Sox went from having the 14th-most wins in the American League to the eighth-most, a significant leap, particularly given six teams from each league make the playoffs this year.
It’s only May, but the Red Sox look like they saved their season.
