A week and change into the season, the 2023 Red Sox are a mystifying group.
It’s feast or famine, onslaught or slaughtered, triumph or tragedy.
Saturday was the latter, though it started off as a game of plate discipline, one of the emphases of the offseason roster overhaul, during a 14-5 thumping over the Tigers in Detroit.
They were patient in the top of the second, loading the bases and scoring their first two runs on walks.
Then Rafael Devers stepped up to the plate and reminded the world why he’s the highest-paid player in franchise history. The 26-year-old third baseman opened the floodgates with a grand slam, his third home run of the season, and his second of the series.
The following inning, Adam Duvall blasted his fourth home run of the season, following Masataka Yoshida around the bases for runs Nos. 7 and 8 of the afternoon.
Not to be outdone, Devers decided the seventh inning was the prime time to hit his fourth round-tripper of the year. The 110.3-mph missile dethroned Duvall’s 109.8-mph homer for hardest-hit ball of the game.
The unnecessary, yet enjoyable cherry on top of the slugging sundae was Raimel Tapia’s ninth-inning blast, which left his bat at 106.6 mph and traveled 425 feet, the longest hit of the game.
All in all, the Red Sox scored 14 runs on 12 hits to win by a margin of nine and decide the series, which concludes on Sunday at 1:10 p.m.
Devers flew into Detroit with one home run on the season, and enters Sunday’s series finale with four. According to the Red Sox, Devers’ 13th multi-homer game ties Mookie Betts for second-most in franchise history by a player his age (26 years, 166 days) or younger. Only a young Jim Rice had more (21).
Duvall went 3 for 5 with three runs scored and a pair of RBIs. Not only are his 14 RBIs this season the most by anyone in their first seven games with the club, Elias Sports also noted that he’s the only player in MLB history to record eight or more extra-base hits and 14 RBIs in their first seven games with any franchise since RBIs became an official stat at the beginning of the Live Ball Era (1920).
Seven of the 10 hardest hits of the day belonged to Boston bats; even more impressively, that doesn’t include Devers’ second-inning slam, which left the bat at the snail’s pace of 102 mph. (Yes, that’s sarcasm.)
Not to rain on the hit parade, but it must be noted how hot and cold the first week of Red Sox baseball has been. Saturday’s victory only brought them back to .500 (4-4), which boggles the mind given that they’ve scored 55 runs in their first eight games.
They arrived in Detroit after being swept at home by the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose only prior series win at Fenway came against the Boston Braves in 1915. Over the three-game set against the Pirates, the Red Sox lineup scored a combined eight runs, including back-to-back 4-1 losses in the second and third contests.
When the Red Sox hired Chaim Bloom in 2019, they spoke about cultivating consistency, but into his fourth season, it’s yet to materialize year-over-year, month-to-month, even within the same week.
Fourteen-run games are all well and good. Consistent wins are even better.
