By Chris Ryan
Fenway Park- Let’s face it baseball is a lot of fun to watch when a team can score a lot of runs and his winning.
The opposite can also be true, as we witnessed in 2014 and 2015.
The 2016 Red Sox team has the chance to be historically good.
Going into last night the Sox had scored a MLB leading 274 runs (the closest team in the AL to Boston is Seattle with 54 fewer), they are averaging 6 runs per contest.
“I feel like once we get a chance to feel out the game and feel out the pitcher, we’re going to find a way to put up some runs,” said Red Sox third baseman Travis Shaw who’s in All-Star contention with a .306 batting average and 8th in the league with 32 RBI.
The Sox offense is starting to catch the attention of folks around baseball with scouts referencing the 1995 Cleveland Indians and 1998 New York Yankees as similarly efficient and difficult to navigate line-ups.
“They’re really good,” said Rockies star third-baseman Nolan Arenado. “They have really quality at bats. It seems like they all have 30 or more RBI from top to bottom!”
That’s almost true.
But, considering we just passed the quarter mark of this baseball season, let’s project out the RBI totals for 1-7 of this line-up, shall we? Mookie Betts 122, Dustin Pedroia 75, Xander Bogaerts 90, David Ortiz 148?!, Hanley Ramirez 90, Jackie Bradley Jr. 122, and Travis Shaw 115.
“If a situation comes (and you don’t drive in the run), it’s ok, because the guy behind you will or in the next inning you’ll get another shot because more guys will be on base,” said Shaw.
It’s fitting that the Sox retired Wade Boggs number last night and in the 2016 season because unintentionally this team was built very much in his image. It has a philosophy of get on base and when you get a pitch to hit square it up and find a gap, and so far it’s working.
