Roman Anthony is out here saying he is “right where I want to be,” which is a wild take considering the guy is currently struggling to make consistent contact at the plate. He’s trying to grind it out every single day for a “long postseason run,” but you gotta wonder if that’s even in the cards with the way things are looking.
Boston’s Contact Crisis
The Red Sox are flat-out muddling through a middling September, and the real problem isn’t a lack of speed. It’s strikeouts. Big time. This month, they’ve racked up the eighth-most strikeouts in the league and drawn the seventh-fewest walks. Rob Bradford from WEEI put it best: “That doesn’t play in the postseason. Making contact does.” Anthony, after initially returning to the big leagues with a bang, is one of the main guys swinging and missing too much. He’s talking about how he “came back with enough time to get a good number of plate appearances, and to fail like I am right now and to succeed like I did in the beginning, and then kind of meet in the middle.” That’s a lot of meeting in the middle when you’re supposed to be gearing up for October.
It’s not just Anthony, either. Willson Contreras, the other big power threat in that lineup, is also struggling to get up to speed. He did manage to homer last night, but he’s still dealing with a nagging hamstring injury. Contreras admitted, “I ran pretty good there on the ground ball to shortstop, but I need to manage my leg better. I know it’s feeling good and it’s feeling alright, but on a hard-hit ball like that, I know I’m going to be out. I was just trying to put pressure on him, see if he made a bad throw or whatever. Next time, I’ll manage better.” You can’t be “managing better” your leg in the thick of a playoff push, man.
A Wild Card From the Grapefruit League?
Amidst all these contact woes, there’s Braiden Ward, a name we heard a lot in the Grapefruit League. This “little speedster” was running wild then, and he hasn’t gotten a chance in the Majors yet. But Chad Tracy isn’t ruling out a wild card appearance in the postseason, even without any big league experience. Tracy said, “Every time he gets on, he’s not afraid. That’s the thing. If he gets on base, he’s looking to go. That’s a unique trait.” Could Ward’s aggressive baserunning be a spark if he somehow makes the postseason roster? The team’s success has been built on depth, not individual star power, so maybe a surprise player is exactly what they need right now.
With September winding down, it’s clear the Red Sox need to find that contact and get healthy fast. Those “few weeks” of a long postseason run are “the only thing that really matters,” but they gotta actually get there first, right?
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Over the Monster.
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