Moments

Nearly every year, as Opening Day approaches, I plan on keeping an ongoing log of the best and worst moments of the forthcoming Red Sox season. I have never done it*. Other people are more reliable, thankfully.

*: Actually, it turns out I did do it this year ... for about a week and a half. (At that early point, of course, these were only possible contenders for top moments/games.)

G6 - April 3 at Marlins: 1-1 in extra innings. Both teams score 1 run in the 11th. Boston gets 2 in T13 (Ramirez's two-out, two-run double) and wins 4-2.

G7 - April 5 vs Rays: Down 2-0, Boston scores twice in B9 (Bogaerts's two-out double ties it) and wins in B12, 3-2.

G9 - April 8 vs Rays: Trailing by five runs (7-2), the Red Sox score 6 times in B8 after there were 2 outs and Ramirez on second. Moreland doubles (3-7), Nunez singles, Devers doubles (5-7), Vazquez singles (6-7), wild pitch by Colome, Betts singles (7-7), Benintendi doubles (8-7). 8th straight win!

Chad Jennings, The Athletic:

Making too much of spring training statistics is dumb. We know this. Martinez going without a home run all spring? Meaningless. Blake Swihart leading the team in doubles? So what? But a funny thing started happening to the Red Sox toward the end of spring training. They started playing legitimately sharp baseball. Their defense became more reliable. Their pitching looked better. They won 14 of their last 15 exhibition games, and allowed a total of seven runs in their last five. ... There was a different feeling with this team coming out of camp, and when they opened the season winning 17 of 19, it seemed to be a meaningful continuation of the way they'd played at the end of spring training. ...

[June 21] [T]he Red Sox were slipping. They'd lost four of five, including back-to-back against the Twins, and they'd fallen two games behind the Yankees in the division, their largest deficit of the year. ... In the road trip finale, though, the Red Sox scored seven runs in the final three innings for a decisive win that was the start of something bigger. Beginning with that game in Minnesota, the Red Sox won 19 of their last 23 games heading into the break. They'll enter the second half with a 4.5-game division lead, their largest advantage of the year.

Jennings also cites the Red Sox's resiliency, which has produced 28 come-from-behind wins, including five when they trailed after six innings.

Owen Pence, Globe:

Whittling down Boston's abundance of successes into the Red Sox' 12 most memorable moments of 2018 wasn't an easy task. ...

April 11: Boston's second loss of the season was overshadowed by some jousting between foes. Dormant no longer, the Sox-Yankees rivalry was injected with passion when Boston flamethrower Joe Kelly pegged New York first baseman Tyler Austin with a pitch that triggered a bench-clearing brawl. ...

May 2: When Betts begins to percolate, the homers come in waves. Betts belted three solo shots in a 5-4 victory over Kansas City, recording his fourth three-homer game and second of the young season. More notably, the performance broke Ted Williams's franchise record for three-homer contests. ...

July 2: In perhaps the oddest game Boston played during its first half, Red Sox starter Rick Porcello stole the show for unexpected reasons. Facing off as a hitter against Washington ace Max Scherzer, Porcello mustered the swing of his life, lofting a three-run double onto the outfield grass at Nationals Park. ... Porcello told himself to start swinging once Scherzer reached the top of his windup. ...

July 14: How many slams is too many? The Red Sox don't want to find out. This time it was Bogaerts delivering the honors with a walkoff shot in the 10th inning as Boston again defeated the Blue Jays. It was Boston's first game-ending grand slam since Jim Rice did so on July 4, 1984, and Bogaerts's third of the season.

Sean McAdam, Boston Sports Journal:

1. Opening Day Meltdown (March 29): The Sox were sailing along, with Sale giving them seven shutout innings. Then, Joe Kelly and Carson Smith conspired to allow six runs in the eighth to lead to a dispiriting loss. The defeat invited the question: Is this a preview of coming attraction? Fortunately for the Sox, the answer turned out to be: No. ...

6. Hanley DFA'd (May 25): It was widely assumed that the Red Sox would designate underachieving Blake Swihart when they needed a roster spot for Dustin Pedroia. Instead, the Sox shocked the world with the announcement that they were cutting ties with Hanley Ramirez. Ramirez had had a wretched May, and sure, there were concerns about his vesting option for 2019. But nobody saw this coming. ...

7. The Astros Series (May 31-June 2): This was billed as a rematch of last October's ALDS, and a chance for the Red Sox to demonstrate that A) they had improved and could B) compete with the league's best teams. For the first two games, the Sox were competitive, but lost both. Then, just as Dustin Pedroia was going back on the DL and Mookie Betts was sent to the DL, the Red Sox awoke and won the final two games of the series (started by Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton) and made a statement of their own.

Matthew Kory (The Athletic) presents "10 surprising stats":

112.428 — The number of wins the Red Sox are on pace for.
Despite projections and expectations that had them behind a resurgent New York Yankees team, the Red Sox have played a hair short of the pace set by the best regular season team of all time, the 116-win 2001 Mariners. ... It's a good time to have a great half-season too, because the Yankees themselves are on pace to win a ridiculous 106 games.

106 — The number of games the Red Sox are expected to win by FanGraphs' projections for the rest of the season. ...
The 106 wins they project would be the most in Red Sox history, eclipsing the 1912 team's 105 wins. That would also be ahead of Fangraphs' projection for the Yankees — 104. ...

0.3 — The difference in WAR between Mookie Betts and first place (Mike Trout). ...
Trout leads Betts in WAR by 0.3, but there are a few caveats. [F]or some reason WAR does not love Mookie's defense in right field this season. ... Mookie also suffered a left abdominal strain that forced him to miss 14 games while Trout has played all 97 of his team's games. That could certainly be spun in a pro-Trout way, but on a per-game basis ... Betts has been without a doubt the best player in baseball this year ...

Also: On July 13, I wrote that plate umpire Brian Gorman had made the worst called ball of the season. FanGraphs' Jeff Sullivan agrees. He limits his consideration to calls from "the first half", but I am pretty confident that Gorman's gaffe cannot be topped. Sullivan also found "the worst called strike".