The Red Sox Are Paying The Price For Being Cheap

The Royals have what the Red Sox need, largely because they put their money on the table last winter.

Last night, while the Red Sox were blowing yet another late inning lead, Seth Lugo was doing this to the Angels.

You may remember Seth Lugo from back in December, when the Red Sox were interested in his services, but not interested in paying him fair market value. Instead, the Royals inked Lugo to a three-year, $45 million deal, which Boston wasn’t willing to match in both length and AAV for the 34-year-old.

This was part of a much larger, aggressive plan by Kansas City, which spent $109.5 million on free agents, more money than in any offseason in their franchise history… and that doesn’t even include the $377.7 million they committed to superstar shortstop Bobby Whitt Jr.

So while the Royals were actively engaging in the market and trying to turn a 106 loss operation from 2023 into a playoff team, John Henry was flying to the other side of the globe to schmooze with Saudi Arabian oil billionaires over the future of golf, which six months later, remains unresolved. (Bravo, gentlemen!) Meanwhile, that same Royals squad that outspent him on desperately needed pitching last winter is leading the race for the final playoff spot.

Digger deeper, the details only bring more displeasure.

Specifically, on the pitching side, here are the main players the Royals signed:

Seth Lugo, RHP: Three years, $45 million (opt-out after year two of the contract)

Michael Wacha, RHP: Two years, $32 million (opt-out after year one of the contract)

Chris Stratton, RHP: Two years, $8 million (opt-out after year one of the contract)

Will Smith, LHP: One year, $5 million

The relief guys haven’t worked out for Kansas City, but it hasn’t hurt them too much because the two starters they grabbed have been excellent.

One of them is the aforementioned Lugo, who leads the league in innings pitched, batters faced, and if anybody still cares, pitching wins. (Actually to be fair, he’s only tied for the lead in pitching wins …. tied with [check notes] … Chris Sale. Oh my God!)

Last night, Lugo worked seven strong innings, marking the ninth time this season he’s pitched at least seven frames in a game this year. The other important starter Kansas City signed over the winter, Michael Wacha, who pitched for the Red Sox as recently as 2022, has gone at least seven innings into a game five times this season.

This means that Lugo and Wacha have pitched at least seven innings into a game 14 times in 2024. Meanwhile, the entire Red Sox pitching staff has only done it 12 times all year.

All of this brings us to the bullpen. Just as water naturally flows downhill and will ultimately flood the lowest lying area if you give it enough time, holes in pitching staffs naturally turn into more and more high leverage innings that need to be covered by the bullpen, ultimately exposing their weakness until the dam bursts. The Red Sox have made themselves vulnerable to this erosion on two fronts:

• One, the starters (as good as they’ve been for much of the year) rank 24th in total batters faced. They’re just not pitching deep enough into these games. Correspondingly, Red Sox relievers rank sixth in total batters faced, only trailing the Rockies, Giants, White Sox, Marlins and D-Backs — five teams who are a combined 117 games under .500 this year.
• Two, the Red Sox rank No. 1 in the American League in most plate appearances in which their pitching had to face a batter in a high leverage situation (953 plate appearances and climbing).

This combination has burnt through the important relievers like a forest fire, and the marginal pickups the front office made at the deadline have done little to douse the flames.

Since the All-Star break, here’s a table of the OPS batters have posted against all Red Sox relievers who have faced at least 20 batters. (I’ve included a few other helpful reference points along the way to drive home how much this pen has sucked in recent weeks.)

It’s important to note that the ‘pen has only been this bad recently. Over the course of the entire season, batters still only have a .738 OPS against them. That’s remarkably similar to the .736 OPS opposing batters have posted against the flimsy Royals bullpen in 2024.

The difference? The Royals starters go deep into the games. The Kansas City bullpen has faced the second fewest batters of any team in baseball this year (only Seattle has faced fewer), and this has allowed them to get away with missing on their bullpen acquisition because they have to navigate fewer high leverage outs and are ultimately building a shorter bridge to the end of the game.

As Eno Sarris and Jen McCaffrey wrote in the Athletic today, the Red Sox entered the season with a plan to limit fastballs to opponents and catch them off guard, and while it worked, the league has now adjusted. Part of this plan also seemed to be to limit the exposure of their starters in the middle innings, which worked in the first half but has now exposed the bullpen even more as everything collapses.

The bottom line is when you cheap out on the rotation and use smoke and mirror tactics to get by, it eventually catches up with you. (And no, Lucas Giolito getting injured is not a valid excuse for not having more starting pitching depth ready to go when you’re the Boston Red Sox and you still come in tens of millions of dollars below the luxury tax.)

One final note on last night’s games and the bullpens. Do you know who closed out Kansas City’s 5-3 win over the Angels after Lugo went seven strong innings? That would be John Schreiber. Yes, the same John Schreiber the Red Sox traded this offseason for David Sandlin, who has a 5.05 ERA in the minors and allowed 12 home runs in just 14 starts. Maybe this move pans out for the Sox in the long run, but it’s another example of Kansas City making a move designed to win in 2024, and the Red Sox making a move designed to win in 2025 and beyond. From that vantage point, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Royals have the 2024 playoff spot the Red Sox need.

They put their money on the table last winter in relation to their market size, and the Red Sox didn’t. Now, we’re all paying for it! I guess this kind of luxe just ain’t for us.