Red Sox offense is really feeling it right now
BOSTON -- The Red Sox offense was non-existent to start the season. The dormancy of the Boston bats led to several frustrating nights and a lot of losses in the standings.
But the Red Sox offense is now very much awake, and it's a force to be reckoned with. Boston picked up its sixth straight win with a 16-3 drubbing of the White Sox in Chicago on Tuesday night, with the offense absolutely mashing everything it saw.
The Red Sox racked up a season-high 19 hits, nine extra-base hits, four homers and 16 runs scored in Tuesday night's victory. They scored all 16 of those runs over the first five innings, capped off with a six-run fifth.
Enrique Hernandez got the party started by going yard on the first pitch of the game. Seven batters later, Trevor Story crushed another pitch for a three-run shot, giving Boston an early 4-0 lead.
It was Story's seventh homer in his last seven games. He has shaken off his slow start and now has 16 RBIs in his last five games. Story leads everyone on the Red Sox roster with 33 RBIs in his 37 games with his new team.
Rafael Devers also clubbed his team-leading 10th homer of the year, a solo shot in the fourth, and Christian Vazquez added a three-run blast in the fifth to cap off Boston's scoring barrage in Chicago.
All nine hitters in the Boston lineup recorded a hit, and Xander Bogaerts was the only one without an RBI on the night. (He scored a pair of runs for good measure.) J.D. Martinez was 4-for-5 at the dish and raised his average from an impressive .349 to an AL-leading .366 by the end of the night. Martinez has been leading this current tear by the Boston offense, hitting .487 over his last 10 games.
The three-headed beast of Bogaerts, Devers and Martinez in the heart of the Red Sox lineup is hitting .340 with 19 homers, 40 doubles and 63 RBIs on the season. That's nightmare fuel for opposing pitching.
Plating 16 runs isn't going to happen every night, but this is the offense that was expected from the Boston bats. The Red Sox have scored at least five runs in each of their last six games, and have scored 95 runs over the last 13 games. That matches the offensive output of the first 29 games of the season, when Boston went 10-19.
The Red Sox are 10-3 since the offense found its groove, and are slowly climbing back into contention. Boston is now 20-22 on the season, just 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot.
