If you watch Red Sox games on NESN, you’ve surely noticed the “Everything is Awesome” commercials that seem to come around every commercial break. If you’re ready to laugh about how terrible this season has been, this is a good place to start. It seems like they always jump to it after a particularly distressing inning.
In a way, these commercials have perfectly summed up this Red Sox season. After something terrible happens, you can always count on people telling you that everything will be fine. It’s nice in theory, but if anyone has just been watching the Red Sox without paying attention to the context of the league, they’d look at optimistic people like they have six heads. At different times (and sometimes all at once) the pitching, offense and defense have all looked impossibly bad. This is a team that’s six games below .500 with a -46 run differential. How could anyone think it’s all going to be fine?
Well, in this case the context of the league is incredibly important. The American League is as mediocre as I can ever remember it being. Right now, the Angels have the best chance of making the playoffs by Baseball Prospectus’ odds. They are just four games above .500. Even more important to the Red Sox, the rest of the American League East has been a dumpster fire. None of the teams in the division have better than a 50 percent chance to make the playoffs. Just two, the Yankees and the Rays, are above .500, and they’ve eclipsed that mark by a combined five games. For as poorly as Boston has played, they are still just five games from getting a bye through the wildcard round.
Before we take a look at how these kind of divisions have gone historically, let’s take a closer look at these teams moving forward. The Yankees currently sit in first place behind the strength of a particularly strong run from mid-April to mid-May. While they’ve been led by bounce-back performances from guys like Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira, they’re a team that could be destroyed by one or two major injuries. They’re the odds-on favorite to take the AL East crown this year, but far from the monster of a team they were a decade ago.
While the division was viewed almost as a toss-up prior to the season, the Rays were the one team that many agreed would be hard-pressed to wind up at the top of the standings. However, on the back of strong pitching, they are currently in second place and have the second best playoff odds. Chris Archer and Jake Odorizzi have both been incredible, but they’re also relying on a lineup that consists of Evan Longoria and eight other dudes. An injury in the rotation, or simply some fatigue, could derail that team quickly.
The Orioles are currently in third, and have the lowest playoff odds of any team in the division. They’re a tough team to get a handle on, as they should be better than this, but there aren’t many clear ways for them to improve internally.They are the most bland team in baseball’s most bland division.
Finally, the Blue Jays were a common preseason pick, but their pitching has held them back in a big way. They’ve scored the most runs in all of baseball, but they still find themselves six games below .500. With that being said, they’re still the scariest team in the division, because they have a couple of young pitchers who could turn it on at any point and an offense that can carry them in the meantime. Of course, one could say the same thing about the Red Sox if their offense ever starts to play up to their potential.
To get a clearer picture of how these unclear situations typically go, I looked back through the last 15 years to find some comparisons. These were hard to come by. I searched for divisions that looked this mediocre on June 4 of any given year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a group of teams playing this poorly was not overly common. Going back to 2000, I found four examples:
In 2009, the Tigers were the only AL Central team over .500, and they only surpassed that mark by four games. By the end of the season, the Twins came back by playing .548 baseball through the rest of the year and won the division. However, they weren’t playing nearly as poorly as Boston has in the first part of the season. On June 4, 2009, Minnesota was just one game under .500 and had a +7 run differential. They’re not a great source of optimism.
One year before that, the NL West also only had one team with a better-than-.500 record. Similar to the 2009 AL Central, the eventual winner was below .500 on June 4. The Dodgers were 28-31 on that date in 2008, and posted a .544 winning percentage the rest of the way to claim the division title. However, like the Twins of the year before, their run differential told a different story, as they were +9 in the early part of the year.
One of the most favorable comparisons for the Red Sox comes from the 2007 NL Central. Through June 4, the Cubs found themselves seven games under .500 and 6.5 games behind Milwaukee, the only better-than-.500 club in the division. The Cubs went on a huge run for the rest of the season, winning 57 percent of their games and eventually winning the NL Central. Unfortunately, once again, run differential tells a different tale. Chicago was +20 on June 4, meaning they were a much better team than their record would indicate. They are likely a better comparison for the 2015 Blue Jays than the Red Sox.
Finally, we get to the 2006 AL West and the Los Angeles Angels. Although they didn’t make the playoffs that year, they would have been one game out of the second wildcard had it existed at the time. They also represent the best comparison for the 2015 Red Sox. On June 4, this team was six games under .500 with a -31 run differential. They would turn it on through the rest of the year, playing .604 baseball from June 5 onward, and finishing the year with 89 wins. In any other division, they would’ve played themselves out of the race early on, but they were held in the race just long enough by playing in a mediocre division.
The Red Sox have played poorly enough that it’s gotten annoying to hear that their chances aren’t dead yet. However, it’s important to look at their almost unprecedentedly mediocre division, and the past says divisions like this can be won by underperforming teams. There are changes that need to be made, but playing in the 2015 AL East means one strong run can put the Red Sox right back in the thick of the playoff race.
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