Top Play (WPA): Go figure, it was Xander Bogaerts’ two-out, two-run double (0.531) to change a 4-3 deficit to a 5-4 lead that would hold until the final bell. When you wait until the end of the game to rack up all your runs, you can get enormous WPA swings. I think that we can all agree, after this single plate appearance, that the Xander Bogaerts (.287 True Average this season) versus Mookie Betts (.266 True Average) debate is finally over.

Bottom Play (WPA): Hanley Ramirez, batting with no outs and runners on first and second, grounded into a critical double play (-0.121) that stranded Brock Holt at second base. Despite the best efforts of Holt — who moved to third on a passed ball — all it took was a Mike Napoli whiff at that point to end the potential for a rally. Bad job, all around.

Key Moment: For me, the key was Rusney Castillo’s homer to lead off the eighth inning and chase Kendall Graveman. Castillo’s been pretty awful since coming up with the Sox this season, but this AB saw him work into a full count and finally go yard. It seemed like the kind of personal win that could break the seal on further run scoring, and that’s exactly what happened in that big inning.

Trends to Watch: Winning is a trend, right?

Okay, so that doesn’t really count. Perhaps the right trend to keep an eye on is Steven Wright, who threw three and one-third innings of effective ball in relief of Doubles McGee in this game. It was the full Wakefield, pitching on short rest, and “sneaking” through the Athletics lineup by allowing unimpressive contact and getting key outs on balls in play. No one needs Steven Wright to be a rotation stalwart or a shutdown reliever — but if he can be a swingman who doesn’t make you want to immediately throw up in your mouth, and can prove to get a strikeout here and there, he’ll be a valuable cog in the machine.

Coming Next: Momentum isn’t real, except when we really want it to be. Season savior and hyperbole king Eduardo Rodriguez faces off against his former team, the Baltimore Orioles, in the jump to a three-game series at Baltimore on Tuesday. If Rodriguez doesn’t strike out half a dozen and keep his ERA below 1.00, it’ll probably be viewed as a disappointment, but really taking two out of three against the Orioles would have to be considered a win. Now this team is living up to a little bit of its potential, so it’s all about keeping the dice rolling.

Photo by Winslow Townson/USA Today Sports Images

After a tough series in which the Red Sox split a four-game set against the Twins, they stay home to face an opponent with it’s own set of maladies and setbacks. For the first and only time on the Weekend Preview, here are the Oakland Athletics.

Oakland Athletics – Current Record: 23-33 – Projected Record: 77-85

The 2014 season hasn’t been kind to the A’s. Their main addition, Ben Zobrist, was out for over a month with a meniscus tear in left knee. Marcus Semien, despite his hitting, has committed so many gaffes & errors in the field that his WARP hasn’t yet reached 1.0. Any further talk about the A’s’ issues will usually include the words “underachieving”, “injured” and “disappointing”. However, the A’s arrive in Boston fresh off a sweep of the Detroit Tigers, and with seven victories in their last ten games, Oakland might be able to make a strong June push.

Probables

Scott Kazmir vs. Wade Miley, Friday, 7:05 p.m. EST

Kazmir is in the midst of a very solid year. He’s cut down on the contact he’s allowed, induced more whiffs and grounders, and all of that combined has given him an ERA just south of 3.00. Not a bad pitcher to have in your rotation, even with the concerning shoulder injury. There are some cracks in the armor, though. Kazmir’s FIP is a full run higher than his ERA, sitting at 3.89. That’s due to a low .260 BABIP against, and a 79% LOB%. There’s even some concern when it comes to the strikes he throws. Kazmir has thrown less than half his pitches in the zone, a drop from the last couple seasons where it was over 50%. He’s relied on the whiffs to offset the lack of control, which has worked to a point, but a 3.86 BB/9 has been the result. Scott Kazmir hasn’t been bad, but he’s been effectively lucky, and a shoulder injury is just the kind of thing to make you worry about him going forward.

Wade Miley is the proud owner of the most dramatic contrast between April & May 2015. Just take a look at this ridiculousness:

• April: 15.2 IP, 8.62 ERA, 4.77 FIP, 10/11 K/BB.
• May: 38.2 IP, 3.49 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 23/9 K/BB.

If that isn’t amazing enough, let us not forget Miley’s last outing against the A’s, which saw him strand roughly two bazillion runners in seven innings. Yes, that number is approximate. No, I still don’t believe it either. By now, you know what to expect with Miley: fast worker, quick innings, mild volatility. Let’s see if that luck still holds.

Jesse Chavez vs. Joe Kelly, June 6th, 4:05 p.m. EST

Chavez started the season as a reliever, but due to ineffectiveness on the back end of Oakland’s rotation, he’s been given a chance to start again. So far, he’s been pretty good. He’s getting a solid amount of strikeouts with few walks, and has posted a 2.11 ERA with a 2.67 FIP. Solid, right? Unfortunately, he’s got the same underlying issues as Kazmir. A drop in pitches in the zone is again being offset by an increase in whiffs, and a .269 BABIP & 76% LOB% might hold up as a reliever, but Chavez will struggle to keep it at that level as a starter. His impressively low 0.30 HR/FB, while good, isn’t sustainable, and you can expect to see some more gopherballs as the season goes on.

Has anything screamed “CONVERT ME TO RELIEVER” more than Joe Kelly? The guy has good velocity with movement down in the zone, but he looks like starting just isn’t for him. Unlike Miley, Kelly got even worse after April, sporting a 6.53 ERA and a 5.03 FIP in May. It’s always nice to have a guy who can consistently hit 96 on the gun and get grounders 50% of the time, but when he’s this bad as a starter, you have to consider other options. Currently, Kelly totes a 5.83 ERA and a 4.37 FIP, which – if we’re being nice – is pretty mediocre. The time spent while he’s pitching would be well-spent being used to find someone to take his spot in the rotation.

Kendall Graveman vs. Clay Buchholz, June 7th, 1:35 p.m. EST

Graveman looks and pitches like back-end filler. He strikes out few, walks just as many, and nothing else really sticks out other than his solid 50% groundball rate. A 5.56 ERA, combined with a 5.26 FIP, won’t amaze anyone. He has yet to go past six innings in a single start. Graveman should probably be used as a benchmark for the Sox offense – if they can’t succeed against him, then there really is cause for concern.

Buchholz, like Miley, pitched one of the most dominant months we’ve seen from him in May. A 3.31 ERA, 3.43 FIP, and a one-point drop in BB/9 cumulated in some of the most impressive starts we’ve seen from the Texan. As Matt Collins has said,  Buchholz really is pitching very well, despite what we’ve grown accustomed to. All his peripherals are pointing in the right direction, and we’ve seen the progression. To be honest, the only thing he really needs now is the Boston offense to wake up – the Red Sox have scored just 11 runs in his last six starts.

Opposing Lineup

With no Ike Davis, the A’s have resorted to using Stephen Vogt as a solution to everything along the first base line, which has worked out quite well thanks to Vogt still putting up stratospheric hitting numbers regardless of position.

Billy Burns – CF – S – .323/.368/.435, .297 TAv
Ben Zobrist – LF – S – .222/.304/.383, .255 TAv
Stephen Vogt – C – L – .308/.405/.579, .366 TAv
Billy Butler – DH – R – .264/.314/.370, .258 TAv
Josh Reddick – RF – L – .300/.376/.506, .327 TAv
Brett Lawrie – 3B – R – .281/.311/.397, .259 TAv
Marcus Semien – SS – R – .277/.319/.432, .271 TAv
Mark Canha – 1B – R – .230/.312/.393, .270 TAv
Eric Sogard – 2B – L – .253/.282/.294, .217 TAv

That standard lineup tallies 4.29 runs per game, placing it in the middle of the pack in the MLB and the AL. Despite the ineffectiveness of Butler and the black hole that is the bottom of the lineup, these guys don’t have any issues in scoring, and have actually scored more runs than they’ve allowed, suggesting that they’ve been underachieving so far.

Recap

Both teams haven’t played to their expected levels of excellence, and both will try to return to those levels this weekend. I’m not saying that they’ll be fun games to watch, but if the Red Sox can squeak out a series win here, it might buck the sinking-ship feeling that much of the fanbase has been experiencing.

Photo by Kelley L. Cox/USA Today Sports Images

Before we dive into the validity of the narrative, I have just a few qualifiers. For one thing, I looked strictly at the games against the A’s, Mariners and Angels. Texas, and more recently Houston, are also in the AL West, but Texas is barely west. There have also been some trips to play the NL West, but those aren’t really the games we think of when we think of “The West Coast Trip.” So, with those arbitrary guidelines set, let’s dive into the results from the last five seasons.

So, we see that the numbers support the narrative to a small extent, especially for the last three seasons. The team was hovering right around .500 heading into the trip last season, then fell flat on their face out west and never fully recovered. Even in the magical 2013 season, the Red Sox played well below their typical record when they traveled across the country, although they were able to recover from that one.

Then we have 2012, the Nickelback of Red Sox seasons. The year of Bobby Valentine, Daniel Bard’s demise and Alfredo Aceves: closer. It’s hard to remember now, but that team went through most of the first part of that year hovering around .500, never really diving into that horrible squad we remember. This is the best example of the west coast trip ruining the season, and it happened twice! On two separate west coast trips they won less than a third of their games, and then played significantly worse from that point forward than they had previously.

The narrative of the west coast trip will never die, and it’s refreshing to know there is some merit to it. Obviously, this isn’t a sample large enough to take any meaningful conclusions from, but rather to conserve a little bit of sanity. We all feel like the west coast trip ruins seasons, and we see that it happened first-hand in 2012. We also see that the team’s performance has fallen off after they return to the friendly confines of the east coast. This year the Sox are 3-1 on the west coast so far, but they still have time to get to .500 or worse.

There is only one solution to this problem: Ban the west coast.

Photo by Ed Szczepanski/USA Today Sports Images

Top Play (WPA): To the surprise of no one, Stephen Vogt’s two-run homer in the first inning was the clear top play, with a .161 WPA. Vogt took a 88 MPH Masterson-brand sinker(?) that didn’t live up to its name, and whacked the right field camera with it.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v112618683

Not only do the A’s have the top spot here, they also have every single top ten play in this game by WPA. The best Sox play was when Pedroia reached second on an errant throw by Marcus Semien in seventh inning for a glorious .006 WPA. You’d be hard-pressed to find a compliment for the Sox that doesn’t sound like a backhanded one.

Bottom Play (WPA): Mookie Betts grounding out for the first out of the game was the worst play by WPA, with a -.022 mark. Seriously. You’d think there’s a worse play than that, but with the A’s jumping all over Masterson early and often, no one really could make the situation any worse for either team. It’s not often that a team dooms itself within the span of a game’s first six outs.

Key Moment: Semi-famous writer guy Matthew Kory & I assumed it was when Justin Masterson awoke that morning. On a more serious note, I’ve gotta say it was Dustin Pedroia getting thrown out trying to take second base in the first inning. He hit a single to left, but Coco Crisp was having none of Pedroia taking an extra base and threw him out by a mile. The Sox needed all the help they could get with Masterson on the mound, and that was some ill-advised aggression when the Red Sox could not afford it.

Trend to Watch: Justin Masterson. There’s not much the Red Sox can do with him and his 6.37 ERA now. This is his second consecutive start having given up four or more runs while not clearing the 5th inning, and his third start like that this year. His average fastball velocity has dropped to a Jered Weaver-esque 87.8 MPH. He’s missing bats at a career-low 5.8% swinging strike rate, and no one is getting fooled on pitches in the zone – batters are making contact 95% of the time when they swing at pitches located there. Getting designated for assignment before his next start doesn’t sound too farfetched anymore, as Masterson is only earning $9.5 million this year, and the Red Sox have a few starters in Pawtucket that deserve some time in the major league rotation.

Coming Next: The Red Sox take on Sonny Gray, he of the 1.65 ERA & 2.66 FIP, in an afternoon game. Gray has put together a four-start streak of going 6+ innings while giving up two runs or less. The Red Sox really needed to jump all over Drew Pomeranz if they had wanted to win this series easily, but the offense flatlined, and now they have to contend with one of the league’s hottest starting pitchers in the rubber match just to win two of three in Oakland.

Photo by Ed Szczepanski/USA Today Sports Images