Glorious. A fantastic moment to end what was probably the most exciting game of the year. The game’s win probability chart looks like the roller coaster ride metaphor I used to describe the Red Sox offense that morning. While I don’t love the turning point narrative that came out of that win, it is easy to see why it exists. Christian Vazquez’s blast off Cody Allen propelled the team to a half-game lead in the American League East, which they have pushed to five by going 13-3 in August (through Sunday’s game), and the offense has been anything but a roller-coaster.

Over the Red Sox’s 16 games in August, the offense as a group is slashing .278/.352/.466, and averaging 6.0 runs per game. Six runs a night is solid output and can certainly take some stress off the pitching staff. When stacked up against every other team’s output in their last 16 games, the Red Sox’s mark ranks as the fifth highest, which is more in line with where this group was expected to rank as an offense. Sixteen games is obviously a much smaller sample than the entire season, so this could just be an oddity of this grouping of games. But looking at the team’s run scoring in 16-game groupings reveals that this latest run is the third high-point for the team this year:

The weak pitching of the Oakland Athletics and Texas Rangers was a real boon for the offense around the quarter-mark of the season (Games 43-46), as was the trip to Toronto followed by another series with Texas (Games 81-84). Now around Game 120 we see another peak. Maybe this team just works toward being at high points every 40 games. But really, it is clear how things have been on a steady climb around that awesome game against Cleveland. The 12 runs they posted that night pulled up the (somewhat arbitrary) 16-game average, and it has continued upward since.

Critically, it is not just the increased average output over the last 16 games. It is the consistency with which they are doing so that has also been important. Relying again on coefficient of variation (CV), which is a standardized measure of dispersion around an average, the Red Sox’s offense has been the sixth least variable in their run scoring over the team’s last 16 games. And of the five teams who have been more consistent in their run scoring, only the Cardinals’ 6.88 runs per game is better than the Red Sox. Basically, the Red Sox have put together a stretch where they are scoring a lot, and are doing so with great consistency: this last 16-game run is the least variable the Red Sox offense has been this season. That is a potent combination and a welcome change from the ups-and-downs of the season to this point.

The Red Sox have put together a stretch where they are scoring a lot, and are doing so with great consistency: this last 16-game run is the least variable the Red Sox offense has been.

An interesting aspect of this run in August is that it comes without Mookie Betts (66 wRC+), Xander Bogaerts (72) or Hanley Ramirez (64) contributing much. Each has had critical hits in big moments, which is excellent, but they have not been leading the way this month. Rather, Vazquez (184), Andrew Benintendi (181), Rafael Devers (169) and Mitch Moreland (153) have been carrying the load. I suppose this fits with my statement three weeks ago that it seems like as soon as a couple of players get going, another couple of guys struggle. Only lately, as with two other times this season, they are producing a lot of runs. Ideally, even if the who’s hot-or-cold shifts around, the run scoring aspect holds, or at least does not falloff as terribly as it has the two other times the Red Sox have posted similar high run-scoring peaks.

August has been a fun month so far. The cosmic ballet has continued. The Red Sox have consistently scored runs, often by way of the home run (1.44 per game in August through Sunday, up from 0.98 per game through the end of July), and won games, including three walk-offs. Their top prospect has risen to stardom at the big league level and rattled a rival’s end-of-game weapon in the process. Their previous top prospect is a strong candidate for Rookie of the Year honors. Chris Sale and Craig Kimbrel are on the Red Sox. Rick Porcello might be figuring things out. Their division lead has continued to increase, allowing important players, Dustin Pedroia and David Price, to avoid rushing back and risking further injury. This is all good stuff. Of course things are always more fun when the team is winning and playing good baseball, but it sure makes all of the nonsense about this team being unlikeable look even dumber now. The bottom line is that this team is really good, and has shown it over the last three weeks.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

Major league sources throughout the game said that the Red Sox had been focused on bullpen help, showing little interest in some of the available bats on the market. The team believes that its offense will be adequate so long as players perform to their track records.

At this point, that is a pretty huge ‘so long as’ hanging out there. Simply put, the offense is a mess. Since hitting their high point in the standings at 49-35 on July 4 (with a 4 game cushion atop the AL East standings), they are 8-14. This is primarily because the offense as a group is slashing .217/.285/.323, and averaging only 3.45 runs per game. That is not enough to get it done. Mookie Betts has not been the Mookie of 2016 at the plate, Andrew Benintendi is in the midst of another rut, and Xander Bogearts, Mitch Moreland, Hanley Ramirez, and Dustin Pedroia are all playing through injuries that are clearly affecting their performance. Couple that with my finding that many of the current Red Sox players have a history of weaker second halves, and the outlook is not so rosy.

With that said, they have shown glimmers of breaking out over this rough stretch. As an example, from July 19th through the 21st, they scored 5, 6, and 6 runs. That is not exactly lighting the world on fire with offensive might, but it was something positive for this group. They then followed it up with 3, 2, and 0. Lunchbag letdown. This sort of (relative) boom or bust aspect has been there for the Red Sox all year. Have a look at a simple histogram of their runs scored totals:

Something of interest: if you add up the totals of the 10+ bins and compare that number to the zero bin you will find the Red Sox have been shutout more times than they have scored 10-or-more runs in a game. They are one of nine teams for whom that statement is true. If the totals for those categories were four and two, as they are for the Blue Jays then maybe this would not be that big a deal – although the Blue Jays only getting to the ten-runs scored mark twice is not something I expected. But the Red Sox’s nine scoreless nights are more than any other team and the eight 10+ run nights is middle of the pack.

It is not breaking news that a team will not score its average runs per game total every night out. After all you cannot score 4.65 runs in a game, right? The point is that teams will vary around their average, and some will vary more than others. I suspected that the Red Sox were one of the more variable teams, as they have seemed to exhibit this roller coaster of run scoring over the course of the season. By coefficient of variation, which is a standardized measure of dispersion around an average, the Red Sox are the eighth most variable team in their run scoring:

	Team	R/G	sd(R/G)	CV
1	WSN	5.57	4.24	0.761
2	SFG	3.91	2.94	0.752
3	CLE	4.89	3.57	0.730
4	KCR	4.41	3.22	0.730
5	PIT	4.25	3.10	0.729
6	ATL	4.60	3.29	0.715
7	DET	4.88	3.49	0.715
8	BOS	4.65	3.32	0.714
9	BAL	4.64	3.30	0.711
10	SEA	4.72	3.33	0.706

So my suspicion about the all-or-nothingness of the Red Sox’s offense was not far off. Relative to the rest of the league, they have dispersed their run scoring quite a lot. From night-to-night it is difficult to anticipate what we are going to get. Not as difficult as it is for the high-scoring Nationals, who have 18 10+ run games, or for the low-scoring Giants, who, with eight shutouts, are on the Red Sox’s heels in that undesirable department. But the Sox are still up there in run scoring variability.

Now, I am not exactly sure what to make of this. There is no relation between variability in run scoring and winning percentage, which should be fairly obvious as run scoring is only half the battle of a baseball game. Run prevention is just as important. On offense, ideally you score a lot, all of the time, or at least more often than you don’t. But the Red Sox have not been able to consistently score runs. It is not really a luck or sequencing thing either. For example, BaseRuns has them as a 4.57 R/G group. The Red Sox just have not had long stretches of games where opponents can’t get them out. It seems like as soon as a couple of guys get going, a couple of other guys start to struggle. Or the group only clicks as a unit for a few games. This will contribute to the ups-and-downs in run scoring that we have seen thus far.

Having Rafael Devers in the lineup rather than the Deven Marrero/Tzu-Wei Lin/Pablo Sandoval/Josh Rutledge carousel should help. Having Nunez as Devers’ complement at third and a threat off the bench should help. Having Brock Holt (and Nunez) around to give the regulars a day-off here and there should help. Getting those regulars healthy should help (a lot). There is no doubt that is a lot of shoulds, but add them all together and I can see why the front office was content to roll forward with the current group. Ideally they get rolling in the same positive direction, and post big run totals night-in and night-out. There’s no two ways about it: the bats need to wake up if this team is going to fight off the Yankees and Rays for the division crown.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports