Series Preview - Red Sox (11-20) @ Rangers (13-17)

I'm gonna dub this one the series of 2 teams that I thought would be significantly better. Super catchy, I think DOB will actually use that on the broadcast. In the offseason, the Rangers finally looked like they were ready to compete for a playoff spot with some of their signings, but they have underperformed to this point. Let's look at the lack of matchups:

The Matchups

Friday, May 13th 8:05 PM - Nick Pivetta (0-4 6.08 ERA) vs Dane Dunning (1-1 3.38 ERA)

Saturday, May 14th 7:05 PM - TBD vs TBD

Sunday, May 15th 2:35 PM - TBD vs TBD

The Predictions

I expected there to be a lot of TBD on the board for this matchup, since it's been an odd week with an off day Monday, a two game series, and another off day yesterday. Wacha is still on the IL, so the off days were certainly welcome from our starters. Pivetta has been our least consistent starter to this point in the season, but his last start was easily his best so far, putting up 6 innings of no run ball against the White Sox. Outside of former Blue Jay Marcus Semien, he does't have a lot of experience facing this Rangers lineup.

Looking at the lineup on a whole, underperforming is actually an understatement. For how bad the people on Red Sox Twitter think Trevor Story has been, Marcus Semien has actually been that bad for the Rangers. He has 115 at bats, and 19 hits. That is good for a .165 average. He has 0 Home Runs, 8 RBI, and a .445 OPS. Their other big offseason acquisition, Corey Seager, has actually been the best hitter on their team, collecting 7 home runs up to this point. He has the highest AVG of the Ranger's top 9 batters, sitting at .243. And while I can sit here at my laptop and talk shit about their lineup not being able to hit above .250, they are still outscoring the Red Sox on the season, 120 runs scored to 107.

The Red Sox, on the other hand will get Dane Dunning. We have a sample size of about 1 game under our belts against Dunning with a lot success in that outing. Xander is 2 for 3 with a home run, Kiké is 2 for 3 with a double, and JD, Vazquez and Dugie all have a double off of him as well. In other words, we'll hit the shit out of the ball. Hopefully we get a repeat of Tuesday night, with guys getting on base and actually getting driven in, as opposed to our Berrios starts where we launch line drives right at their fielders. Bold prediction - Kiké gets his first dinger of the season. His average exit velo (again, only a sample of three ABs) is 98 MPH. He's gonna tag one and finally break out of his season-long slump. I noted on the last recap blog that he has some seriously loud outs, so the timing is all coming together perfectly.

Since neither teams are going to announce their starters for the rest of the series before I publish this, I'm gonna make my picks just on how I'm feeling. Sox in a sweep. Their lineup is just as anemic as ours, and their best pitcher this year so far has been Martin Perez. I love Martin Perez the guy, but I am very much looking forward to getting a chance to face Martin Perez the pitcher after watching him pitch in a Sox uniform for 2 years. And this is coming from the guy that would tweet at him before literally every start that we are going to skull fuck the other team. Smooth brains across the internet will say that the Red Sox are back, but my big and extremely grooved brain knows that it's just false hope and we are all going to be very sad again when we face the Astros next week.

Also, of note - Fuck Giannis, Fuck Grayson Allen, Fuck Tony DeAngelo, go C's go B's. Let's have us a fucking weekend eh?