Red Sox Early Season Struggles

     The Red Sox are off to an up and down start overall this season. Their offense has not struggled much at all this season lead mainly by Hanley Ramirez and his .295 Batting Average, 9 Home runs and 20 RBI's. The Red Sox offense has not struggled much scoring an average of just over 5 runs per game. There have been 7 games where the team has scored 7 runs or more this season. The team has also had to have many comeback wins in the late inning including two walk off wins.  The problems for this team thus far have come in the pitching staff. The majority of the struggles are in the Starting rotation.
   
  The team named Clay Buchholz their number one pitcher in hopes he would be their ace. This has not happened as he is 1-3 with a 5.76 ERA in his 5 starts. Newly signed Rick Porcello was supposed to also do well and he is 1-2 with a 6.48 ERA in his 4 starts. The worst pitcher so far is Wade Miley who is 1-2 with a 8.64 ERA and has walked 11 batters in his 4 starts. Justin Masterson is 1-2 with a 5.16 ERA and Joe Kelly has pitched the best so far as he is 1-0 with a 4.94 ERA so far. So far the team is the worst in the MLB in team ERA with a 5.23 and have allowed 10 more earned runs than any other team allowing 112 earned runs so far. They are also 5th in the league in home runs allowed already allowing 25 home runs. Your rotation is expected to be able to throw the majority of the innings of them game and this far the team has had 5 games where the starter couldn't make it through the 4th inning and in 4 of them they didn't even throw 3 innings. The team is lucky to have won 11 games so far and are also lucky that their division is weak overall so they are still just 2 games out of first place. If their rotation continues to struggle they will need to trade their young prospects to pick up Cole Hamels.

    With their lineup as powerful as it is so far this rotation only needs to be mediocre for this team to succeed. Their lineup has shown that they can score 5 or more runs almost every game so if their rotation ac start keeping the game close this team will win a lot more often. No team can win consistently when they are having to come from behind in the late innings every game. I hope that the team does give up some of their young prospects to pick up Hamels because with him as the ace and their other starters just being mediocre this lineup will score runs and this team can go on a playoff run this year.