Phillies 4, Red Sox 1: Cristopher Sanchez’s complete game exposes the weaknesses in Boston’s lineup

Of the 13 position players currently on the Red Sox active roster, only Masataka Yoshida has a “k” appear anywhere in their name. However, if you peruse the Red Sox box score on a daily basis, you’ll find no such shortage when it comes to that letter.

Tonight, the Red Sox struck out 12 times in a listless loss to a dominant Cristopher Sanchez, who threw a complete game and is becoming a force in the frightening top half of the Phillies rotation. So on one hand, the Red Sox ran into an excellent starting pitcher and caught him on a night where they probably weren’t going to beat him anyway. But on the other hand, some of the ugliest aspects of this team were on full display for exposure — And boy did Sanchez expose them!

Specifically, the problematic patterns include:

• The Red Sox strike out way too much
• The Red Sox struggle to score via anything but the home run in low scoring games
• The Red Sox offense stinks on the road, largely because of the first two items

So when they run into a good pitcher on the road like they did tonight, their homer happy hacks fail in miserable and predictable fashion. Consequently, they have no real way to claw back into a game, even when the bullpen works hard to keep the door ajar, which also happened in this game.

Picking up where they left off last night, the Red Sox offense has now struck out 28 times in the last two games, and it’s part of a larger season trend in which the Red Sox have struck out over 26 percent of the time on the road. The only team in baseball to strike out at a higher clip than them on the road is the Colorado Rockies, who are both flirting with the worst record of all time (post 1900), and have a built in crippling disadvantage offensively when it comes to road games. (For comparison, the division leading Blue Jays only strike out 18.4% of the time on the road.)

With this approach, the Red Sox simply have no answer if the ball doesn’t fly out of the ballpark like it did for them on Sunday. So far, in the five games since the All-Star break, they’ve stranded 56 runners on base and scored only two runs via anything other than a home run, which also happens to be the same number of times they’ve committed catcher’s interference. (Yeah, that happened again tonight.)

Zooming out on the road strike out problem we’ve seen over the entire season, the Sox have now struck out over 100 times more on the road than at home despite actually playing one additional game at Fenway Park.

So unless they go out and get another top of the rotation starter to pair with Garrett Crochet where they can win a couple of games 1-0 or 2-1 in a short series, they’re going to get exposed if they make it to October because that’s a month where you tend to see some really good starting pitching on the road.

Here’s the graphic video of Sanchez carving up the Red Sox bats again and again and again:

Studs

The bullpen work by Brennan Bernardino, Chris Murphy and Greg Weissert:

They kept the Phillies off the board in their 4.2 innings of work to close out their half of the game. If the Sox had a more resourceful offense, maybe they make a game of it.

Duds

Roman Anthony : 0-4 with four strike outs. A golden sombrero for our golden boy.

Romy Gonzalez: 0-3 with three strike outs. He’s also 0-18 since that Rockies series, and has had some huge issues at the plate since the quality of the opposing pitching improved.

Carlos Narvaez: 0-3 at the plate, and another catcher’s interference infraction.

Alex Bregman’s quad: Bregman simply can’t run right now in fear of reinjuring his leg. He’s right to take it easy, but if the situation is this precarious, he’s also playing with fire. It doesn’t seem to impact his swing, but watching Bregman try to move out of the box is an uncomfortable experience.

Dick Fitts: Allowed four runs in just 3.1 innings of work. Not gonna cut it when you’re facing the top half of a good team’s rotation on the road, and especially not with the way this offense operates.

Play of the game:

For its uniqueness, catcher’s interference for the second day in a row is hard to top: