Analyzing Why Fenway Park Has Become a House of Horrors for Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox did not have a fun series in Kansas City against the lowly Royals. They won the first game easily enough, but they dropped the next two in frustrating fashion.

It's all water under the bridge now. The Red Sox are starting a nice six-game homestand at Fenway Park on Thursday night. First up is a four-game series against the Cleveland Indians, and then the Seattle Mariners come to town for a two-game series.

One's first instinct is to say that this homestand is a shot for the Red Sox to make up some ground in the AL East, but nothing can be taken for granted with this team at Fenway Park this season. On the road, the Sox are 8-8 on the season. At home, they're 4-10 (and on their way to 4-11 tonight).

Those numbers should be reversed. And if they were, the Sox would be 18-12 and right in the thick of the AL East race.

This has to be a fluke, right?

Not necessarily. The Sox obviously aren't going to maintain a .286 winning percentage over a full season's worth of games at their home digs, but they've been under-performing at Fenway for quite a while now.

In 2010, the Sox went 46-35 at home. In 2011, they went 45-36 in Fenway.

To put these numbers in perspective, the Sox went 55-26 at home in 2004, and 51-30 at home in 2007, winning the World Series both years. Even when they were somewhat mediocre in 2008 and 2009, the Sox managed to win 56 games at home both seasons.

So in the span of just a couple of seasons, the Sox have gone from being a dominant home team to being a decidedly mediocre home team (relative to other contenders, of course).

Finding Fenway Park Hitters

What's concerning about the Red Sox's recent struggles at home is that it's actually quite easy to build a team that is custom designed to succeed at Fenway Park.

The trick is to find hitters who can take advantage of the Green Monster, and pitchers who can keep opposing hitters from doing the same. Teams constructed with players like these may struggle in other parks, but they should dominate at Fenway.

The Red Sox have made acquisitions in recent years that prove they're not run by complete dolts. Trading for Adrian Gonzalez before the 2011 season was a stroke of genius, as he's a lefty who likes to hit the ball the other way in the air, making him a perfect fit for Fenway Park. Sure enough, he hit .347 at Fenway last year.

More recently, the Sox went out and signed Cody Ross, another perfect Fenway Park hitter. Ross' power is to the left side of the field, and he's already shown it off with a couple moonshots over the Green Monster. He has a .526 slugging percentage at Fenway this season, with three home runs, four doubles and a triple.

It is, however, worth noting that the biggest free-agent acquisition the Sox have made in recent years was anything but a Fenway Park signing.

Carl Crawford is not a prototypical Fenway Park hitter. He has power, but he's more of a line-drive hitter with gap power, and Fenway Park doesn't have the same kind of gaps as other parks. Crawford has also never been a player capable of hitting the ball to left field with authority on a consistent basis. His power alley is to right field, and hitting a home run to right at Fenway is awfully tough.

Crawford did hit better at Fenway Park last season than he did on the road, but he didn't exactly tear the cover off the ball at Fenway. He hit just .276 in home games, and he was only able to hit two triples at Fenway. He hit five triples on the road.

Fenway is problematic for Crawford because it's not a place where he can best put his speed and other skills to use. The Red Sox gambled on him anyway, and they're losing.

But Boston's recent struggles at Fenway have less to do with their hitting, and more to do with their pitching. 

The John Lackey Debacle and More Pitching Woes

The Red Sox's biggest pitching failure in the last several seasons is without a doubt the signing of John Lackey. The warning signs of a decline were there when Lackey was a free agent, but the Red Sox signed him to a big contract anyway.

Since joining the Red Sox, Lackey's strikeouts have dipped, his walks have increased and opponents have had little trouble getting hits off him. He was particularly bad at Fenway last season, posting a 6.65 ERA and a .314 BAA. He allowed 12 home runs at Fenway last season, and eight on the road.

The Lackey signing was supposed to give the Red Sox stability behind Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, and it didn't.

Here we are over a month into the 2012 regular season, and the Red Sox still don't have any stability behind Lester and Beckett. Clay Buchholz has been an absolute mess all season, and it's worth noting that he's already allowed 10 home runs at Fenway this season. Felix Doubront has an ERA of 6.00 and a BAA of .306 at Fenway. Daniel Bard got knocked around by the Oakland A's in his last start at Fenway.

Even Lester has had his issues at Fenway this season. He has an ERA over 11.00 in two starts at home. 

Of Boston's five current starters, only Beckett has pitched well in his Fenway starts.

So things could obviously be worse, but it doesn't bode well for the Red Sox that four of their five starting pitchers have had struggles at home.

Bad pitching in general is largely to blame for Boston's struggles at home this season. The Red Sox entered Thursday with 171 runs allowed on the season, and they've allowed 95 of those at home, per FanGraphs. That's an average of nearly seven runs per game, and the Sox have also allowed a staggering 26 home runs at home this season.

The Sox had this problem last season, too, giving up 410 runs and 77 home runs at Fenway Park. That's an average of about five runs per game. In 2007, they allowed less than 4.4 runs per game at Fenway. 

What this tells us, in a nutshell, is that the Red Sox's pitching has been a major problem for quite a while now.

That much should be obvious, and that doesn't reflect well on the guys putting these teams together.

Pointing Fingers

I'm trying to think of a better word than "negligence," but there really is no better word than that to describe how Boston's pitching has sunk to such a sorry state.

Over the last two seasons, and this offseason in particular, the Red Sox haven't been proactive in terms of fixing their pitching. In fact, through bad signings and their own inaction, the Sox let their pitching go from being a strength to being a weakness.

Boston's bad pitching hasn't been a problem exclusive to Fenway Park. Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe crunched the numbers and was horrified by what he found. Pitching has been a major problem dating back to last September.

Between now and then was an offseason in which the Red Sox could have upgraded their pitching. Instead, new Sox GM Ben Cherington was content to add pieces here and there and hope for the best. His best move was trading for Andrew Bailey, but it didn't take long for his injury issues to pop up again.

The Red Sox don't need to worry about their offense. They rank among the top five highest-scoring teams in the majors, and they're not likely to slide down the ranks at any point this season.

A lot of this offense is going to go to waste this season, and that's simply because the Red Sox don't have the arms to back up their bats. And since Fenway Park is a park that favors hitters, it stands to reason that the Red Sox are indeed going to have a harder time winning games at home than on the road.

So if you want the short version of this very, very long story, here it is:

The Red Sox aren't winning at Fenway Park because they're just not a well-rounded team. They have offense, but they don't have pitching, and it's hard to win ballgames without good pitching.

It's Baseball 101. It seems the Red Sox need to take this course again.

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