The Boston Red Sox Are Baseball's Sleeping Giant Heading into Second Half

The Boston Red Sox had a good first half.

No, really. They did. A 43-43 record is typically not the kind of thing a given team wants to write home about, but an even .500 showing in the first half qualifies as a victory for this Red Sox team.

You need more than two hands to count all the things that went wrong for Boston over the last couple of months. Most of it was injury-related.

Carl Crawford started the season on the disabled list, and is still on there as we speak. Same goes for would-be closer Andrew Bailey. Jacoby Ellsbury landed on the DL early in the season, and hasn't played since. Josh Beckett also had to spend some time on the DL. Ditto Clay Buchholz. Team heart and soul Dustin Pedroia is the latest Sox star to land on the DL, and indications are that he won't be back until late July or early August.

And that's only a fraction of the injury problems the Red Sox have had to deal with this season.

All of this would have been bad enough. It didn't help that Adrian Gonzalez hit just .283 with six home runs in the first half. Nor did it help that Jon Lester has an ERA of 4.49 and a WHIP over 1.30 through 18 starts. Beckett has had his own struggles. Daniel Bard was an absolute disaster as a starting pitcher.

In addition to the injuries and the underperforming players, the Red Sox have also had to deal with an unusual amount of drama, even for Boston. New manager Bobby Valentine publicly ripped Kevin Youkilis just two weeks into the season. David Ortiz has gone a couple of different rants, including one in which he referred to Boston's clubhouse as a "[crap]hole."

Because, you know, that's the kind of thought that simply needs to be out there when the team is struggling.

All of this reeks of a team that should be well under .500 and an utter disappointment to baseball fans and wide-eyed children everywhere. The various nations that surround Red Sox Nation love to say that the Red Sox suck, even when things are going well, but this is a time when the Red Sox truly should suck.

They don't. To this point, they've merely been mediocre. Though it is often confused as meaning such, saying a team is mediocre is not the same as saying a team is "bad."

To paraphrase what Ortiz told reporters (via WEEI.com) after the Red Sox wrapped up their first half with a loss to the New York Yankees at Fenway Park, it could be worse.

Indeed. And let's be honest, things couldn't have been much better for the Red Sox in the first half, not with their laundry list of issues. At an even .500, they're right about where they should be.

And this is what's going to be different between the team's first half and the team's second half. In the second half of the season, things should be better.

A lot better.

The good news is already starting to roll in. On Tuesday, Nick Cafardo of The Boston Globe reported this:

"

So the plan is for Red Sox to activate Jacoby Ellsbury on Friday and Clay Buchholz on Sat. Trying to deal an OF, preferably Sweeney.

— Nick Cafardo (@nickcafardo) July 11, 2012"

So right off the bat, the Red Sox are going to start the second half with the 2011 AL MVP runner-up in center field and one of their top starting pitchers on the mound the day after.

When healthy, Ellsbury is one of the most dynamic players in the game. Buchholz, meanwhile, posted an ERA of 3.23 in the seven starts that preceded his stint on the disabled list, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

Meanwhile, Alex Prewitt of the Globe reported a couple days ago that rookie third baseman Will Middlebrooks should also return for the start of the second half in Tampa Bay.

There's more.

On Wednesday, Chad Finn of the Globe reported that Crawford will start a new rehab assignment on Thursday night. He's been waylaid by wrist and elbow problems that were followed by a groin strain, but he's just a couple weeks away from returning to left field.

So even with Pedroia out for a few more weeks, the Red Sox are very close to being healthier than they were at any point in the first half of the season. They were forced to scrape by using minor league players and fringe major leaguers, but that's not going to be the case for much longer.

If an undermanned Red Sox club can go .500, it stands to reason that a Red Sox club well-stocked with actual big leaguers can do a few games better. 

That's a good sign. Another good sign is the the underperforming players on the Red Sox should start playing well. Both their track records and their numbers say so.

That list starts with Adrian Gonzalez. His track record suggests that he's a .300 hitter capable of posting a slugging percentage over .500. His .283 average and .416 slugging percentage therefore should get a boost in the second half.

And it's not crazy to think that they will. Gonzalez hit .372 in the 19 games leading up to the All-Star break, according to Baseball-Reference.com. He only hit one home run in that span, but he added five doubles. His .472 slugging percentage over the last 19 games represents an upgrade from where he was.

Assuming Gonzalez does get it going, the Red Sox are going to have two very dangerous hitters in the middle of their batting order in him and David Ortiz. A dynamic duo like that is something that's been missing from Boston's offensive attack all season. 

Yet the Red Sox still rank second in baseball in runs scored. Other teams in the AL should be frightened of how scary their offense is going to be once Ellsbury and Crawford are back healthy and Gonzalez starts hitting like himself again.

Pitching-wise, the first order of business for the Red Sox is to get Jon Lester squared away. His struggles have been frustrating to behold this season, but it's not as bad as it seems.

Per FanGraphs, Lester's FIP (fielding independent pitching) checks in at 3.57, nearly a full run lower than his ERA. His BABIP of .326 is well above his career average.

These are signs that his luck should even out. Lester can further help himself by not mentally breaking down every time something doesn't go his way.

Josh Beckett is another guy whose FIP is much lower than his ERA. FanGraphs has his FIP calculated at 3.69, well below his 4.43 ERA. 

Even despite that, there are good vibes where Beckett is concerned. Per Baseball-Reference.com, he has an ERA of 3.46 over his last eight starts. That's including his recent shellacking at the hands of the Yankees.

The first key for the Lester-Beckett-Buchholz trio is to stay healthy. Beyond that, the numbers point towards the three of them being a strong core of Boston's starting rotation in the second half. 

They'll take what they can get from the back end of the rotation, especially if they can get more of what they got in the first half. Felix Doubront had his ups and downs, but he got the job done more often than not. Aaron Cook pitched in with a couple of solid performances. Same goes for Franklin Morales.

Daniel Bard, the one guy who completely flunked as a starter, is trying to make his way back to the big club as a reliever. That process has hit some snags here and there, but at least the Red Sox know he's down there if they run into a situation where they need a reliever.

It bodes well for them that this isn't likely to happen. After a rocky start, Boston's bullpen turned into one of the league's best. There are some things Bobby Valentine has struggled with this season and managing his bullpen isn't one of them. The repair job he performed on the bullpen is to be commended.

For the Red Sox to get hot and make a run at a postseason berth, they're going to need four things: better health, better hitting, better pitching and more good work out of the bullpen.

They stand to benefit from all four of these things in the second half.

It bodes well for them that they don't have a ton of ground to make up. The AL East title is probably a lost cause, but they'll start the second half just 2.5 games out in the wild card race.

The Baltimore Orioles currently hold the second wild card spot with a record of 45-40. That puts them on a pace to win just 86 games.

That many wins should be the target for the Red Sox, and it is by no means an unattainable target. They have to win 43 of their final 76 games, a winning percentage of .566.

So it's not like the Red Sox have to play .600 baseball over the next two and a half months in order to qualify for a postseason berth. They'll be able to get away with a lesser effort.

They'd already be doomed if there was still only one wild card spot up for grabs. If that was the case, there'd probably be rumblings about Ben Cherington looking to go into fire sale mode at the trade deadline right now.

There are no such rumblings (John Tomase's suggestions are just that, suggestions). The reason there are no such rumblings is because Cherington has to know as well as anyone what the Red Sox really are:

A sleeping giant.

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