Boston Red Sox's Remarks on AL-NL Differences Should Raise Expectations

The Boston Red Sox are coming home on the heels of a barely-winning road trip (5-4), having played all nine games in relatively uncharted National League venues, no less.

Under ordinary circumstances, that sentence might warrant nods of pleasant surprise or even spot-on satisfaction. After all, it is a bit much to ask any team, even a pennant-caliber club like Boston, to follow another league’s rules for nine consecutive outings.

The circumstances, however, were not so extraordinary in that three genuinely tough bouts with the Philadelphia Phillies were sandwiched by visits to the barely-.500 Pirates and the MLB’s worst team in Houston. On paper, a 6-3 or 7-2 run during this trip would not have been much to ask.

Regardless, now that the Sox have sweetened the final taste of this venture with a rightful sweep of the Astros, it is time to revisit what happened during the trip’s sour outset.

The Red Sox are returning home on Monday with a strictly A.L.-based slate ahead of them for the remainder of the regular season. This means they will have that designated hitter they openly pined for in Pittsburgh for all of the next 79 games.

With that luxury, they will now be taxed with proving that deleting the DH for a couple of series is, in fact, an adverse and disadvantageous task. They can do that by showing how much they have grown from the tribulations of the past 10 days and ultimately meeting their preseason expectations.

After starting their trip at 1-4, including a 0-2 start against the Pirates, the Sox seemed, in retrospect, to build enough character to win each of their next four games.

And they did. With only eight reliable bats at their disposal at a time, they outscored the opposition, 24-12, and aggregated 40 hits in those four outings. That amounted to a precise nightly average of six runs on 10 hits.

Imagine, then, what they can do going forward when they fill all nine of their batting slots exclusively with men who were born to hit, not hurl?

It is already common knowledge that, far more often than not, having a DH in lieu of your pitcher makes for a more ideal batting order. But even when the rules do not permit that, a team like the Red Sox ought to have enough depth to compensate the loss of their ninth hitter.

It is the business of fans and pundits, not of players and managers, to make proclamations about the American League, National League, their differences and how those differences influence the game.

But the likes of Boston DH David Ortiz, infielder Kevin Youkilis and manager Terry Francona still chose to speak up against the N.L.’s outdated policy while they were in the midst of last weekend’s Pittsburgh series. Accordingly, the pressure is on their team to follow through.

To be fair, Francona himself can now breathe easier knowing that he will no longer have to decide whether to keep a hot starter active, like he did with Josh Beckett on Sunday, or take him out early in favor of a real hitter.

Nor is the Ortiz-Adrian Gonzalez dilemma relevant any longer―at least not until the World Series, at which point the Sox would be hypothetically required to test everything they learned from their experiences in Pennsylvania.

Until then, the rest of the schedule ought to be akin to sliding the doughnut off one’s bat and carrying the lumber to the plate.

If squeaking out a .556 winning percentage in an eight-batter, one-pitcher, nine-game road trip is surmounting adversity, then things should logically balance out so that the Sox end up winning roughly 50 of their remaining 79 games.

Incidentally, they are 49-34 at the moment, and many initially projected them to push triple-digits in the win column.

In that sense, not much has changed. The only difference is the Sox themselves―who had to cram early just to salvage their contender’s certificate after an inexplicable 2-10 start―have professed to be the recent objects of hardship.

Great teams overcome and grow from hardship. Is Boston a great team?

We’ll see over the next three months.