NEW YORK — For the better part of seven weeks, Red Sox Manager Alex Cora has been begging his team to control the strike zone.
The message isn’t getting through.
Wednesday, the Red Sox had a pregame meeting where, once again, the message was clear: chase less, take your walks and trust the guy behind you.
And once again, the Red Sox offense didn’t listen as they mustered just four hits in a mostly lifeless 5-2 loss against the Yankees. They were swept in the three-game series, scoring just five runs.
In the third inning, Kiké Hernandez took a fastball right down the middle for strike one. Then he struck out swinging wildly on a curveball so far out of the zone he lost the grip of his bat and it flung into the air as he did a full 360-degree turn before setting his helmet down.
In a key spot in the sixth, Hunter Renfroe chased a change-up almost a foot outside the zone and threw his bat at the ball, which he popped up to shallow right field.
And in the ninth, Rafael Devers just needed to reach base safely to bring the tying run to the plate, but swung at all three pitches he saw from the Yankees’ erratic closer Arodlis Chapman. None of them were in the zone.
This is who the Red Sox have been for a long time now, and Cora can’t seem to change it.
“It’s about controlling the strike zone,” Cora said. “That’s it. Obviously, we didn’t do it today. I look back at video or the tape or whatever you want to call it, I bet there were a lot of outs that were out of the strike zone. A lot of swings out of the strike zone. That’s the first thing you have to do, control the strike zone.”
How many times can he say it?
He said it early in the year, when the Sox were scoring runs despite an aggressive plate approach. He said it in the middle of the year, when the Sox saw their chase rate soaring. And he continues to say it now, as their 31% swing rate on pitches outside of the zone is the worst among all 30 teams.
They’re swinging like crazy and teams know it. They pitch differently against them because of it.
“I think it’s kind of what everybody sees,” Renfroe said. “We’re having trouble stringing hits together…. We need to relax and go out there and play our game. We know that we’re good. We know we have those guys that we need to get us where we want to go. We’ve just got to continue to stay focused on ourselves and stay within ourselves.”
Andrew Heaney hadn’t thrown a good game in weeks. He hadn’t held a team to two hits or fewer over seven innings in four years. But he did it on Wednesday. The Sox had just two hits off the lefty.
“He pitched a lot differently than his previous one and the one we saw from him in Anaheim,” Cora said. “This is a guy who relies a lot on his four-seamer. I think he’s second in the league, after Robbie Ray, of left-handed starters. You saw right away – 1-0 change-up to Kiké Hernandez. He let us know right away where he was going.
“We did an OK job. You know what I mean by OK. There were some really good at-bats and then there were some empty ones. To produce at this level, you have to keep the line moving, you’ve got to walk, you’ve got to get deep into counts, you’ve got to recognize what’s going on in the game. I’m not saying that’s not the case. The guys have been watching. But we haven’t been able to make adjustments.”
The Sox had a few good at-bats in the game, including a key walk by Hernandez in the sixth and a walk by Xander Bogaerts in the ninth. But otherwise it was more of the same.
Renfroe said the Sox’s lineup is “overanxious” and “trying to do too much instead of just taking a walk and allowing the next guy to go up there.”
“Obviously we’re upset,” he said. “We’re pretty (expletive) at ourselves. We wanted to come out here and we wanted to win the series. I think that kind of sums up a few weeks of us not playing up to our potential and I think everybody’s frustrated with themselves and kind of beating themselves up.”
A pregame talk didn’t do the trick.
Cora said it was a quiet clubhouse after the game.
All the talking hasn’t worked. Maybe silence will.
“It’s very quiet today, I’ll tell you that,” Cora said. “It’s very quiet in the clubhouse, and understandably so. It’s a different feeling than early in the season when we (won the first seven games against the Yankees). All that stuff is in the past…
“We’re an offensive club, and we know that this club is supposed to score runs, and we will. But today it’s very quiet in there, and I understand. It’s not a good feeling.”
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