By: Joe Thompson

Since the start of the season, the Boston Red Sox noticeably improved since the last two seasons; however, they still have some issues to fix if they want a serious shot of being World Series contenders.

The Red Sox have shown a tremendous ability to score runs in a hurry. They lead the league with 274 runs as well as a .298 team batting average. This year has been an incredible start for the offense, but it is unlikely that they will be able to hit at this pace the entire season.

Players such as Jackie Bradley Jr, Xander Bogaerts, and David Ortiz have been phenomenal so far this season, but they will not continue their hot streaks the entire season. For example, Jackie Bradley Jr. is on a 29 game hitting streak. He has definitely shown tremendous improvement over his first few years as a professional, but it will be almost impossible for him to continue hitting as well as he has. Bogaerts is more likely to continue his level of play since he already showed last year that he is a great hitter. Travis Shaw has already begun to slow down over the past couple weeks after his own hot start.

When the Red Sox don’t score a lot of runs they will need their pitching to step up and win them the game. So far this season, the Red Sox’s team ERA is 4.00. This is sixteenth in the majors, and they will not contend for the World Series if their pitchers continue to perform like this. A few starters for the Red Sox have had very poor starts to the season such as Clay Buchholz and David Price. Price has recently begun to play better, but Buchholz has continued to struggle against opposing offenses.

One positive for the Red Sox pitching is that the bullpen has performed very well. Craig Kimbrel, Junichi Tazawa, and Koji Uehara have played especially well. If the Red Sox can consistently get quality starts out of their starting pitchers then they usually have a very good chance of winning the game.

Other pitchers like Joe Kelly and Rick Porcello still have to prove that they will consistently pitch well enough to win. Porcello so far has played well as he has a 3.47 ERA, but Kelly has only made a few starts this season. Both of these pitchers performed very poorly over the majority of last season so it is vital for the Red Sox that they perform well to strengthen the pitching rotation.

The Red Sox have shown that they are a very good team, but they must improve if they are going to compete for a championship.