It is early in the season, and like any season we are overreacting on the problems with the Red Sox. Lack of offense, Ortiz, bullpen, blah blah blah. I am not saying I am not one of them, far from it actually, but there is another problem that doesn't seem to get talked about by fans.
The Twins stole 3 bases yesterday, 2 by Denard Span and another by Nick Punto. To put it lightly, this isn't the first time this has been a problem. Opponents are 11 of 12 in stolen base attempts against Martinez this season, and 1 for 1 on Varitek. Last season V-Mart only threw out 11% of the batter that ran on him, and Varitek only threw out 13%. It is an interesting problem for the Red Sox, who have built a team that is supposed to prevent runs through solid defense. I would think it would be hard to do that when every single is quickly made into a double.
Twice last season a team stole 8 bases against the Sox in a single game! Think about that for a second. Now that has happened yet this year, but I see no reason why it won't. It used to be that the Sox would slug their ways to wins, but this team was supposed to be different. Good pitching, great fielding, run prevention was supposed to be the keywords this season. Just seems odd that they left the whole throwing guys out completely out of the equation.
I don't know what the answer to this is. Tek is only a little better defensively then V-Mart, and obviously V-Mart is 100 times the hitter Tek is. I know some numbers are always inflated, because I could steal on Wakefield, but still this problem is bigger then the 1 out of 5 games the Wake will pitch.
So I ask you sports fans, how do you fix this problem? Will they? Because you can't just let every guy that gets on base stroll his way to 2nd base.
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