Boston Red Sox at Oakland Athletics / MLB 2022 Predictions & Preview
The Red Sox have climbed their way out of last place and are now looking to insert themselves into the postseason chase, where everyone thought they would be in March.
Meanwhile, the A’s are coming off a sweep at the hands of the Astros, which has pushed them deeper into last place, and everyone wonders just how much longer this team can remain viable in Oakland.
Boston Red Sox Overview
Maybe it was just too cold in Boston for baseball this April. The Red Sox finished the first calendar month of the season with just 12 home runs, an average of less than 3.5 runs per game, and a slash line of .225/.273/.336.
Fortunately for Red Sox fans, things heated up in the month of May. That home run total jumped to 37 in the 28 May games, the average runs scored leapt by more than two runs to 5.7, and the slash line for the month was .282/.356/.476.
It’s like it was an entirely different team, which it needed to be after spending the first several weeks of the season looking up the entire American League East, including the Baltimore Orioles.
It appears to be a turnaround fueled by a shave. Manager Alex Cora came into the season sporting a beard for the first time, and through 29 games – a 10-19 record – he kept the beard. But saying he needed to reset the season, Cora shaved.
That first game he shaved his beard, the Red Sox broke a five-game losing streak, and they’ve gone 14-8 ever since.
Oakland A’s Overview
Sadly for the A’s there is no quick shave to solve what ails them. They have the quietest bats in all of baseball, and there is no reason to think that that would change, even with the hottest of heat waves hitting the East Bay.
The A’s are dead last in the Majors in batting average and on-base percentage and second from the bottom in slugging. They have 34 home runs on the season, compared to the 37 by the Red Sox, just in the month of May.
During their three straight losses to the Astros, they scored a total of six runs. In a three-game stretch of losses last week in Texas, they scored ten total runs. In 19 games so far this season, the A’s have failed to score even two runs.
You are not going to win a lot of baseball games with that kind of production, and you are not going to draw a lot of baseball fans either.
These three games with the Red Sox is the end of a 10-game homestand in Oakland, and in the seven games already played, their top attendance was 8,753. It was one of just two games that topped 8,000 fans, while two other games failed to reach even 3,500 fans in attendance.
For the season, Oakland is averaging 7,547 fans per game, and by the end of the season, that number is likely to be even lower.
Red Sox at Athletics Prediction
The Red Sox are scheduled to send Nathan Eovaldi to the mound on Friday night. His last time out, he threw a rare complete game, beating the Orioles 5-3. It was his second straight start won by the Red Sox after a string of five consecutive losses.
The A’s counter with James Kaprielian, who so far is winless on the season in six starts. Most recently, he pitched against the Rangers, giving up four earned runs and a pair of home runs in 4.1 innings. His outing before that, he allowed five runs in five innings against the Mariners.
This one is easy. Roll with Eovaldi and the far better bats of the Red Sox. Kaprielian has given up five home runs in his last three starts, so expect more Boston homers in this one and a Red Sox win.