Houston Astros Fans Know Your ALCS Foe – Boston Red Sox

The Houston Astros chopped the Chicago White Sox up like sushi and ate them like Shrimp Te(m)pera. (Sorry, I had to). The Astros begin the ALCS Friday at Minute Maid Park playing against the red-hot Boston Red Sox, who beat out Tampa Bay in a thrilling four-game series.

This should be a highly entertaining series, a contest between recent World Series champs who want to win their second in the last five year.

Know the Astros’ ALCS foe: who are the 2021 Boston Red Sox?

STAT PROFILE: BOSTON RED SOX

The 2021 Red Sox are led by former Astro bench coach Alex Cora and have an All-Star lineup led by JD Martinez, Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts and Alex Verdugo to name a few.

The Red Sox regained the services of Chris Sale late into the season as their number one pitcher, to go along with Nathan Eovaldi and Nick Pivetta. And the Red Sox closeout things with Matt Barnes, an All-Star closer who had a terrific first half of the season but has since been mired in a long slump.

Offensively, the Red Sox are really really good. Boston finished the season third in OPS (.777), third in batting average (.261) and second in slugging and (.449). Boston was perhaps one of the better power teams in all of baseball – they finished the season 10th in home runs and 11th in overall strikeouts.

What’s amazing is how good this offense is at home — they hit it preposterous .281 BA at home and we’re first in the majors in OPS by a large margin. However, the Red Sox offense did drop off when they played the better teams in the — they hit .274 against below .500 teams and only .250 against those above. 500 teams. (For reference, the Red Sox only hit .210 BA and .685 OPS in the seven games they played against Houston this season.)

On the other hand, Boston’s pitching was not so good. Even though they played very well in the ALDS, this is still the same pitching staff that would finish 15th in team ERA (4.26), 23rd in team whip (1.25) and 25th in opponent batting average (.259). When you dig deeper into the numbers, you see the Red Sox have some interesting splits.

This staff finished a dismal 25th in WHIP at home in hitter-friendly Fenway Park, but were league average when they pitched away (15th).  Boston should be better now that Chris Sale and Ryan Brasier are back on the mound, but by and large this Red Sox pitching group was extremely sub-par for most of the season.