Red Sox Dives into Vaughn Grissom, Cooper Criswell, and Power Outage

We’ve got ourselves a good ol’ fashioned good news-bad news scenario as we begin the first full week of May, folks.

The bad news first, because it’s always best to get the bad news out of the way: the Red Sox weren’t able to finish last week’s slate with a record north of .500, as one loss at the hands of the Gigantes paired with dropping the series in Minnesota resulted in a 3-3 mark since you last heard from me here.

 

 

The good news: the Celtics and Bruins are cooking, meaning that we’ve still some time before mediocre weeks like these really start to bug us! Hey, it could be worse: you could be Justin Bieber.

 

For real though: not a banner week for Boston baseball, although a bit of that can be chalked up to running into a red-hot Twins club at the wrong time. That’s baseball, Suzyn. Sometimes you play the hottest team in the league.

It was encouraging to see the Sox keep the good times rolling at Fenway earlier in the week against San Francisco, though. After a rocky start to the home schedule, they’ve won their last two serieseseseseses at America’s Most Beloved Ballpark by way of a 4-2 record. They’ve outscored opponents 34-16 in those six games…but don’t ask me if one of those games included a 17-0 blowout. The golden rule for blogging is that you only use stats that support your agenda, duh.

As we move closer towards the summer, taking advantage of chances to win at home could be pivotal for the Red Sox’s aspirations. This is the same club that won just 39 of their 81 home games a year ago. If they can remain fairly competitive on the road while continuing to make progressive strides at Fenway, that’ll go a long way towards possibly seeing meaningful baseball past Labor Day.

 

 

All of that is to say: the Red Sox gotta shake off this rough series against a tough Minnesota team, lock in and hang tough with another tough squad in Atlanta, and get ready for a set of winnable games at the Fens against Washington and Tampa Bay. If they can’t…well, at least we have the B’s and C’s, right guys? Right?????

It’s Monday Morning Brushback time, y’all.

 

A hearty hello to middle infielder Vaughn Grissom, who made his official Red Sox debut on Friday!

After being acquired in the offseason from those aforementioned Bravos in exchange for Chris Sale’s services, Grissom projected to be a consistent presence in the Boston lineup in 2024—and perhaps far beyond that, given the fact that he’s still in his pre-arbitration era. As we all know, that plan had to be delayed: a left hamstring injury resulted in Grissom starting the new season on the injured list.

But that was then, and this is now. After notching 10 hits in 30 AB’s over in Worcester during a rehab stint, Grissom started in two of the three games against Minnesota over the weekend. There wasn’t anything to write home about about his offense in his first few plate appearances with Boston, but manager Alex Cora had enough faith to bat him fifth against righty  Joe Ryan on Sunday. Maybe that’s just a result of the circumstances regarding the rest of the roster’s health, but that’s not nothin’.

And hey: his first hit in a Sox uniform was a double that broke open the game on Sunday! A clean piece of hittin’ to the opposite power alley with a silky smooth bat flip to boot, you love to see it.

 

So, what could we get out of our pal in the infield going forward? The sample size in his MLB career is small (he hasn’t even logged 250 plate appearances yet), but his OPS+ in 2022 and 2023 combined was 102, which is right around the league average. His triple slash in that abbreviated time was .287/.339/.407. That’s not eye-popping, but he’s shown a few flashes of having legit juice with the bat. His max exit velos have topped 107 MPH and his expected slugging metric is at around .400 during his young career, according to Savant.

He demonstrated that offensive potential against the Red Sox in 2022, mind you!