Welcome to the roller-coaster ride that is the Boston Red Sox’ 2025 season.
After dropping four of their first five games, the Red Sox promptly ripped off five straight wins that included a home-opening sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals — and then promptly dropped three in a row to the Toronto Blue Jays, scoring just four runs over 29 innings.
It’s far too early to make any grand proclamations about a club that’s 6-7 after just 13 games. But there’s one troubling trend this team is showing that needs to be addressed: strikeouts with runners in scoring position.
Exhibit A came in the 10th inning of Wednesday’s game against the Blue Jays, when the Red Sox had the game-winning run on third base with one out and Trevor Story at the plate. Boston had a win probability of 83 percent at that point, per MLB.com, as any contact from Story likely would have resulted in a walk-off win.
Instead, Story struck out swinging, and Kristian Campbell followed with a strikeout of his own to end the inning. The Blue Jays plated a run in the top of the 11th and held on in the bottom half (thanks to a David Hamilton strikeout with a runner on second and no outs) for the 2-1 win.
The Red Sox have struck out 43 times with runners in scoring position through 13 games, an average of 3.3 per game and the most in Major League Baseball as of Thursday.
They went 0-for-11 as a team with runners in scoring position Wednesday night and are hitting .248 in those situations, a number that would be much lower if they didn’t go 12-for-24 with RISP during an 18-run outburst against the Cardinals in their home opener.
This isn’t a new issue for Boston, either: Alex Cora’s club racked up 404 strikeouts with runners in scoring position in 2024 (second-most in the majors) while hitting .247 in those situations.
And when the game gets close, the Red Sox’ bats get quieter: In “Late/Close” situations — seventh inning or later and the score within one run — Boston is hitting a putrid .170 this season with 19 strikeouts (tied for fourth-most in MLB) in six such games.
Again, it’s a small sample size, and some of their recent offensive struggles can be attributed to frigid temperatures at Fenway over the past week. But if the Red Sox want to snap out of their offensive mini-slump and be more productive going forward, they need to make a dedicated effort to at least putting the ball in play with runners on second and third base.
“I think they made some good pitches against us, but obviously we haven’t put together the same quality of at-bats,” third baseman Alex Bregman said after Wednesday’s loss, via MLB.com. “We look forward to [Thursday] and trying to do that.”
The Red Sox wrap up their series with the Blue Jays on Thursday at 4:10 p.m. ET.
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