The Boston Red Sox limp into Friday's Home Opener against the Padres riding a five-game losing streak. Where does the Sox offense rank amongst the rest of the league thus far?
It's been an underwhelming start to the season for the Boston Red Sox, who will head into Friday's home opener at Fenway Park with a 1-5 record and a league-high five-game losing streak. Not a lot has gone right for the Red Sox, but by far the most concerning part of the slow start has been the anemic offense.
What the numbers say
The Red Sox entered Thursday in the bottom half of the league in nearly every offensive category. Granted, it's just a week, but their 17 runs scored in six games is tied for 29th in baseball, with only the San Francisco Giants scoring fewer runs than they have. But that is merely a byproduct of what has been a truly dismal start to the season offensively for the Red Sox. Boston has a team batting average of just .208 with an OPS of .642, both of which are good for 22nd in the majors.
However, by far the most concerning part of the slow start to the season comes in the form of the strikeouts. The Sox are sporting a 29.4% strikeout rate, a number that ranks fourth-worst in all of baseball. While they are chasing 31.9% pitches out of the zone, once again placing them in the bottom ten in the sport.
When you look at the individual side of things, two players stand out amongst the rest with the strikeouts: Trevor Story and Roman Anthony, who both rank in the bottom ten among qualified hitters in strikeout rate at 44.8% and 44%, respectively. When your first and second hitters are putting together uncompetitive at-bats that are ending in strikeouts more than 40% of the time, it's incredibly hard for the offense to find any rhythm.
The Red Sox' offensive woes don't stop there, though; Fangraphs has the Red Sox as one of the worst 'high-leverage' offenses in baseball, hitting a paltry .120 in high-leverage spots, striking out an astronomical 51.9% of the time. In other words, when the pressure is the highest, the lights get too bright for the Sox offense.
For a Red Sox team that was built to put the ball in play, especially with men on base, the early returns are...not great, to say the least.
But it's not all bad...
There have been a few bright spots for the Red Sox offense to start the season: Wilyer Abreu has picked up right where he left off in the World Baseball Classic. Abreu is tied with Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez for the tenth-highest batting average in baseball at .421; his three home runs also see him tied for third in baseball. In a season where many people pegged Abreu as a breakout candidate, he has answered that call and then some, and been not only the Red Sox' best hitter to start the season, but one of the best hitters across the entire sport.
Another, much more surprising, bright spot to start the season has been backup catcher Connor Wong. After waiting until late July for his first extra-base hit in 2025, Wong has hit the ground running in 2026, already ripping three doubles in just four games. On one hand, when your backup catcher is considered one of two offensive standouts in the first week of the season, you may think that you don't have a very good offense (which, thus far, the Red Sox do not), but on the other hand, if Wong can get back his 2024 form, it'll allow Alex Cora to keep Carlos Narvaez, who spent much of the 2025 season playing through an injury, fresh throughout the season.
Why there's reason for optimism
Ultimately, the Red Sox are just six games into the marathon that is the 162-game season, and there are a few reasons to be optimistic about the offense moving forward. According to Baseball Savant, the Sox rank fourth in baseball in hard-hit percentage at 44.1%, with an average exit velocity of 91.1%, which is good for second in the majors. When they aren't swinging and missing, they are hitting the ball harder than almost any other team in baseball. They also rank middle of the pack in batting average on balls in play (BABIP) at .279. League average BABIP usually sits around .300 for a major league season, meaning that the Red Sox should be due for some positive regression on some of these hard-hit balls that aren't falling in for hits right now.
If the Red Sox have any aspirations of making a deeper playoff run than they did in 2025, the offense is going to have to get going, sooner rather than later.
The Red Sox will look to snap their five-game losing streak and right the ship offensively when they host the San Diego Padres on Friday at 2:10 pm ET.
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