There’s no need to sugarcoat the obvious: The Red Sox will enter the postseason with the worst offense of the American League playoff teams, and arguably of all the playoff teams. With 4.89 runs per game entering Thursday, the Sox will be the lone AL team in the playoffs that falls short of the five-run threshold.
How much significance does that carry once the curtain lifts on the postseason? Virtually none.
On Wednesday, the Red Sox offered a reminder that while they might not have been an elite offense over the course of a season, they are capable of erupting. In their 10-7 win over the Blue Jays (and starter Marco Estrada, who’d given them fits in three prior starts), the Red Sox offered glimpses of an offense capable of producing crooked numbers.
Hanley Ramirez, Mitch Moreland, and Xander Bogaerts homered. All three have had wildly inconsistent years in terms of offensive production, but that becomes irrelevant in October, a month that is less about consistency than about hot streaks.
Since 2000, there have been 34 teams to reach the World Series. Of those, eight led their league’s playoff field in regular-season runs; eight finished fourth or fifth in that category, with seven the lowest-scoring team in their league’s playoff pool. Five World Series winners led their league in runs in the regular season; five ranked fourth or fifth in that year’s October group.
* - Rank among the teams that reached the playoffs
** - Until 2012, only 4 teams from each league reached the playoffs
(The 2014 Giants ranked fourth in the NL’s five-team field; all other fourth- (prior to 2012) or fifth- (starting in 2012) place finishers identified a team with the worst offense of the playoff teams.)
The Red Sox’ offense this year hasn’t been the equivalent of the Astros (5.53 runs per game), Yankees (5.35), Indians (5.06), or Twins (5.06). But it’s been explosive, much as was the case with a 2016 Indians team that averaged more than a half-run per game less than the Red Sox (4.83 runs per game for Cleveland, 5.42 for Boston), yet pounded Boston pitching over three games en route to a playoff sweep.
With the start of the playoffs in a week (presuming the Red Sox do indeed win the AL East), the fact that the Sox have been the least-prolific offense of the American League playoff field matters less than the fact that they’re capable of high-scoring bursts. You’d bet on the offenses of Houston or New York or Cleveland to carry their teams through the postseason before you’d place such a wager on the Sox, but recent history shows that the regular season rarely serves for what will transpire by October offenses.
Put another way: There is no formula. No specific regular-season strength guarantees success in October, no weakness assures failure. It is a different season that nets unexpected outcomes, where the unpredictable becomes commonplace.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexspeier.
