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ALEX SPEIER

What’s up with the Red Sox’ offense this month? Passive at-bats

Mookie Betts has been a little out of sync with his swing lately. julio cortez/AP

It’s no longer in doubt: The Red Sox offense has entered a September malaise. Why? In the wake of Wednesday’s 10-1 shellacking at the hands of the Yankees, manager Alex Cora offered a hypothesis.

“I do think that sometimes we’re getting too passive at the plate,” Cora told reporters in New York. “We’re taking too many pitches right down the middle, which, I think, they’re bad takes.”

Do the numbers bear out the notion?

Indeed they do. According to Statcast data from BaseballSavant.com, the Red Sox had been among the most aggressive teams in baseball on middle-middle pitches (the middle third of the strike zone both vertically and horizontally) in the first half of the season. They swung at 78.5 percent of such offerings (the fourth-highest rate in MLB), hitting .330 with a .533 slugging mark.

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Since the All-Star break, the Red Sox have remained productive when attacking such pitches. However, they’ve swung at a far lower percentage of them — just 74.2 percent, among the lower half of teams.

And while the Sox have been somewhat more aggressive on middle-middle pitches in September, they have done little against such meatballs. This month, they’re hitting just .270 with a .446 slugging mark on pitches down the middle. The bad intentions that characterized the team’s approach earlier this season have been replaced to a degree by more mild-mannered ones.

Red Sox vs. middle-middle pitches MLB rank in parenthesis.
Category 1st Half 2nd Half September
Swing % 78.5 (4) 74.2 (17) 76.7 (10)
Average .330 .312 .270
Slugging .533 .586 .446
SOURCE: BaseballSavant.com

That said, it’s a bit misleading to focus just on middle-middle pitches. In this launch angle era (with hitters looking to match their swings to the plane of the pitch with a slight uppercut), pitches down in the zone but over the plate often result in the hardest contact. The Sox, meanwhile, also feature a number of hitters — Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Andrew Benintendi — who do damage on pitches over the middle in the upper third of the strike zone.

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Red Sox vs. middle third pitches MLB rank in parenthesis.
Category 1st Half 2nd Half September
Swing % 74.2 (3) 71.6 (22) 72.5 (12)
Average .329 .321 .310
Slugging .577 .600 .500
SOURCE: BaseballSavant.com

It’s with that notion in mind that Cora and the hitting coaches have emphasized staying off the edges of the plate. It’s in a vertical column of roughly 6 inches in the middle of the plate that runs from the top to the bottom of the zone that the Sox have done their most damage throughout the year.

Yet that larger region of the plate tells a similar story: The Red Sox had been one of the most aggressive teams in baseball on pitches in the middle third in the first half, one of the least aggressive in the second half, and somewhat more aggressive — but with little to show for it — in September.

Several factors can contribute to such changing patterns. Sometimes injuries (known or unknown) contribute to the diminished ability to drive the ball; sometimes those patterns are a reflection of shifting pitch sequences; and sometimes it’s a matter of players who fall out of sync with their approach. (Betts, for instance, has acknowledged frustration at his inability to jump on early-count offerings in his wheelhouse in recent weeks.)

Over a 162-game season, there are numerous reasons behind a fluctuation in production. For the Red Sox lineup, the fact that they’re in a performance trough against the meatiest pitches in September is of little concern. But moving into next month, if they hope to avoid the same quick dismissals that occurred the past two Octobers, the ability to start taking advantage anew of the most vulnerable pitches will prove critical.

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As Cora said, the Sox have to “get back to look for pitches in the middle of the zone and try to do damage with it. I think that’s very important for us.”


Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on twitter at @alexspeier.