Zolak & Bertrand: Who Is MVP Of Red Sox?
BOSTON (CBS) -- There is very little to complain about with the 27-17 Red Sox, who find themselves tied with the Baltimore Orioles for first place in the AL East.
Sure, every five days you can gripe about Clay Buchholz's latest poor outing, but overall Boston has been an extremely fun team to watch. The starting rotation appears to have figured out most of their early-season woes, and the offense continues to tear the cover off the baseball. Most importantly, the Red Sox are winning games.
When your team is winning, one of the fun arguments you can have is who is the team's MVP? There are plenty of options with the Red Sox, from Jackie Bradley Jr. and his 27-game hit streak to Xander Bogaerts' league-leading .346 batting average to David Ortiz and his team-leading 11 homers and 37 RBIs -- at the age of 40.
Marc Bertrand and Scott Zolak had the MVP discussion on Monday, but Bertrand said the team requires two awards: Best player and MVP.
Zolak is going with Bradley Jr. as their best player, with Ortiz the team MVP. Bertrand sees Ortiz as the team's best player, but has an interesting pick as MVP. It's a player he says "has truly saved their ass to this part of the season": pitcher Rick Porcello.
"David Price comes in and sucks, guess who was there to save the starting rotation? Rick Porcello. I don't want to exclude Steven Wright, because he helped them out quite a bit in the early going too. But if you take Rick Porcello out of this rotation, what would they have been left with over the first couple of months from a starting pitching perspective," said Beetle.
Porcello is 7-2 on the season with a 3.47 ERA, but won all five of his starts in April with a 2.76 ERA for the season's opening month.
"His steady presence has been one of the most important things to this Red Sox team this season, and I don't think he gets enough credit for it," said Bertrand.