Tyler O'Neill is having a strange season.
He leads the Red Sox in home runs and OPS, and on Wednesday, he delivered a gotta-have-it victory with a walkoff three-run shot against the Orioles, helping the Red Sox take two of three from one of the American League's best teams and remain four games back in the wild card race.
Tyler O'Neill sends a #walkoff HR way over the Monster! pic.twitter.com/nRtMZdBOo1
— MLB (@MLB) September 12, 2024
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O'Neill reached 30 homers for the second time, and in only 101 games. Had he managed to stay healthy and maintain that level of production, that's a 50-homer pace. Move over, Aaron Judge.
But O'Neill has battled injuries, which is nothing new. Now in his seventh season, this is only the second time he has managed to stay on the field for 100 games. He has missed time with head, knee (twice), leg, and finger issues in 2024 alone, and that's made life challenging for a team in desperate need of right-handed power to neutralize left-handed pitching.
Considering how little his acquisition moved the needle this winter, however, the Red Sox will take those 101 games and the accompanying production.
"I'm really proud of all the work that I've done this year," O'Neill told reporters, including Julian McWilliams of The Boston Globe. "Just making sure that physically, I'm in a really good spot to be able to go out and produce on a day-to-day basis. I'm seeing the results of that for sure."
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O'Neill has been on a homer binge all year, but particularly recently. He has homered five times in his last five games, including a pair of multi-homer games, and nearly half of his hits over the last six weeks (14 of 30) have left the yard.
Considering that the Red Sox rank third in the AL in runs scored, and that O'Neill leads the club in homers, it would follow that he must have 80 or 90 RBIs. But part of what has made his season so strange is that he has only driven in 59 runs. That ranks fourth on the team, behind Rafael Devers (81), Jarren Duran (72), and Ceddanne Rafaela (70), and not that far ahead of Wilyer Abreu (55), Masataka Yoshida (49), and Connor Wong (48).
It's also a historically low total for someone with that kind of power.
The fewest runs anyone has ever driven in while hitting 30 bombs is 59, a list that includes Curtis Granderson, Jedd Gyorko, Cedric Mullins and old friend Kyle Schwarber. Should O'Neill reach 35 homers, he'd have a shot at becoming the first player ever to hit that many out without plating 70 runs.
That's partly because 20 of his 30 homers have been of the solo variety, and partly because his 1.200 OPS against left-handed pitching makes him an outlier in a Red Sox lineup that has struggled against southpaws. The Red Sox are just 17-24 vs. left-handed starters, and their team average and OPS drop to middle of the pack.
On Thursday, the Red Sox open a four-game series against the Yankees that will feature left-handed starters Nestor Cortes and Carlos Rodón. The Red Sox will need O'Neill to keep providing power if they're going to overcome long odds and reach the playoffs.
His home run on Wednesday at least briefly saved their season.
"Little by little, he's been feeling great," manager Alex Cora told reporters. "It feels like every pitch, every at-bat, he's going to do damage with it. We needed that one. It was huge."