This story was excerpted from Ian Browne’s Red Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

BOSTON -- The first half of the 2024 Red Sox season is in the books. Well, just about.

Game No. 81 was supposed to come on Wednesday against Toronto, but heavy rain in Boston halted action in the top of the second and postponed the finale until Aug. 26.

Ahead of the actual halfway point on Friday, let’s use this off-day to assess where the Red Sox stand. Have they met expectations? Exceeded them? I spoke with pitching coach Andrew Bailey and hitting coach Pete Fatse to see how they would grade the club’s first-half.

Pitching

This category raised a lot of questions for the Red Sox during Spring Training. Primarily: Who would crack the rotation? Among the candidates were Tanner Houck, who not only made the rotation, but has put himself in early AL Cy Young discussion. Kutter Crawford held his ERA under 2.00 through his first eight starts. The two homegrown pitchers played a major part in the rotation’s historic start to 2024.

Though they’ve since come back down to Earth, Boston’s staff still ranks among the tops in the Majors in a number of categories including a 3.54 ERA (sixth-best) and a 1.18 WHIP (fifth).

1st half evaluation

“I think the pitchers have shown some growth over the course of the season. … And I think that they really understand what we're trying to accomplish as a pitching group. The metrics that we highly value and why they correlate to success. Still learning them personality wise, we're going through a lot of firsts together, successes, failures, everything in between. So just monitoring the players, but overall, I couldn't be more pleased with the commitment to the work and the results they’re producing.” -- Bailey

2nd half goals

“We always target our key process metrics. We want to be tops in the league in these certain categories, and we meet on them once a week as a pitching staff, and we give our players individual and team process metrics and feedback. We just got to stay the course and continue to put our offense in a good position and our team in a good position to win.” -- Bailey

Offense

A number of injuries to key players like Triston Casas and Trevor Story forced manager Alex Cora to get creative with the lineups. As a result, there have been plenty of positional changes and platoon opportunities.

Despite being without a major veteran presence outside of Rafael Devers, the offense has come alive at the hands of young players like Jarren Duran and Connor Wong. Duran, whose 10 triples lead the Majors, has played a pivotal role in shifting the game plan to one that focuses heavily on speed. Wong is riding a career-high 13-game hitting streak and batting .330. And Rob Refsnyder has turned into a clutch hitter who provides leadership to a young clubhouse.

1st half evaluation

“I think the most impactful thing has been the growth of a lot of our young guys. Every single guy on our roster is obviously making strides, but I think guys are kind of taking the next step, especially the true rookies, and obviously we have some younger veterans in Connor Wong, Jarren Duran that have clearly made strides as well. I think it’s just continuing for us to keep those guys going is the best way to put it. And obviously you can't talk about our offense without Rafael Devers. He's been a consistent force throughout the course of the year and obviously, we're gonna ride that.” -- Fatse

2nd half goals

“Staying healthy is always the most important one. I think we have a lot of guys that are doing it for the first time -- playing this many games or being on the field this much. So making sure guys are managing their workload, I think that's a collaborative effort with our staff. I also think not letting our finger off the pulse of guys' development tracks. There's things that we're focused on with every guy, and making sure that we're consistently collaborating with the group and putting those guys in a position to keep developing at the Major League level.” -- Fatse