I realize you can't just completely change who you are as a team, but I was hoping we'd see a little more aggressiveness and late game situational play this year. We're not stealing bases well or often, just 10 for 16. Last March/April we were 21-2 and averaged nearly 18 attempts per month, with Papi in the line-up. We're not even at that pace. I expected X to steal more (he attempted more last year when he was not batting ahead of Ortiz). I thought AB would be given the green light more. Again, not to go bonkers, and not just run into outs, but push the edge a bit more, rather than wait for the Ortiz 2-run HR that isn't coming. I thought with an increased emphasis on pitching/D/run prevention would come a slight corresponding increase in playing for one run in the later innings. Not enough to join the National League, but just a shift in emphasis. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case.
But let's give the offense in general more than one flu-infested month to get its bearings. If we're saying the same things on June 1, then yes, we're going to have some real problems. I expect Pedey and X to more than double their monthly XBH production in May!
I don't know how much of this our team specifically, and how much it is just changes in baseball. Steals are generally down since their peak in the late 80s (though historically, they were even lower in the past), and my guess would be that stats have a lot to do with it. Just looking at the last 4 years (so 120 team seasons), there is no positive correlation between SBs and Runs (r = -.06), nor attempted steals and runs (r = -.10). I think that the reality is that we remember moments like Dave Roberts in the playoffs, but that over the course of a season you are going to end up killing as many rallies as you are scoring extra runs, and that most of the time it's simply a non-factor.
To extend this notion, let's take a look at the run expectancy tables and grab a common example. With a man on first and 1 out, you have an expected value of .489 runs, if you attempt the steal, you have two basic outcomes (ignoring the catcher throwing the ball into center, for now):
man on second, 1 out: .644 expected runs
no one on, two out: .095 expected runs
So a successful steal increased your expected runs by .155, but a caught stealing drops it by -.394
If you assume a 70% success rate, then you have risk of (.3 * -.394) + (.7 * .155) = -.009
At the league average of a 72% success rate, you end up about breaking even, adding .001 runs to your expectancy. Maybe the catcher throws it away, but maybe your guy sprains his thumb diving into second. It is entirely possible that teams, in an age of rising HR rates and SOs (raising the risk of the double play), just no longer see stealing bases as a viable strategy for scoring more runs in the aggregate, so they aren't trying. Based on average success rates and total number of attempts, we are talking about a handful of extra runs for the entire league based on SBs in the current environment.