COMMENTARY
The 2020 Red Sox season is not about wins and losses, at least primarily. The 2020 Red Sox season is about games played. As in, the Major League Baseball season must get to Sept. 1 in order for Boston to get the luxury-tax reset it so clearly sought this winter when it … well, you know what it did.
You have my solemn vow that we aren’t going to spend a ton of time relitigating the Mookie Betts/David Price trade. For one, it’s really depressing! For two, however you feel about it, the history is long from written. When the Red Sox ultimately decided not to meet their superstar’s price, however angry that made you, they essentially said, “We can spend that money better elsewhere.” That’s Chaim Bloom’s task, and we won’t know how he does until years down the road. Trading Betts was, honestly, a good first step if that’s what they decided.
Even if actually doing it, then watching Betts forgo free agency for somewhere in the neighborhood annually of what the Red Sox offered him before a global pandemic changed things just enough …
We can’t not talk about it. Because the only reason it won’t be the defining aftertaste of the 2020 Red Sox season is because of how absurd it feels that there even is a 2020 Red Sox season. In the hours before the MLB opener in Washington, the Nationals were scrambling because budding star Juan Soto tested positive for COVID-19, the Blue Jays were scrambling because they still don’t have a home park to play in, and even the optimists among us are being forced to remember we’ve got months of this yet to go no matter how normal larger forces are trying to make it all seem.
No fans? Not on FOX Sports.
Thousands of virtual fans will attend FOX’s MLB games this Saturday. pic.twitter.com/z9oQU0rYuC
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) July 23, 2020
Somebody else is now the franchise chasing a long-sought championship, and spending as such. Boston — after two decades as an all-sport, world-vaporizing, hate-us-cause-they-ain’t-us monolith — is staring at an all-hit, no-pitch Red Sox roster like the ones from the history books. And just like then, we’re trying to convince ourselves it’s somehow more than what we know it is.
“I like him because he goes right after hitters. You know what you’re going to get,” manager Ron Roenicke said earlier this month about 29-year-old Ryan Weber, your No. 3 starter until Eduardo Rodriguez recovers and one of six Red Sox who made their first Opening Day roster this year. “He moves the ball in and out. He’s got command. He throws strikes. He’s capable of going through some really good lineups. He’s a great athlete, so he knows how to repeat things.”
Two years ago, Boston’s No. 3 starter had a Cy Young Award, whether you picked Rick Porcello or Price for the spot. Today, Boston’s No. 3 starter has a 5.04 ERA in 114 major-league innings — spread across five years — and, in his own words to MassLive, still gets ID’d buying lottery tickets.
Of the 25 men who celebrated the 2018 World Series at Dodger Stadium, only 12 remain. Heck, 13 of the 30 on the Opening Day roster weren’t in the organization last year. And the going-on-64 Roenicke’s been promoted from bench coach, his first season in charge since 2015 one likely trying in ways we can’t even fully grasp yet.
As I related it to a friend the other day, there are weeks in your life when you go on vacation to Barcelona. Walk Las Ramblas, see Lionel Messi play, gorge on pa amb tomaquet, and gaze at the Mediterranean. There are other weeks when you spend four figures on your house’s sewer line. Both weeks are important. Only one’s probably going to make the Christmas letter.
These Red Sox are the pipe, and the pipe dream. This is a building block year, the start of some scarring demolition, the pouring of a foundation, or maybe a little of both. If you were to ask why these Red Sox (or their ownership) deserved your attention, after a trade Bloom followed by proclaiming, “I certainly think it’s reasonable to expect that we’re going to be worse without them,” I could not rationally give you an overwhelming list of reasons to change your mind.
Sports, however, aren’t rational endeavors. Baseball certainly isn’t, if I may wave my arm generally toward the past eight months and the idiocy still to come.
This is the team of Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, and J.D. Martinez now, and there’s little question they will mash even if it won’t be enough for a championship. The exhibition games against “Toronto,” finger quotes and all, reminded there’s always something to savor watching Jackie Bradley Jr. play center field. Watching Ol’ Steak and Potatoes Mitch Moreland handle his business.
Alex Verdugo arrived under auspicious circumstances, some of his own making, and had a terrible summer camp on the field. The pandemic, frankly, has laid out a tremendous welcome mat from his maiden season: The four-month delay means he’s healthy for Opening Day, and the crowd-less Fenway and distracted fanbase alleviates some of the pressure for The Guy They Traded Mookie Betts For out of the blocks.
“Let’s just go out and play baseball again,” he told NESN After Hours earlier this week, after he’d offer a hint of the skillset he brought from Los Angeles against the Jays.
He didn’t get the out at the plate but Alex Verdugo still has a cannon. #RedSox pic.twitter.com/AAzCFQhKhj
— Brendan Campbell (@brendan_camp) July 22, 2020
This will not be a team like we’ve grown accustomed to, we “championship or bust” types who even got a title out of the expectation-less 2013 Red Sox. Pessimism is rampant, about this team and this sport and the world in which it all happens, and a good amount of it belongs.
But I’m smart enough to know why we all ended up here as sports fans, especially those of us for whom 2003 and before isn’t just a Wikipedia page. Even the dark times can crack a smile, and even the worst can produce things that make you remember why you give a whit about any of this. Maybe the pitching staff and the rest of them surprise. Maybe they don’t. Sometimes, you’ve got to just take things for what they’re worth, and get from them whatever you can.
That’s no “Do Damage,” but it’ll have to do, and it could be a lot worse.
Kind of like the 2020 Red Sox.
