Dominican games were a party for Red Sox fans already in need of relief
Despite a lackluster offseason, the joy of this weekend's Red Sox-Rays games came through the TV screen this weekend, in horns and happy faces.
COMMENTARY
It was a good weekend for the Red Sox. Relatively, of course, this a time in their history that an actual emotion can be evoked amid games that do not matter. When injury, the annual killer of spring training vibes, already has hit hard.
Lucas Giolito is scheduled to get a second opinion Monday on his right elbow, the one last week reported to have a partially torn UCL. Good news would be, what? A few months rest? Pitching through it, a bounceback season coming despite constant worry surgery will end up needed anyway?
I’m not a doctor, but it seems a bad prescription. Better to focus on an actual positive.
The sort in Red Sox history that made their presence for the Dominican Republic Series possible. That made it matter like it did.
Baseball matters in the Dominican. Red Sox baseball, specifically, given two of the nation’s five Hall of Famers — Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz — are iconic here and there, Adrian Beltre’s Hall of Fame path truly began in Boston, and even Juan Marichal made a late-career cameo in red. (Before you ask, Vlad Guerrero’s the fifth.)
When MLB played exhibitions on the island in 2000, the Red Sox were sent. Pedro and brother Ramon each threw a scoreless inning, and Carl Everett clanged a homer off a light tower.
Fun fact: The second of two games with Houston that spring was won with a two-run homer by a little-known minor-league infielder, a month from his MLB debut and about a decade from his place in Red Sox history. Julio Lugo.
The joy of it all came through the TV screen this weekend, in horns and happy faces. Red Sox players loved it. Rays players loved it. Any of us who’ve spent months now listening to this dirge of an offseason savored it.
Brayan Bello will never forget it. Nor will anyone who read Alex Speier’s deep look at the road Bello traveled to get to the Red Sox, and to the six-year extension that thousands who chase the dream he did never come close to approaching.
“I’m not comparing them, and I didn’t see Pedro pitch much, but I feel like he has that natural swag, that natural presence on the mound that can’t compare with anybody else,” Rafael Devers, the established Red Sox star from Samaná, DR, told reporters of his teammate. “It’s natural. . . . The way that he walks, the way he pitches.”
It’s quite the thing. What percentage of the hopes that these Sox can be dragged from their current dregs, alighting a region that rides the good times higher than few others, sit on two players from a Caribbean tourism hub 1,600 miles of ocean from Boston?
There are no guarantees they can do it, the increasingly comfortable face of the place and the homegrown starter with one full season under his belt. But there’s a lot better chance they can than, say, Giolito, whose contract — with a $19 million player option in 2025 and subsequent 2026 club option — meant he’d likely be gone after a year were he still an impact arm.
Or, for that matter, the big Scott Boras clients who’ve waited their way into mid-March and seem likely to now want short-term deals that’ll mean another free-agency crack next winter.
Would those be bad moves? Not entirely. Not when the finite number of baseball seasons in our lives will be spent with this as one of them. They, as a healthy Giolito would have, allow a mediocre team to fish for October and maybe pull an Arizona.
The real question is deeper. It’s the age old one of every franchise in the wilderness, waiting on the prospects to save it for whatever the reason: Who are we seeing that will be part of that next great team?
Masataka Yoshida is signed through 2027, and Tanner Houck is under team control until then. Trevor Story and Garrett Whitlock, 2028, with Triston Casas a free agent after that year. (For now.) Bello, through 2030. Devers, 2033.
We know the baseball turnarounds can come quick, especially in this modern era of playoff bloat. From a wider view, New England’s golden championship era came from some considerable depths. (Remember the low of those Dave Lewis Bruins of 2006-07? Another best last-place team in their league, of which David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron, Tim Thomas, and new captain Zdeno Chara were all a part.)
The path is not always as expected — the third great Red Sox from Samana brought home a championship, though Hanley Ramirez did it in exchange for Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett. It also may not be quick, as those who remember what happened after the last time the Red Sox won a championship in ‘18 would rather not think about.
Giolito’s already hurt. Vaughn Grissom, too, as well as 2023 bullpen surprise Chris Martin. We’ve watched back-to-back 78-win teams, and we know this drill well. There are needles in the 162-game haystack. There’s hope in there, too. But there’s going to be a lot of hay finding it.
Best to savor the stuff like this weekend. It’ll make the future all the sweeter.
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