After an All-Star break of highlights, can the Red Sox keep flying beyond expectations?
Prior comments have made clear that Craig Breslow intends to pick a lane.
COMMENTARY
The name of Walpole Joe Morgan came up the other day, at it seems a fitting moment given the 2024 Red Sox begin their second-half push late night Friday at Dodger Stadium.
The question looms: Are they as good as we think they are?
Forced anecdote? Without question. I’m a sucker for Morgan, who took over the Red Sox midway through 1988 — the first season I was really watching with any deep awareness or investment — and they promptly won 19 of 20 on the way to a division title.
A few years later, I mailed baseball cards (and pre-addressed, postage-paid envelopes!) to a handful of my favorites in hopes of getting autographs back. My entire haul: Morgan, who signed with a ball-point pen, making it more engraving than anything else. (Your author wasn’t real happy at 11, but he often needed to calm down.)
Now 93, Morgan is scheduled to be among the well-wishers in Cooperstown this weekend to see his friend, Joe Castiglione, honored with the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence. The two have long been close, to the point Castiglione’s house is where Morgan decamped to after the Red Sox fired him in October 1991.
That firing was the scene for Morgan’s tell-off of Sox brass, “Your team is not as good as you think it is.” The next year made it legend — a team that won two division titles in four years and contended under Morgan promptly finished last in 1992.
Different sentiment, same energy today. No team’s won more than the Sox the last two months, 31-18 since dropping two straight to the Cardinals in mid-May. Jarren Duran’s redemption song hit a national crescendo when he won All-Star Game MVP; hope no one looked too close at his wrist tape on those crystal bat photos!
Minutes after that, David Ortiz picked Boston to win the World Series. Worth it solely to see the way Derek Jeter dismissively heaved Ortiz’s Rich Gedman-style bucket off screen.
Where to from here? The sport’s superpower, albeit one without Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May, and Walker Buehler. A return home to face the Yankees and AL West-leading Seattle. Later in August, a visit to sweltering Kansas City, similarly surging Houston, Baltimore . . .
Fangraphs calls it the toughest remaining schedule in the sport, but I wouldn’t sweat that much. This is all up for discussion because the Sox have been a team that’s beaten the teams it needs to beat. They’re built in a way to continually find a way.
And the way forward feels hard to discern until after the next two weeks, when Sox architect Craig Breslow decides to what degree a 53-42 start is worthy of reinforcements.
“I think this team has put themselves in a position where we have to take them seriously. The job that they have to do is win as many games as possible, and they’re doing that,” he said on NESN during Sunday’s victory. “They’ll continue to do that, is my hope, is my expectation, and we need to be thinking about opportunities for us to improve the club.”
Prior comments have made clear that Breslow intends to pick a lane; “determine what we are trying to accomplish and be completely convicted and decisive in accomplishing that,” as he put it on NESN’s ‘310 to Left’ podcast.
In a fortunate turn for someone who talked over the winter about an unwillingness to trade “future wins for now wins,” future needs largely mirror present ones. The starting rotation needs help, having leaned on Cooper Criswell and Josh Winckowski for 17 starts. The lineup needs help against lefties, and the coming return of Triston Casas doesn’t feel like enough.
That, however, feels secondary. Boston’s bullpen has thrown the 10th-most innings in baseball this season, with both Justin Slaten and Chris Martin down at the moment with elbow inflammation. Not a dire situation, but one to be helped either on the reliever side or the starter one. Random bullpen adds are a common thing all year, so hard to think one’s not coming.
The other? Less so, which leads to wonder about the many paths Breslow will have to choose from.
He has surpluses from which to pull, even on Boston’s current roster. (Kenley Jansen in the bullpen? Wilyer Abreu in the outfield?) The minors have similar ones, especially in the middle infield, and had them back into the days of Chaim Bloom middling the 2022 deadline and largely sitting out the 2023.
The issue remains cost, which is ever escalating at a time when two-thirds of the league can still fancy itself in a wild-card chase as the games resume on Friday night. Nate Eovaldi’s familiar name has been thrown around plenty as a possible addition, but is Texas entirely convinced they’re out of it?
More pointedly, are the Red Sox going to be able to outbid the slew of other suitors seeing the exact thing so many in New England are?
It, as it has for the past few years now, makes one wonder how unbreakable the glass case containing Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, and Kyle Teel is. Breslow and those before him, repeatedly, have refused overtures to include them in deals.
They remain the future, and a brighter one by the day. Teel ripped a pair of doubles at the Futures Game over the weekend. Anthony pounded home runs at the Skills Showcase. The trio remain in Double A Portland, but they hardly seem long for it.
Still, at least for a moment, a future problem. The Red Sox’ place in the world is a continuing need to prove their worth. Establish themselves as as good as they think they could be.
They return tonight flying. How close to the sun, only their play can determine.
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