Some of Boston’s slew of new guys helped start the new Red Sox season off right
With almost half the 2020 Red Sox turned over from the 2019 squad, it was a promising start
COMMENTARY
The 2020 Red Sox are not new and improved. None less than the man in charge of their construction, Chaim Bloom, said that in a moment of candor forced by extreme circumstance.
“I certainly think it’s reasonable to expect that we’re going to be worse without them,” the chief baseball officer said in Florida on Feb. 10, hours after the trade of Mookie Betts and David Price to Los Angeles went final.
A month later, the world froze. Four and a half months after that, the world on fire in almost every conceivable way, a baseball season like no other offered some comforting reminders.
The Baltimore Orioles are still the worst. And the Boston Red Sox can still run it up with the best of them.
“I knew our offense was good and we’ve been swinging the bat well, but obviously you don’t expect them to come out [like that],” manager Ron Roenicke said after a 13-2 victory, Boston’s most runs in an opener since 1973 fueled by a first-game record eight doubles. “In my mind, I’m not expecting we’re going to score that many runs.”
The 2019 Red Sox were an abject disappointment, but they were always capable of nights like Friday: They topped 10 runs 20 times in 162 games and won eight games by double-digits, both top five in baseball and equal to the numbers of the world champion Washington Nationals. In a small sample, most anything’s possible.
Enter a season where they made the whole thing out of a small sample, a 60-game sprint to a 16-team postseason extravaganza, and you can just about convince yourself of anything for a weekend. Especially when baseball’s reigning doormats, who have fewer wins (101) the last two seasons than the 2018 world champion Red Sox had, are there to greet us.
“I’d like to flush this one,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said, succinctly.
You can only win the games on your schedule, of course, and that schedule gets tougher almost immediately, with the Mets coming to town Monday and a visit to the Yankees next weekend. We will almost certainly be reminded in short order that these are not the 2018 Red Sox. Nothing wrong with basking in a little Opening Day afterglow, like the world used to do before “brain scraper” entered our vernacular.
Heck, these are pointedly not the 2019 Red Sox. Nearly half of the 30-man Opening Day roster, 13 guys, were not in the organization just last year. And with all due respect to Nate Eovaldi — who hit 99 miles per hour on nine of his first 14 pitches, in case you were curious whether he was fired up about being there — and Jackie Bradley Jr., it was some of those new faces that offered the most hope for a fulfilling summer of baseball.
“I would be lying if I told you, my first at-bat … little excited, little nervous, went up there and probably swung at a pitch I shouldn’t have,” Kevin Pillar told NESN after his 3-for-5, 3-RBI debut. “I was able to settle in, watch guys have good at-bats, and just remind myself that’s what I’m here to do.”
Pillar had already saved the day well before he fished at that Tommy Milone changeup, racing and reeling in Austin Hays’s shot to the right-field warning track on Eovaldi’s second pitch of the night. That sort of stuff is what most of us expected when the 31-year-old signed in Feburary, days after Betts was excised from the job. Pillar’s been a below-average hitter his seven years in the majors, his power spiking in 2019 along with everyone else’s despite playing in the heavy sea air of San Francisco.
On Friday, he batted fifth behind Rafael Devers and Xander Bogaerts, and made Roenicke look like a genius with a two-run double in the four-run third and a single in the six-run fourth.
“He’s going to be out there as much as we can get him out there,” said Roenicke, who gave Pillar the nod against the lefty Milone over Alex Verdugo.
Pillar, Bradley Jr., and J.D. Martinez’s three-hit nights couldn’t quite match Jose Peraza’s, who joined Gabe Kapler (2003) and Jose Offerman (1999) as the most recent Red Sox with a four-hit debut. In a season to ride strong hands, the 26-year-old has gone from likely utilityman in December to the starting second baseman after blitzing the summer camp, supplementing strong defense with gap power and consistency at the plate.
His fourth-inning single through the hole off Cody Carroll — the only batter Carroll didn’t walk — left the bat at 107 mph, Boston’s hardest-hit ball of a hard-hitting night. His second double was a Fenway special, but coming off a career worst .239/.285/.346 year in hitter-friendly Cincinnati, what more could anyone have asked for?
“He doesn’t waste a lot of time. First pitch, if he sees it and it’s in there, he rips it,” said Roenicke about a player who’s walked roughly once a week in his five MLB seasons. “With the confidence, and just to continue on that knowing that what he did, the changes that he made in his swing carried over … all that’s very important when you’re making changes.”
Even the bullpen offered a little hope, relatively. Austin Brice got caught on a fastball by Rio Ruiz for a seventh-inning home run, but blew heaters by both Pedro Severino and DJ Stewart to end his inning of work. (Get used to seeing the high-spin curveball on which he built his career-best 2019.) Phillips Valdez hit two batters in mopping up the final two innings, but got a ground-ball double play to clean up the first, the career swingman’s sinker-changeup mix good enough in his Boston debut.
Bloom’s old team, the Rays, made a habit out of plucking usable parts from the discount bin. In the first game under his administration, we got four nice nights from four new faces.
This is going to be a year spent convincing ourselves things are better than we know they are. For the home team, and for the sport they play.
No matter the opponent, Friday was mission accomplished.
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