Some scattered thoughts on the Red Sox as the truck pulls into JetBlue Park in Fort Myers…
1. The Red Sox are doing a heck of a job alienating both their fanbase and former players this winter, with Matt Barnes the latest longtime player they’ve irritated.
While Barnes was honest and professional in his goodbye press conference this week, he shared more on the Jared Carrabis podcast about what happened when chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom told him he was being designated for assignment.
“I was like ‘why? What’s the logic there?’ You have to explain this to me because I need to know what you’re thinking,” Barnes said he told Bloom. “And it was essentially like, roster construction with having to have some flexible pieces, and on paper, analytically, the last two months of the season were, he didn’t say lucky, but insinuated that.”
Barnes then told the Carrabis podcast it “makes me happy” that the Red Sox will be paying part of his salary while he pitches for the Marlins this season, and that he has June 27, when the Marlins are in Boston, “circled on my calendar.”
It’s not surprising Barnes wants to stick it to his former team now, but this part is surprising: why on earth were the Red Sox wasting valuable ninth-inning opportunities on Barnes in the final two months of the 2022 season if they actually thought he wasn’t very good?
If their “on-paper analytics” were indicating he sucked in August and September and was only getting lucky, why did they keep sending him out in the ninth inning when they could’ve been giving the ball to young players who might actually benefit from a confidence boost and experience closing out games?
Here’s one more nugget from Barnes, who told the Globe what many in the organization must’ve been thinking about the Sox’ inability to retain any players from the 2011 draft:
“Honestly, the person that I would have expected to stay in Boston there for their entire career from that draft would be Mookie,” Barnes said. “The fact that he isn’t there is still crazy to me. But such is the nature of the business, right?”
2. FanGraphs expects the Red Sox to win 82 games, though they leave room for improvement if players like Connor Wong, Reese McGuire, Bobby Dalbec and Adalberto Mondesi take huge steps forward.
Take that information with you to MGM Springfield.
3. If the Red Sox farm system is as bad as Keith Law thinks it is, this team is in serious trouble.
Law, who worked in the Blue Jays front office before transitioning into a role in the media, listed his top 30 farm systems for The Athletic this week and the Red Sox came in at No. 23.
“Their group of position-player prospects is probably in the upper half of farm systems, but their group of pitching prospects is one of the weakest,” he wrote.
At least ESPN thinks differently, with Kiley McDaniel listing the Red Sox’ farm system at No. 14.
The idea is the same: Marcelo Mayer and Triston Casas could be stars, but beyond that, it’s like playing the lottery.
4. Good luck to Justin Turner if he plans on wearing No. 2 this season.
The Sox’ website has Turner listed as No. 2, the number worn by Xander Bogaerts during the majority of his 10 years in Boston, and the number worn by the late Jerry Remy, who often said Bogaerts was his all-time favorite Red Sox player.
5. Between the Sox never seriously entering the Bogaerts sweepstakes, their inability to sign any top-tier free agents, their lack of desire in retaining any of their own free agents and the way they handled the Barnes situation, they’re likely to enter the year as an unlikable team.
At the very least, they’re setting themselves up to play the us-against-the-world card.
It worked well in 2018, when the Red Sox won 108 games in the regular season then claimed to be underestimated underdogs in the postseason.
6. There’s no denying that manager Alex Cora doesn’t look good in Evan Drellich’s new book, “Winning Fixes Everything,” that comes out on Feb. 14.
As detailed in the Herald this week, new details from 2017 and 2018 paint Cora as an angry, insecure and often unstable bench coach of the Astros who then joined the Sox in ’18 and told them, “We stole the (expletive) World Series (in 2017).”
But before judging Cora as the sole villain of 2017 and a guy who never learned his lesson, read the entire book first.
The entire industry failed to address the widespread abuse of technology to steal signs, and commissioner Rob Manfred wasn’t as aggressive as he needed to be to shut it down sooner.
Cora seems to have a way of crossing the line more egregiously and perhaps more often than most, or at least he made enough enemies along the way to get called out for it. But he’s not alone.
The Astros, Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox are among those who showed a lack of discretion in their willingness to cheat in recent years, according to the book, which is a must-read for baseball fans.
7. Lastly, a bit of optimism for Red Sox fans: the newest member of the baseball Hall of Fame, Scott Rolen, is considered one of the closest comparisons to Rafael Devers through his age 25 season, according to Baseball Reference.
And while Rolen had an equally-impressive start to his career, he only got better with age, winning six of his eight Gold Gloves, earning all seven of his All-Star Game appearances and getting MVP votes three times after his age 25 season.
