Are they good, or do they stink out loud? That is the question.
OK, perhaps that query lacks the Shakespearean, roll-off-the-tongue appeal to catch on. For our purposes, it conveys the point, which is that April has been a month of mixed reviews for the Red Sox.
Heading into Sunday’s finale at Camden Yards (it’s still standing after Saturday night, right?), Boston was tied at the top of an American League East logjam with the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees, the two traditional nemeses whose time the entire offseason we were told had come and gone.
The Sox’s winning the first three series for the first time in 63 years made us ready for the club to print playoff tickets. The past week-and-a-half restored some that worst-to-first-to-worst reality.
There are still some holes. Alarming ones.
Clay Buchholz looks like the ace that the team supposedly needs in one start and appears in dire need of a sports psychologist the next. Justin Masterson never saw a smooth start or a two-run lead that he couldn’t besmirch with a batting practice quality gopher ball. And is it just me, or is Joe Kelly’s electric stuff better suited to be a closer than a top-of-the-rotation cornerstone?
The bullpen frightens me. Edward Mujica, in any role, in any context, is just a guy I’d rather see wearing any of 29 other uniforms. Craig Breslow clearly peaked in October 2013 and may never be the same again. With each passing day, it also appears that Koji Time may have elapsed. I would feel better about Uehara if he had one of those fake Latin American birth certificates to tell me he isn’t 40, or a broken radar gun to convince us that his split-fingered fastball is traveling north of 85 miles per hour.
I’m not the least bit sold on the lineup yet, either. There’s nobody to hang the hat on, day-in and day-out, and yes, that includes David Ortiz. Papi is enduring his usual spring struggles hitting with runners on base and dealing with the defense shifting eight guys to his right, as if the field is a warped pool table.
At least we hope these are only April doldrums. One of these years, we won’t see the May and June recovery. He’s the face and voice of the franchise, but he isn’t immortal. The party won’t last forever. Every year Ortiz slips on a banana peel out of the starting gate, I wonder, with reasonable caution, if this is the beginning of the end.
Mike (K)napoli’s breakthrough home run Saturday night notwithstanding, I see a guy with Mendoza-line production who has been wielding a toothpick at the plate since his spring training tear. The beard and tattoos don’t balance the equation. He hasn’t looked like a danger to anybody but himself.
If questioning whether or not Ortiz’s days are numbered can’t be construed as enough sacrilege, let’s talk about Dustin Pedroia. Subtract that opening-day power surge against the allegedly coveted Cole Hamels, and his production has been on par with that of a slightly-above-average 1970s middle infielder. The Laser Show isn’t on a regular, nightly schedule. It makes me wonder if the years of dirt-dog mentality, the fistful of finger and wrist injuries, are gradually unleashing their cumulative effect. He’s still very good, but not the guy we once knew.
Mookie Betts and Xavier Bogaerts are the future of the franchise, untouchable and untradeable in my view, but I’d still emphasize the word “future.” Betts is struggling to find the swing that made him the stuff of minor league legend. Still a project in center field, he whisks a would-be home run out of the bullpen one inning and loses a fly ball in the sun the next. Substitute the same concerns for X, who joined Napoli and broke out of his home run slump Saturday. Bogaerts’ best quality as a young hitter is that he has a knack for the big knock at the right time.
The questions and concerns are limitless. So far, I’m unimpressed with Pablo Sandoval’s fitness and the pop in his bat. Allen Craig looks like he escaped from the Island of Misfit Toys. Playing deep into October with a Ryan Hanigan-Sandy Leon catching platoon strikes me as a laughable prospect.
But I’m a fiscal conservative when it comes to the farm system, and, at odds with every argument I’ve constructed here, an optimist at heart in regard to this team’s ability to catch fire and develop special chemistry over a 162-game season.
First place is first place, and nothing I’ve seen yet convinces me that Hamels, Jonathan Papelbon, or any other serviceable No. 1 starter or closer on a bad team is a solution to the Sox’s relatively minor problems. Certainly it would be foolish to trade Betts, Bogaerts, Henry Owens or Rusney Castillo in return for a quick fix with minimal upside.
Let’s ride this out. That is the answer.
Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.
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