Wait-and-see approach
Dombrowski does give team ‘a chance’
BALTIMORE — Dave Dombrowski doesn’t look at Memorial Day as an easy gauge for the season, but he wouldn’t be crazy to.
Two months of play are gone, about one-third of the games done. What does the Red Sox president of baseball operations see in a first-place team that’s 31-20?
RED SOX BEAT Evan Drellich
“I’ve seen so much happen in various years,” Dombrowski said after Steven Wright’s gem in a 7-2 win against the Baltimore Orioles yesterday. “I like to wait early in the season before coming to any type of summation. . . . But, I think if you get to this point and you’re playing well, that you usually have a good club and you have a chance to compete.”
In truth, we’re beyond pleasant generalities of “a chance to compete.” Whether there’s a line in the sand because of the holiday or not, a standard has been established with time.
Talk in the winter of winning is nice, but the last two years rendered hype meaningless. Sox fans couldn’t have gotten more from the team yesterday unless manager John Farrell came by and set up your grill — and the play has been dominant many other days as well.
The offense has been the singular best in the majors. Whether it can finish in that position is a fun debate. Either way, the Red Sox definitively carry a playoff-caliber lineup.
What’s going to matter most when an inevitable dip comes is the continued success of pitchers like Wright — and of new entries like Eduardo Rodriguez, who is to make his season debut tonight.
Dombrowski wanted nothing to do with the p-word.
“Oh, I don’t want to go into that yet, that’s way too early for that,” Dombrowski said when asked if his club had the look of a playoff team thus far. “I want to win tomorrow.” Fair enough. David Ortiz has been the single best offensive player anywhere, and he homered again against the Orioles. A day earlier, his left foot was bothering him too much to even pinch hit. How’d he pull that off? “I don’t hit with my foot,” Ortiz said. “I hit with my hands.”
Xander Bogaerts is already touted and his 23game hit streak suggests he may even be underappreciated. The reliability of the core guys makes occasional contributions from a Marco Hernandez, who hit his first career homer in the series opener, stand out even more.
Given the chance, Ortiz didn’t outright declare these Sox the best hitting team around. “Right now?” Ortiz said. Overall. “I don’t know, what do the numbers say?” Ortiz said. That this is the best. “That’s your answer,” Ortiz said with a laugh. “It’s doing well now. It’s not something that it stays there forever, but it hopefully does.”
There — even Ortiz knows some sort of fall is coming. It might be just a dip, not necessarily a fall from the cliff.
That brings us back to Wright, the kind of unexpected piece that seasons can turn on.
Wright makes a baseball do things no one else can — at least no one else presently in the game. His floater changes directions in mid-air and is a throwback to middle-school Wiffle ball. Not all knuckleballs move the same, and his acts like it’s perforated even more than the ones thrown by Toronto pitcher R.A. Dickey.
Going into the day, Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds report had the Red Sox at an 80.2 percent chance of reaching the postseason and a 70.2 percent chance to make the Division Series — the best marks in the American League.
All the great work at the plate has gone into that calculus. Wright’s great pitching, too.
“I think Steven Wright can continue to pitch well, because he’s pitched very well,” Dombrowski said. “I think you can do that and I think we have a very good offense. I think we can continue to score runs. We’ll see where it takes us. But we put up offensive numbers compared to anybody at this point.”
What will make the difference during the lulls at the plate — whenever they may come — is whether a guy like Wright, a gift of a pitcher in this season, can stay on course.
“The fact that I’m a starting pitcher on the Boston Red Sox, it’s unbelievable,” Wright said. “I definitely sometimes pinch myself like, ‘Man, is this real?’ ”
An offense that’s definitively playoff worthy will need it to be. Twitter: @EvanDrellich