Life after Papi begins
Replacing Ortiz’ leadership a must
FORT MYERS — Walk into the Red Sox clubhouse at JetBlue Park and the first thing you notice is what you don’t notice. You don’t notice David Ortiz.
There’s no way around it. The locker staring back at you when you enter the clubhouse, just to the left, is where Ortiz used to dress. But it was more than a dressing stall; Big Papi’s precious corner unit was always the water cooler of the JetBlue home clubhouse, a place to gab, to laugh, to swap tales, to trade gossip.
That this smidge of Florida real estate now belongs to Hanley Ramirez did not escape the attention of veteran second baseman Dustin Pedroia when he arrived in camp.
“Yeah, I did notice it,” Pedroia said yesterday. “Yeah, it’s different, man. You walk in and there it is, except that now it’s not.”
Pedroia paused and then said, “But we’ll figure it out the best we can.”
And that, people, is the challenge facing the Red Sox as spring training gets under way.
Look, we can spend the next seven weeks talking about Pablo Sandoval’s weight. We can monitor the comings and goings of lefty Chris Sale for clues as to whether there will be some type of first-year hiccup. We can watch Andrew Benintendi take his Grapefruit League cuts and then determine whether the kid puts up the kind of numbers that’ll gain him full-fledged membership in the Killer B’s with Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr.
But L.A.P. Time — as in Life After Papi — begins right now. Or, as Dustin Pedroia put it so well, it’s time for the Red Sox to figure it out the best they can.
This isn’t a roster thing. Dave Dombrowski, the Red Sox’ president of baseball operations, reacted to the dawn of the post-Ortiz era by doubling down on starting pitching with the acquisition of the established, dominant Sale for a couple of shiny baubles from the vaunted farm system. The result: A batting order that might turn out to be a little less Murderers Row-ish but a front three in the rotation (Cy Young Awardwinner Rick Porcello, David Price, Sale) that might be the best the American League has seen since the late, great Earl Weaver was rolling out Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar for the Orioles.
Ramirez, in addition to taking possession of the Ortiz locker, will also (mostly) take Big Papi’s DH job. That is, when the opposing pitcher is a right-hander. Dombrowski brought in Mitch Moreland to play first base against righthanders. When there’s a lefty on the hill, Ramirez shifts back to first base and somebody else, such as Chris Young, or maybe a half-resting Pedroia or Bogaerts, will DH.
But replacing David Ortiz as a clubhouse leader is an entirely different challenge. Take a look at the AL East and it’s hard not to see the Red Sox as the team to beat — on paper.
As for the very soul of a ballclub, that’s something that can’t be determined using fancy 21st-century statistical analysis.
It’s likely that Pedroia, the only holdover from the Red Sox’ 2007 World Series team, will amp up his personality and be more of a clubhouse presence. The pitching staff has plenty of leadership, as Sale, Porcello, Price, etc., have been around the block a few times. And it helps that younger players such as Betts have shown that they are wise beyond their years.
Meeting with the media yesterday morning in the sunshine of JetBlue Park (sorry, everyone back home), Dombrowski pointed out that leaders tend not to emerge during spring training.
“It’s a little bit harder to establish that when you have 60 guys in camp,” he said. “Because you don’t really have your club ’til later on in the spring.”
And then Dombrowski quickly provided an example of when a player did show signs of leadership during spring training.
It was from last year’s edition of spring training. And the player he cited was Betts, just 23 years old and beginning his second full season in the big leagues.
“It was not long into it, and I was new here myself, and I was surprised when a bunch of guys said we’re going out to dinner,” said Dombrowski. “So I said, ‘Where you going?’ And they said, ‘Well, Mookie coordinated the dinner for us.’ So guys will do what they want to do in that regard, but I don’t think it’s really that easy to measure until you get the club in smaller numbers.”
And so this will be a developing story. But it’s an important story. All bigleague clubhouses have factions, and those factions can be based on everything from race and salary to geography and religion.
David Ortiz brought them all together.
“We’re all gonna miss him,” said Pedroia. “But I’m sure if I need some advice I still have his number. He’s not going anywhere.”
True. But strolling through the clubhouse to say hey to the boyos isn’t the same. David Ortiz is gone, and he needs to be replaced — on many levels.