HE’S BORING, BUT BASHING

Benintendi keeps focus

Sorry Red Sox fans. A chance interaction with Andrew Benintendi on the streets of Boston is a very unlikely event. He usually can’t be found partying on Boylston Street, or riding a bike to Fenway Park, or shooting commercials on Jersey Street. Benintendi appreciates the peace and quiet. His commute is solitary, from home to car to work and back again. “I don’t really go out too much,” he said. “I just stay in and keep to myself.” Simple has been Benintendi’s mantra since he was first called up two years ago. While that may not turn him into a social media star or land him leading roles in big brand commercials, it’s worked just fine for his performance on the field. Since May 5, Benintendi is hitting .326 with a .980 OPS, eighth-highest in the game. But at a time when commissioner Rob Manfred is calling out the game’s best player for his lack of desire to market himself better; when attendance is down nearly six percent from last year; and when the median age of an MLB fan is 53 years old, per ESPN, some are wondering if baseball needs to do a better job of marketing it’s young stars to engage a younger audience. “Player marketing requires one thing for sure — the player,” Manfred told reporters at the AllStar Game, referencing Mike Trout. “You cannot market a player passively. You can’t market anything passively. You need people to engage with those to whom you are trying to market in order to have effective marketing. We are very interested in having our players more engaged and having higherprofile players and helping our players develop their individual brand. But that involves the player being actively engaged. “Mike’s a great, great player and a really nice person, but he’s made certain decisions about what he wants to do and what he doesn’t want to do, and how he wants to spend his free time and how he doesn’t want to spend his free time. That’s up to him. If he wants to engage and be more active in that area, I think we could help him make his brand really, really big. But he has to make a decision that he’s prepared to engage in that area. It takes time and effort.” Forcing it doesn’t work either. “Mike Trout doesn’t want to embrace it,” said one agent who represents some of the game’s top players, “but Trout shouldn’t feel the pressure. It has to happen naturally, organically. People who make things happen, they never sustain it, it never lasts. You’re asking for trouble to ask guys to do what they don’t do.” Especially in Boston. What’s happened with the Red Sox this year is a perfect example of how a team’s success is born organically and from results, not necessarily with boisterous personalities or players who spend time worrying about their brand. They’re great on the field, and ratings on NESN are up more than 20 percent and still soaring. Like Trout, Mookie Betts has been a quiet and humble superstar for years, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change. J.D. Martinez has been a top-five hitter in baseball since 2014 but doesn’t show a ton of emotion on the field, and he won’t be found on billboards or in Nike commercials. Benintendi, too, is often nondescript, described as someone who comes from a “simple, great midwestern good-moral family.” There’s no unnecessary pressure or performance barriers put on him, someone close to him explained, and he’s been able to have a singular focus: playing baseball. Add it all up and the Red Sox have a team of fairly quiet players who have won more games and scored more runs than any other team. “All together, as a wolf pack, this is a more complete lineup than that one we had (in 2004), believe it or not,” Pedro Martinez said on MLB Network last week. “It’s almost like unfair for me to say it, because I was part of that team and I played with those guys, but what I like about the 2018 — and I’m gonna say I like the 2018 lineup better — when you look at this lineup and you see the 2018, you see Mookie Betts — as consistent as there is of a player: power, speed, defense, everything together. You look at Andrew Benintendi, not too far away from Mookie.” “The fact that Mookie’s having this type of unbelievable year is another thing, but Benintendi’s right there having another AllStar type of season.” When Benintendi got called up from Double-A Portland at the start of August 2016, some quietly wondered if he would struggle with the attention in Boston. There was a belief that he was too closely protected at the University of Arkansas and he wasn’t prepared to handle the media expectations as a big leaguer. That hasn’t been an issue. He’s developed a huge social media following despite hardly being active. Benintendi has tweeted twice since the start of 2018, but still has more than 100,000 followers. He’s posted just 13 times on Instagram this year, but has almost 200,000 followers. Being a 24-year-old baseball player in Boston “has been fun,” Benintendi said last week. “I don’t like a lot of attention, but don’t have an option there in Boston, with my hair and everything. But it’s fine. It is what it is.” Off the field, Benintendi doesn’t like the spotlight. On the field, he’s embraced it. Bench coach Ron Roenicke said last month that he thought Benintendi actually loved the spotlight given how well he was hitting out of the leadoff spot when Betts got hurt. Benintendi’s only personal goal this year was to be more consistent. While he couldn’t carry his incredible spring training into April and got off to a slow start, he’s surged since. One of the biggest developments he’s made this year is going the other way with his swing, rather than trying to yank every ball over the rightfield fence. “I don’t know what the percentages are of where I’ve hit the ball, but I feel like I’ve gone to left or left-center a lot more, especially at home,” Benintendi said. “Just using that wall. Last year I didn’t do it as much. I think I can understand

d how pitchers are trying to pitch me now. I’m not always going to get that fastball on the inner half that a lot of guys look for. Just kind of taking what the team gives you. I have an idea of when I might get an off-speed pitch or when they might try to attack or to pitch around me.

And just playing the game. A guy on second base, nobody out, just try to get him over. Usually when you do that, good things happen.” The numbers say Benintendi’s been going to opposite field at about the same rate he did last year, and he’s actually pulling the ball more often than a year ago, though hitting coach Tim Hyers noted that his pull tendencies occurred mostly earlier in the season.

Just look how well he’s hit at Fenway Park: Last year, Benintendi’s .711 OPS at Fenway was well behind his .838 OPS on the road. This year, he’s hit 17 of his 26 doubles and four of his six triples at home, and has a .980 OPS at Fenway — compared to .829 on the road — that would make him the youngest Red Sox player with a home OPS that high since Fred Lynn in 1975.

“It’s about adjustments,” manager Alex Cora said.

Cora pointed to one of Benintendi’s at-bats on Monday night in Baltimore as “a perfect example.

With a 2-0 fastball, when he tried to hit a grand slam, swung and missed. Then he gets a changeup on 3-1 and instead of swinging hard to the pull side, he goes the other way (for a tworun double).

“Benny is a complete player. Good base-runner, good hitter, has a good idea what he wants to do. He’s shooting the ball the other way.”

As of Friday, he was hitting .300 with a .901 OPS and 14 homers.

“Everybody says, you are what you are,” Benintendi said. “If you’re a .300 hitter, you’ll be there at the end of the year regardless of what happens.

“For me, the way I play, it’s more about average. Power, I don’t really care about. I’m not a big-time homer guy but I’ll hit some. Doubles and hitting the gaps is what I do, that’s who I think I am as a player and that’s what I try to do.”

If his numbers hold, Benintendi would be just the 23rd player in the last 50 years to hit at least .300 with an OPS of .900 or higher before their

age-24 season (Benintendi turned 24 earlier this month, but this is still considered his age-23 season). Just seven have come since steroid testing began in 2005: David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Joe Mauer, Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval, Bryce Harper and Trout.

There’s still work to be done, particularly in the outfield. He feels like he’s still learning how to play left after spending the majority of his amateur career as a center fielder.

“I think now I’m a lot more comfortable,” he said. “Now it’s when I go back to center, it’s like I need to re-learn how to play this. Obviously I’ve played center a lot more than left in my life so it’ll take time. Time and experience will help that.

“I think mostly just playing in Fenway and knowing when to take a shot at throwing a guy out or cutting balls off and keeping them to singles is what I’ve gotten a lot better at. That’s one thing I can work on is my throws. I’ll two-seam one, I’ll cut one. That one in Detroit, I threw a slider home. It’s frustrating. Just have to work on it.”

While it may look like he’s playing slow or cautious in the outfield, that’s just his style.

“I like the pace,” Cora said. “That’s him. But certain decisions, like in Detroit the other day, he threw the ball all the way to the plate with Victor Martinez at first. They tag and then they score that run. Stuff like that (he needs to work on). He feels like he can throw everybody out so you have to be smart about that.”

Those little things usually improve over time, but his personality isn’t bound to change, nor is his confidence.

“For me, it just stays the same,” Benintendi said. “I think when you’re going good, confidence goes a little higher, but it never goes lower than what it was before. I’ve always been pretty confident.”

Not even a breakout season can change that.

“No, not really,” he said.