Lester, Lockhart invited to offer advice, inspiration at Sox camp
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Dwight Evans, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Luis Tiant. The former Red Sox legends have been fixtures at spring training for years, offering their insight and experience to the club’s current players.
That perspective is invaluable, and this spring the Red Sox have made a point to bring in even more voices who can help ready the club for the new season.
Thursday two new dignitaries made an appearance at Jetblue Park, former Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester and longtime Boston Pops Orchestra conductor Keith Lockhart. Lester will spend two days in Fort Myers helping out the pitchers, while Lockhart spoke to the players Thursday morning.
“I invited him to come over and talk about leadership, how we can get a group together of different talents, different levels, and make it work,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who admitted he played the flute in 10th grade but gave it up after one year. “What they do in his job, in his domain, it’s amazing. You have to be on-point on everything and he just had a great talk with the players.”
Speaking to the Herald, Lockhart said he and Cora did a seminar in the fall together about leadership among elite performers, and following the event Cora asked if he’d be willing to speak at spring training. Things came together within the last two weeks and he appreciated the opportunity to draw a connection between his musical world and the world of competitive baseball.
“When you deal with the Boston Symphony or the Boston Pops you’re dealing with a group of, within their field, elite athletes,” Lockhart said. “The same kind of people who have spent five to sixhoursadaysincetheywere five or six years old perfecting a craft, that brings with it the challenges of building a team out of people who, up until this level, the team was built around them. Because everybody here was the star in high school or college and intriple-a,andallofasudden there are a bunch of stars, so howdoyougetpeoplefocused on a common goal and mutually supportive?”
Lockhart’s message was well received within the Red Sox clubhouse.
“His message to us was about leadership and how it’s integrated by holding one another accountable instead of from the top down,” said first baseman Triston Casas. “Whenever he has an incident in terms of when someone is off-key or playing out of note, it’s the other members who are holding that person accountable so he doesn’t have to. That was the message I gained out of it and hopefully we can apply it here.”
Though he isn’t giving any team-wide presentations like Lockhart’s, Lester’s presence is no less impactful. Nearly a decade after failed contract talks led to his being traded in 2014, Lester has been back at Fenway Park a handful of times since his retirement and was invited to camp this spring by chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, his former Red Sox teammate.
Whitlock goes a solid three:
Garrett Whitlock delivered another strong performance in his second start of the spring, striking out six over three innings in the Red Sox 5-2 win over the Detroit Tigers on Thursday.
Whitlock retired the first eight batters he faced before running into some adversity with two outs in the third. The right-hander allowed three straight singles, two on unlucky bloopers, to score a run and put runners at the corners. He escaped the jam without further damage, however, striking out Andy Ibáñez to wrap up his day.
Rafael Devers hit his second home run of the spring, once again going opposite field over the Jetblue Park Monster for a solo shot, and he finished the day 2 for 3 with the homer, an RBI and two runs scored. Trevor Story also went 1 for 2 with two RBI, including an RBI double in the bottom of the first and a bases-loaded walk in the fourth.
After being held out for the first week of game action, several key Red Sox position players will return to the lineup this weekend, starting with outfielder Jarren Duran on Friday.
Cora confirmed that Duran will make his spring debut in Friday’s game against the Minnesota Twins and that he will serve as a designated hitter. Casas (flu) will make his debut during Saturday’s split squad games and Connor Wong (elbow soreness) will be back behind the plate, and infielder Vaughn Grissom (hamstring) is expected back on Sunday.