Dombrowski likes what he sees from these Sox
Ugly start long gone
The Red Sox passed the quarter mark of their season this homestand, and as long as they forget about those first 19 games in which they limped to a 6-13 start, the team has finally hit its stride.
Actually, the Red Sox see little value in looking back at that awful start.
It happened, it was a shock, it was painful and it pretty much wiped away any shot they have of running away with the AL East like they did last year.
They did not crumble, however, and while they have to play catch-up vs. expanding their already plush cushion from a year ago, there is very much a sense that this team is where it wants to be. Maybe not in the standings, not yet, but they are good in the clubhouse and on the field, and that’s where the rest of their season will have to begin.
“I think we’ll play well, we have a good team,” said Dave
Dombrowski, president of baseball operations, while watching his team take batting practice from the left field grandstands at Fenway Park last week.
“Saying it doesn’t mean anything, you have to go out there and do it, but I think we have the capabilities to do it and I think our guys have broken through that early season funk. They’re not in that — whatever the reason behind it was. I think we’re in a spot. Doesn’t mean you won’t have a game here or a game there or a little streak where you don’t play well, but I think we have a good team and I think we’ve taken the turn to play like that.”
When the Red Sox were at their low point in that midApril series in New York, Dombrowski voiced concern but not panic in where the team stood. His patience and faith were rewarded, although he was by no means certain he was absolutely right.
“When you’re playing like that for a little while, you ask ‘Hey what’s going on?,’ not with a panic mode attached to that but more, ‘Hey I think this is going to come along.’ You see a little progress, you know what’s going on behind the scenes, maybe why a guy’s maybe been a little bit slower, so you try to keep it in perspective. You have a combo of the two — not a panic mode but you’re still saying ‘Gee, I hope this changes quickly.’ ”
Exactly what Dombrowski can do to accelerate the team’s pace of play or at least maintain it is shrouded in some uncertainty at the moment.
Last year, remember, the tweaks he made were subtle.
The team needed a righthanded hitting first baseman after Hanley Ramirez was let go, and they got Steve Pearce.
They needed another starter, and they got Nathan
Eovaldi. They needed a second baseman, and they got Ian
Kinsler. This year, they have Michael Chavis playing the role of Kinsler and outshining him.
Pearce has been a shell of himself, but the team seems committed to extending its leash on him and wait for his turnaround – they gave up on Ramirez on May 30 last year, when his numbers were better than Pearce’s are now.
Their rotation is running at full speed right now without Eovaldi, so when he returns sometime next month perhaps, it will be akin to his arrival a year ago. Plus David Price is on his way back as well.
The point is that the Red Sox now are playing near or at top capacity of late.
It’s manager Alex Cora’s job to keep the players he has at his disposal playing like they have been, and it’s Dombrowski’s job to bring in help if needed.
It’s fair to say Dombrowski already has done that, with the DFA of catcher Blake Swihart and return of catcher
Sandy Leon, plus the recall of Chavis, coinciding with the turnaround in the rotation’s performance as well as the offense.
One refrain used in baseball to describe the job of a president or GM of baseball operations is to take the first two months of the season to assess the team and its needs, then use the next two months to make fixes, and then ride it out for the final two months.
Dombrowski believes that taking two full months to figure out what you’ve got is too long. Right around now, at the one-quarter point, around 40 games in, is enough to know what you’ve got.
And right now, Dombrowski does not see a glaring flaw.
“Some you need to let them keep playing, at some point they’ll snap out of it, at one point, about a month ago, people were saying ‘we’re not sure about (Rafa
el) Devers,’” he said. “Well, we like Devers and now he’s starting to play like that.
Christian Vazquez was like that a little while ago, people, now all of a sudden he’s been a more consistent performer. Sometimes you have to let things play out, and we’ve got time to do that yet.”
With the Red Sox climbing above .500 and then leapfrogging over the expected AL East weaklings, Blue Jays and Orioles, in the standings, Dombrowski looks ahead and is not in a rush to change anything.
“When you have a good club, you need to identify
your weakness slash weaknesses and see what you can do to help your club there, but you can wait sometimes if you have a good club,” said Dombrowski. “Because sometimes someone steps up from an injury perspective all of a sudden. Just like us. If you looked at us now, maybe you’d say, ‘They need help depth-wise in starting pitching.’ Well, we have Price coming back and Eovaldi coming back and Brian Johnson coming back and all of a sudden you’ve got some guys coming back internally in that regard. All of a sudden in a little over a month we might get Steven Wright back to help us in the bullpen. That may change your needs then compared to what you’d look at in the short version.”
Will it last?
How long will Chavis stay productive? There’s no telling if he will keep rising to the occasion like he has and come up with big hits and especially big hits at a big time, or will start to tail off. Regression of some sort is likely if not inevitable, but to what degree? Will Middlebrooks, for example, started off hot, as did many other Red Sox prospects, before settling in to a more average pace of production.
After his first walkoff hit in his 22nd big-league game, Chavis said the shock of the new is starting to wear off.
“I do feel a little bit more comfortable,” Chavis said. “Any time you start collecting a couple of hits, you definitely get a little more confident, a little more comfortable. But a lot of it is just kind of the consistency. It’s not so much the results that I’m feeling more comfortable, it’s more so the swings that I’m putting on pitches and the takes that I’m having. I’m more comfortable and more confident in those. They’re better swings, better takes, and it’s just more of a progression thing where I’m not quite where I want to be, but I’m staying focused on the process and the results are coming.”
Dombrowski maintains a positive outlook on Chavis’ continued integration into his big-league career.
“Hopefully he can keep it up,” Dombrowski said. “I like that the other day he had a big hit and then afterward he hit in the cage an hour after, said he worked on his swings. He not only has power, he has a beautiful swing — quick and compact and powerful. But sometimes you can get too pull oriented. But he is a good hitter, he can hit the ball the other way, drive the ball the other way. We’ve seen that not only young guys but veteran guys can also get too pull oriented, so when he goes the opposite way to drive in runs its really a nice look.”
In just half the games, Chavis’ power totals, as well as his rate stats, rank favorably with the club’s other two early big boppers, J.D. Martinez and Mitch Moreland.
“We all knew he had power but for him to apply it at the big league level is a different factor, you just never know if that’s going to take place,” Dombrowski said. “But the power that he’s shown, the pure power, doesn’t surprise me but saying he’s got seven home runs in 21 games, I would never predict that for anybody as a youngster. I saw him at Salem (High A) a couple of years ago, they’ve got a big ballpark and he was hitting it out in right-center field, center field, all over the place.”
Unexpected
It was so strange to see Colorado third baseman Nolan Arenado make two errors in the same game last Tuesday, the Rockies’ first game of a quick two-game set at Fenway. Arenado has only three errors on the season, and he commonly is recognized as the best defensive third baseman in the game — he’s won the Gold Glove at that position in the National League the last four seasons. It was a cold night, so perhaps that was the issue for Arenado, who made one throwing and one fielding error. …
A strange-but-true sideshow to the two-error game is that exactly one year earlier, on May 14, 2018 when the A’s came to town, third baseman Matt Chapman had his own two-error game against the Red Sox in the first game of their series. And the next night he had one more. Chapman won the Gold Glove at third base last season in the AL.