Montgomery, Rafaela, Crawford addressed
In exactly one week, the Red Sox play baseball that counts.
Here are seven questions to hold you over until then:
1. When, where will Jordan Montgomery sign?
As I said in previous ‘7 Questions,’ I’m going to keep asking this until Montgomery has a new team. The Red Sox are one week away from Opening Day in Seattle, and that’s still not the case.
With Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman and Blake Snell all finding new teams within the last month, Montgomery is now the last man standing of the “Boras Four,” Scott Boras’ quartet of top free agents this year.
At this point, he may end up holding out until the season starts, an uncommon but not unheard of strategy for a top free agent. Craig Kimbrel was in a somewhat similar situation after the ‘18 season; he didn’t sign with the Chicago Cubs until early June.
However, Kimbrel went into free agency with quite the bold strategy. His reported initial asking price was six years, $100 million, historically high for a closer (Aroldis Chapman had signed a five-year, $86 million contract with the Yankees two years prior), and recency bias wasn’t in his favor. Compared to his elite work in previous seasons, the closer struggled in his final year with the Sox. After posting a 1.43 ERA and 0.671 WHIP over 67 appearances in ‘17, his numbers rose to a 2.74 ERA and 0.995 WHIP over 63 regular-season games in ‘18.
His heart-stopping postseason performance — seven earned runs, nine hits, eight walks, and 10 strikeouts over nine games (10 ⅔ innings) — did him no favors in free agency.
A couple of months in the regular-season, the Cubs felt they had legitimate postseason chances — and the June 1 deadline for forfeiting their first-round draft pick to the Sox had passed — and brought Kimbrel in for a far more reasonable three years and $43 million.
Montgomery is coming off a championship run as well. He’s also surveying a league in dire need of starting pitching. Several teams will be without at least one top starter for months, if not the entire season. Perhaps teams feel that they can wait him out, at least until the day after Opening Day, when he’ll become ineligible to receive a Qualifying Offer at season’s end.
2. Is Ceddanne Rafaela starting CF?
With Opening Day a week away, there’s not much more for Rafaela to prove.
In addition to his alreadyelite outfield defense, the 23-year-old rookie has been one of the team’s most productive hitters this spring. Entering Thursday, he’d collected six doubles, three home runs — not including the towering blast he hit in last weekend’s Spring Breakout exhibition game — scored six and driven in eight over 18 games. His 13 hits are tied with Rafael Devers and Connor Wong for the team lead.
Over the last year, the Sox tempered Rafaela’s ascension, wanting his plate discipline to improve before unleashing him on the Majors. Spring training is a small, and somewhat meaningless sample size, but the rookie has shown significant improvement. He may not be fully ready, but he’ll never figure out how to swim in the deep end if they don’t let him take the plunge.
3. Will any Sox players opt-out?
The collective bargaining agreement gives players on minor-league contracts three opportunities to opt out if not added to the 40-man roster as long as they signed at least 10 days before Opening Day, have at least six years of Major League service time, and ended the previous season on a big-league roster (or injured list).
The Red Sox have four such players in camp: first baseman C.J. Cron, catcher Roberto Perez, right-hander Michael Fulmer and lefty Joely Rodriguez.
Of the four, Fulmer is the least likely to opt out. The 2016 AL Rookie of the Year signed a two-year MiLB deal, and he’s already set to miss the entire upcoming season after elbow surgery last year.
Rodriguez was Boston’s first free-agent signing of the previous offseason, then missed almost the entire ‘23 season due to injuries. The Sox brought him back on a minor-league deal in midFebruary, and he’s pitching his way into contention for a bullpen spot. However, he could parlay his preseason success into a better deal elsewhere.
The Sox could certainly use Cron’s bat after letting Justin Turner and Adam Duvall depart in free agency. He’s coming off an injuryshortened campaign, but homered at least 25 times in each of the previous four 162game seasons.
Perez won back-to-back Gold Gloves behind the dish in Cleveland and pitchers have been benefiting from his knowledge throughout camp, but Connor Wong and Reese McGuire have established themselves as a fairly strong catching duo.
4. Is Kutter Crawford the No. 3 starter?
Crawford is having a strong spring, and he was brilliant for various stretches during the ‘23 season. With Lucas Giolito out for the year, he could land the No. 3 spot in the Red Sox rotation, ahead of Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock.
5. Is being Opening Day starter meaningless?
Yes and no.
It’s something of a case-bycase basis. It would’ve been significantly more meaningful for Chris Sale last season, as it was his first healthy start to the season since 2019 and his birthday, but Corey Kluber got the ball, instead.
But for Brayan Bello, who just signed a pre-arbitration extension, and is the fourth-youngest Opening Day starter in the last 85 Red Sox seasons and only the second Dominican-born pitcher to get the nod (after his own mentor, Pedro Martinez), it’s quite meaningful. It’s also a significant moment for an organization that has long struggled to develop elite homegrown starting pitching.
6. Can Connor Wong stay hot?
Wong has been on an offensive tear. He entered Thursday hitting .433 with a 1.302 OPS, two home runs, and eight batted in over 12 games, and leading the team with six doubles and a 240 wRC+.
Will he be able to maintain at least some of that momentum when games start to count? He had a fairly solid ‘23, highlighted by his 25 doubles, but the Sox would love to see him improve his strikeout numbers after he punched out 134 times in 126 games.
7. What happened with Shohei Ohtani’s translator?
On Wednesday, the Dodgers fired Ippei Mizuhara, after Ohtani’s lawyers accused his interpreter and close friend of “massive theft” of the superstar’s money.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Ohtani’s representatives allege that Mizuhara stole millions and was placing bets with Orange County, Cal., resident Mathew Bowyer, “an allegedly illegal bookmaker who is the target of a federal investigation.” ESPN reported that at least $4.5 million was sent from Ohtani’s bank to said bookmaking operation via wire transfer. Sports betting is still illegal in California.
It’s a sharp pivot from the original statement an Ohtani spokesman gave and then disavowed to ESPN earlier this week: that the superstar was covering his interpreter’s gambling debts. ESPN also interviewed Mizuhara for 90 minutes on Tuesday evening, and he claimed that Ohtani had agreed to help pay down his debt.
On Wednesday, he changed his story, telling ESPN that Ohtani was completely unaware and uninvolved. He admitted to having a gambling addiction, but maintains he never bet on baseball, which is against the rules for league and team employees. As of Wednesday, Mizuhara was still interpreting for Ohtani.