Amid a pleasant surprise start, where could Red Sox this threadbare possibly go from here? (2024)

Red Sox

A 13-10 open is more than a lot of people thought they'd see from these Red Sox.

By Jon Couture

April 22, 2024 | 10:55 AM

COMMENTARY

The left-adrift Red Sox have won four of seven series, this weekend hitting Pittsburgh with early power on the way to a sweep. They’ve scored first in 17 of 23 games, and Sunday’s was the first game they won when they didn’t.

They’ve done it as they continue to lose critical pieces, the latest Triston Casas, shelved Saturday with a bleak-sounding rib ailment causing him “a lot of pain” and sending him back to Boston for Monday testing.

The news doesn’t figure to be good. Another drag when the on-field news has, somewhat inexplicably, been better than expected.

Twenty-nine home runs, second in the majors. A 2.52 ERA, bettered by no one. Despite 12 on the injured list, including the four — Lucas Giolito, Liam Hendricks, Chris Murphy, and Trevor Story — on the 60-day. They outperformed out west, then underperformed at home.

A 13-10 open is more than a lot of people thought they’d see from these Red Sox, better than Toronto, the Dodgers, Tampa, and Texas. It’s also solidly behind the Yankees and Baltimore, who hammered the Sox, 23-10, in the three games at Fenway most constituting an early season test.

It somehow feels like they should’ve gotten more out of those big performance numbers, and feels amazing they’ve gotten that much given Sunday’s designated hitter was career backup Tyler Heiniman and its winning pitcher was Rule 5 pick Justin Slaten.

More Major League the movie than major league the league. Cam Booser is a carpenter, not a convict, but with that handlebar moustache and backstory, I think we can make it work.

A Seattle kid who grew up a Red Sox fan, with Alan Embree and J.D. Drew among his favorites if you doubted his bonafides. He broke his leg playing football in high school, broke his back going too hard in the weight room. Two elbow surgeries. A torn labrum. Hit by a car, while he was rehabbing from shoulder surgery.

He quit in 2017, never having reached Double-A. He worked hanging ceilings, started coaching, started throwing again, and hit 98 miles per hour. Pitched in two independent leagues, pitched in the Arizona system, signed a minor-league deal with the Red Sox last February, made it all the way on Friday at 31.

Spy that steady-cam on the right side of the shot? He’ll be getting the Netflix treatment, safe to say.

The story will be old hat by then. Heck, it might be trumped by then.

Uplifting and demoralizing, in the manner of the post-2018 Red Sox. Great for Booser, but a reminder there were times plumbing the bottom of the 40-man roster wasn’t needed to finish an April series in Pittsburgh.

Forget about wondering whether this is sustainable in the sense of the 92-win pace the Sox are on this Monday off day. That doesn’t need serious analysis.

How is this sustainable in the sense of actually completing 162 games short of requiring you to grab a glove?

Slaten and Booser are the only two Red Sox to make a literal major-league debut in this first 15 percent of the season, but Enmanuel Valdéz has already made 19 starts at second base. Bobby Dalbec is up to nine, finally cracking his first hit of the season Friday.

Nine is the same number of starts David Hamilton made at short despite continued defensive problems, though it appears shifting Ceddanne Rafaela will finally stop that.

The only surprise, of course, is that it all had to happen this fast. The 40-man roster is literally tapped on the position player side, to the point of needing to think about the spots held by Naoyuki Uwasawa and Vladimir Gutierrez — acquired in you-definitely-missed-them trades within the last month — if something else happens.

If not them, more bullpen shuffling. Bryan Mata, in the system since 2016 but yet to crack the majors. Less likely, but Wikelman Gonzalez and Luis Perales, low-level minor leaguers the team liked enough to protect from the Rule 5 Draft. A move every team does without fanfare, because the 40 isn’t typically an all-hands-on-deck group.

It must be noted even among the doomsayers, it’s shocking it’s come to this. Thirteen players on the injured list — Rob Refsnyder came off last week, and was a key contributor in Pittsburgh — before the final week of April is worst-case scenario stuff.

The Red Sox won’t be back into division play until May 13, when they see Tampa seven times in 10 days. If things turn south before then, or south during that run, the inevitable team brass chatter about injuries and overachieving won’t be entirely unfair.

But, come on. It should never come to this. In a sport built to reward the big markets just for existing, this is final years of the Yawkey regime stuff. John Harrington might be somewhere right now, feeling vindicated after all those years saying the franchise needed to replace Fenway Park to compete.

Building toward youth is fine. Taking the foot off the win-now gas, putting long-term planning first, and not spending crazy for a mild increase in your October odds is, dare I say, prudent. In the era of the 12-team playoffs, with two short series just to get to the traditional best-of-sevens . . . I fear there’s going to be more of this type of building when only one megabucks spender gets to lift the trophy every year.

But this? Alex Cora’s dog-days-of-summer scrounging before it’s hit 60 degrees consistently. It’s unfathomable, even in an era of lowered standards.

To the point it makes you wonder, even when the product’s been fun and the results have been there, how low it could really go.