One of my favorite things in life as I age in this overly automated, data-driven world is watching how differently things turn out when human beings enter a situation after it was projected to go a certain way on paper. And let me be clear; I say this as a complete baseball nerd who spends hours every week on Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, and Baseball Savant. I love the data as much as anybody, but I’ve also learned over the years that you can never underestimate anything when human being are involved.
This is where the real magic of life, and by extension baseball happens.
All of this brings us to today’s question: How might the outfield logjam play out over the coming weeks and months inside the Red Sox clubhouse? Right now, we have five guys (Roman Anthony, Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela, Jarren Duran and Masataka Yoshida) essentially squeezed into four spots between the outfield and DH positions. All of them would likely be in the starting lineup pretty much every single day if they were on just about any other team. However, because Craig Breslow couldn’t find a dance partner for this overflow during the winter months, Alex Cora is left trying to feed five mouths with four spoons.
It’s one thing to have this issue on paper, and proclaim everybody’s going to play 80 percent of the time, or two guys are going to play 90 percent of the time and the other three are going to rotate, but it’s an entirely different ball of wax when it’s playing out inside a clubhouse of highly competitive dudes on a daily basis. In other words, all in an environment where any inkling of annoyance in bench time has the potential grow and multiply rapidly.
On paper, I see three general ways this could play out (but I’m sure there are more), and that’s before you consider the details within each scenario, which quickly become too numerous to count.
- The logjam actually serves as a positive in the long-run. Every guy in the equation is motived to keep the intensity higher throughout the season to preserve playing time, and they all play well and play nice while pushing each other because of it. With extra rest time sprinkled in, everybody maintains production up throughout the 162 game season without wearing down. (Something tells me this is the scenario the Red Sox computer spit out.)
- It creates actual issues inside the clubhouse. Guys get upset because they’re tired of seeing their name off the lineup card and think “Really? That guy is getting another start over me?” It slowly builds up, creates tension, and messes with the chemistry of the group before culminating in some incident later in the year.
- Somebody gets injured and the logjam is cleared. All of a sudden, Craig Breslow looks like a genius for keeping all of these guys. This of course could happen at any time (ruining scenario No. 1 or providing relief from scenario No. 2), or it might not happen at all.
Talk about this and whatever else you’d like, and as always, be good to one another!
