Long Wait Finally Over

            Spring is finally here. Baseball is back, and temperatures are flirting with 70 degrees for the first time in what seems like ages. This winter was the coldest one I’ve ever lived through, and I’m glad to finally refer to it in the past tense.

            The Red Sox wrapped up their first two sets of the season with a record of 4-2. The Sox looked exceptionally good on Opening Day, when they beat the Phillies 8-0. Clay Buchholz pitched seven solid innings, which many fans thought proved he could be a solid number one for the squad. However, six days later, it was clear that those fans were mistaken.

            Buchholz pitched against the Yankees on Sunday night, and to say that it was a disaster would be an understatement. The righty allowed seven runs in the bottom of the first inning, washing away the Sox’s hope of sweeping their archrival in the first meeting of the two teams in the 2015 season.

            Whether it was the pressure of being on national TV in Yankees Stadium on a Sunday night, or just a terrible outing, Buchholz had absolutely nothing working for him. Not only was his pitching dreadful, but he also wasn’t there mentally. As soon as things started going south for Buch, he lost his head. That was clear not only because of his appearance out on the mound, but also because he wasn’t carrying out some of the basic fundamentals of the game that he should have learned in high school. There were several times when Clay needed to be backing up a throw, and he instead chose to just stand on the mound and watch, which is inexcusable, and an embarrassment for the team.

            You can’t judge him by this one start, but for him to go from throwing seven shutout innings in Philly to the worst start of his career, to me shows that he’s going to be unpredictable this year, which isn’t what you want out of your number one starter.

            While Buchholz was terrible in New York, he didn’t get any help defensively either. Mike Napoli, who has generally been pretty good defensively for the Sox, made a painful error at first base, and the Sox didn’t look all that sharp in the field. Napoli has also struggled quite a bit at the plate to start the season. He is 1-for-19 to start the season, and went 0-for-8 in Friday night’s 19-inning marathon game against the Yankees, which is an incredibly frustrating thing to do as a hitter. The Red Sox need to find a way to get Napoli out of his slump at the plate, or else it might be sensible to give Daniel Nava a shot as the starting first baseman.

            Even though there were rough spots, overall the Red Sox have looked pretty good to start the season. Thirty-four runs over six games is a pretty good number, and one that John Farrell has to be happy with. Xander Bogaerts has looked really good at the plate so far, and if he can keep that up, it will be huge for the Red Sox. It has long been a struggle for the Red Sox to find a shortstop who is able to produce offensively, and in my mind Bogaerts has the potential to change that.

            The Sox have also seen good pitching from their other starters. Joe Kelly, who wasn’t even expected to make his first start of the season due to an injury, threw seven solid innings on Saturday, saving the Red Sox bullpen, which was forced to throw 13 innings relief the night before. Kelly, like a lot of other guys on the Red Sox staff, is somewhat of a question mark in my mind regarding how he’ll be able to perform this year, but he looked really sharp on Saturday in New York.

            The Sox look to keep on rolling this week as they take on the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles at Fenway Park.

Contact Jasper Goodman at jgoodman@radiovermont.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jasper_Goodman.

Red Sox Need to Rebound

            Opening night is just six days away. That’s right, six days. The Red Sox open up on the road in Philadelphia, but if you have a hard time believing that there’s going to be baseball being played in Boston next month, you’re not alone. So now that the 2015 MLB season is upon us, lets have an in depth look at the Red Sox roster, and what to look for on this year’s team.

Pitching staff

            In my opinion, the Red Sox simply did not do enough to their rotation. They have made not having an ace seem way less important than it actually is. If the Red Sox didn’t have Jon Lester to lead their rotation in 2013 there’s no way they would have ever been able to win the World Series. This year, the Sox will rely on Clay Buchholz to lead the rotation, which sounds like the makings for disaster to me. Buchholz is injury-prone, at times unreliable, and in nobody’s opinion any sort of an ace.

            There is a good chance that Joe Kelly, who could have some sort of a biceps injury, will start the season on the disabled list, and if he does, knuckleballer Stephen Wright will take his place. If not, here’s what I think the Red Sox rotation will look like: 1. Clay Buchholz, 2. Rick Porcello, 3. Justin Masterson, 4. Wade Miley, 5. Joe Kelly. Those five averaged a combined earned run average of 3.77 last year, so they don’t look terrible on paper. However, all of those guys are prone to injury in a big way, which is extremely concerning. When a starter goes down, it is a huge blow for a team, and by the looks of this rotation, we could be seeing multiple starting pitchers going down at a time, which can’t happen on a team that is competing for a playoff spot. The go-to guy if a pitcher get hurt is going to be Stephen Wright. Wright is a knuckleballer who has been in the Red Sox’s organization since 2012, and John Farrell seems to be very high on him. If there’s one thing that’s going to keep the Sox from winning the division it’s their pitching rotation, but they do have a group of veterans who could be quite capable of surprising us pleasantly if they can stay healthy. It is somewhat of the same situation out in the bullpen, where the issue of health is just as prominent. Sox closer Koji Uehara simply isn’t the pitcher that he was in 2013. He is older this year, and that means that he’ll have to rely more on his cutter instead of his fastball, which is a big problem for the Sox. At the end of last year, Koji’s cutter looked more like a Tim Wakefield fastball than anything else. He’s probably put in a decent about of work to fix that problem in the offseason, but I just don’t think he’s going to last as the Red Sox closer.

Offense

            While the pitching staff isn’t rebuilt the way I’d like it to be, the Sox did do a good job putting together an offense that’s going to score a lot of runs. They added the power bats of Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez to the middle of their lineup, giving David Ortiz a lot of protection and the Red Sox the chance to contend in the AL East. If there’s one thing that was clear to me when I was down at Spring Training in Fort Myers, FL, it was that Hanley Ramirez is an absolute beast. CBS Sports reported in February that Ramirez had bulked up to 240 pounds now that he’s moving to left field, which is an enormous difference from the scrawny little shortstop that showed up at Red Sox camp back in 2005. Pablo Sandoval was criticized at the beginning of the spring that he didn’t keep fit in the offseason, but I don’t see that being too much of a problem considering how he’s played in Spring Training games. While Sandoval and his 191 career homers are a huge help offensively to the Sox, he’s also a good defensive third baseman for his size. The notion that the Panda has no range is false, and even though he’s big, he won’t be any sort of a liability for the Red Sox defensively this year. The other guy who really impressed me down at Spring Training was Mookie Betts. If you had to put together a highlight real from Red Sox camp so far, Mookie would probably make up about half of it. He is quick, powerful, and has a great baseball mind. At the beginning of Spring Training I thought that Cuban outfielder Rusney Castillo would be the Red Sox’s starting center fielder come opening day, but it is clear now that Betts has the job. He will likely bat leadoff for the BoSox, filling the much-needed roll that Jacoby Ellsbury left empty when he departed last season.

            My prediction is that the Red Sox will finish second in the AL East, not getting the wild card spot, and missing the playoffs for the second straight year. The division is there for the taking, as it is as weak as I’ve ever seen it, but the Red Sox don’t have the pitching to capitalize on the opportunity.

Contact Jasper Goodman at jgoodman@radiovermont.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jasper_Goodman

Ortiz Being Ortiz

            Today is the day we have all been waiting for. Even though it may be below freezing outside, and you may find this slightly hard to believe, the 2015 Red Sox season gets underway today. The Sox will take on the Boston College Eagles and the Northeastern Huskies college baseball teams today in the annual slugfest in which the Sox get to show off some of their best new talent.

            Last year the Red Sox beat Boston College 11-1 and they modestly topped Northeastern 5-2. I’ve never had a chance to take in one of these games, but I did talk to former Vermont Mountaineers outfielder Aaron Barbosa, who played for Northeastern, about playing in the game. Barbosa said that it was a very exciting experience to play against the Red Sox, and one that he’ll never forget.

            Today the Sox are expected to send Clay Buchholz out for the first game against the Huskies and then Wade Miley to start the second game against BC.

            There hasn’t been a whole lot of action on the field so far at camp, but before the team starts playing games is when the players sit down with all the different members of the media, and last week David Ortiz made some harsh comments about the new rules that the MLB has put into place to speed up the game.

            It wasn’t surprising to me to hear that David Ortiz hated the new pace of play rules, but what did catch me by surprise was how aggressive he was in lashing out at the MLB for implementing them. When Big Papi rolled into camp, he was in a great mood. He was back in the Florida sunshine, his good friends, and now teammates Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez was there with him, and he doesn’t have to worry about his contract again until next year. However, when Boston Globe Red Sox beat writer Peter Abraham told Ortiz about the new place of play rules (which require batters to keep at least one foot throughout an at-bat), in a press conference last week, things went south for the Red Sox DH.

            “Is that new this year?” Ortiz asked Abraham after the reporter brought the new rules up in his question. “Yeah,” Abraham responded. “I call that bull (explicit),” Ortiz said back. “They don’t understand that when you come out of the box, you’re thinking about what the (pitcher is) trying to do…I’m not walking around just because there are cameras all over the place, and I want my buddies back home to see me.”

            When asked if he understood the concept of speeding the game up, Ortiz responded by saying that “It doesn’t matter what they do, the game’s not going to speed up. That’s the bottom line.”

            After that, another reporter explained to Papi that the MLB would fine him if he didn’t obey by the new rule. “I might run out of money,” Ortiz said in response. “I’m not going to change my game. I don’t care what they say.”

            So clearly Ortiz isn’t on board with speeding up the game. However, in a one-on-one interview with Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal this week, Ortiz backed off a bit. “I totally understand,” Ortiz said when Rosenthal asked him if he understood where the MLB was coming from with the new rules. “What I don’t understand is that it’s always related to batters, and the other day what got me angry was that,” Ortiz continued. “When you look around the game, the batter’s not the only one that wastes time.”

            Papi also said later in that same interview that he is “one of the faster (players) at getting in and out of the box,” which is almost laughable, considering he steps out and spits on his batting gloves after almost every pitch.

            While I agree with Ortiz that the batters aren’t the only ones in the game who waste time, I don’t think that the rules that the league is implementing are bad ones. I also hate the attitude that because David Ortiz is David Ortiz, he doesn’t have to abide by the rules. Papi may be a veteran and a very loveable guy, but he is also a player in the MLB, which means that he needs to follow the rules that are put in place by the league, no matter how long he’s been in the game.

            With that said, Red Sox Nation loves Papi because he’s Papi, and I don’t expect his personality to change any time soon. It’s hard to believe, but there’s only 33 days until MLB opening day, and like the rest of the baseball world, I can’t wait.