With the door to the COVID penalty box finally opening, the Boston Red Sox You can imagine a streak run by your best players and not by Triple-A’s infill and fairway free agents.
But it’s time for the team that opened the season. Those Triple-A infill and street free agents have kept the club afloat, mind you, and if the Red Sox make the Playoffs, they’ll have the young Panamanian to thank in part. Jonathan Arauz to take them home.
And while we wait for the return of the veterans, it is now clear that a player has the key to unlock the rest of the roster: the Puerto Rican. Kiké Hernandez.
This isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to a hideous center-field defense during Sunday’s absurdly agonizing 11-10 slate loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, which saw Alex Verdugo play two balls off a pair of home runs. minor leagues who added five runs.
The Red Sox’s outfield defense has been nurtured for a while, but that wasn’t always the case. For three months, in fact, the Red Sox were able to legitimately claim as the best defensive outfield in baseball with Verdugo on the left. Hernandez in the center and Hunter Renfroe in the right.
Not anymore. With Hernandez on the shelf and Kyle Schwarber needing at-bats somewhere, the Red Sox have seen the quality of their outfield defense disintegrate.
Verdugo is an above-average left fielder who has saved an additional seven runs there, according to Baseball Info Solutions. However, put him in the middle and he has a hard time, especially with balls that hit overhead. According to BIS, if he plays a full season at center, Verdugo would cost the Red Sox 23 runs.
His deficiencies were on full display Sunday when he lost Nelson Cruz’s fly ball in the sun, knocking it out of his glove on a three-base error.
He then futilely jumped over the fence to advance Austin Meadows at the start of the ninth. When Renfroe couldn’t back him up and forced shortstop José Iglesias into the center, Meadows turned around to tie the game with a home run inside the park.
Now imagine a garden with Hernández in the center. Despite opening the season as a starting second baseman, he was 10 runs better than average at center, projecting a plus of +21 overall. Where Verdugo seems hesitant and lets the ball play him, Hernandez attacks as he is also blessed with a monstrous arm.
It gets worse. Moving Verdugo off the left has put Schwarber or regular designated hitter JD Martinez there, and the Red Sox have suffered unsurprisingly. Martinez provides reduced range and has periodically thrown to the wrong base, but his problems are not so much defensive as offensive.
When Martinez hit .304 with 23 homers, 78 RBIs and a .941 OPS; In other words, he is one of the most dynamic hitters in baseball:
But when he plays in the outfield, his numbers stagnate. In 31 games, he is hitting .229 with two home runs, 11 RBIs and a .627 OPS. This was not the case early in Martinez’s career with the Red Sox. In 2018 and 2019, for example, he hit .362 in the outfield.
Schwarber may bring a welcome dimension to the offense, where he’s reaching base in nearly half of his plate appearances, but he’s a positionless man. He has played seven games in left field and one of his mistakes in Tampa last week effectively cost the Red Sox a game when he made a short throw with a ball near the fence.
Even Renfroe, who will earn Gold Glove status as the AL’s leader in assists, has not been immune from mistakes. In addition to failing to back Verdugo with the Meadows home run, he also twice uncorked unnecessary shots at the plate that allowed runners to take an extra base (one of them, Cruz, finished scoring the decisive run in 10th).
Put Hernandez back at the center, though, and a lot of these issues go away, and that’s even before we mention his offensive impact. At the time of his COVID diagnosis, he was the hottest hitter on the team, hitting .300 with .401. in base percentage and .937 OPS since the All-Star Game.
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The Red Sox desperately needed him back, and he’s already in the lineup Tuesday vs. the Rays at Fenway Park. That’s great news for a team that needs to stabilize its defense in the outfield while making this latest postseason push.
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