All that's left is to say good-bye

No, not me (sorry), but maybe just about everyone else

Photo by Shihab Chowdhury on Unsplash

I’ve been kinda checked out on the Red Sox over these past few weeks. There’s been a ton of stuff I wanted to write about but just didn’t find the mental energy to actually sit down and flesh out. What does a Xanderless Red Sox team look like? Should they re-sign JD? If the Red Sox signed Rafael Devers, what would that extension look like, and if they didn’t and decided to trade him, what would they get in return? Who in the heck is going to pitch for this team next season? Oh, and what about catcher, right field, DH, and the entire bullpen? Grading Alex Cora, a look back at last off-season, there’s a lot is the point.

But I didn’t get to any of it. I’m sorry for that. I do feel guilty. This past week or two wasn’t really about anything on the field so much as the looming changes promised by the coming off-season and I guess I wasn’t really ready for all that.

In truth, I’m rarely ready for the off-season because the off-season isn’t the most pleasant thought; baseball signals the arrival of spring, the summertime, warmth, sun, vacation, time off from work and school, and a whole bunch of other good things that are ingrained in me from my youth. Maybe in you too. Basically, it’s all the good stuff.

The off-season is, if not more depressing, at least less happy and optimistic, especially the beginning of the off-season. The days shorten, they get colder and darker, and change comes. The guys you’ve grown to love over the last seven, and if we’re lucky, eight months, move on, find new homes, and new fans to cheer for them. Not always, of course, but sometimes. New guys do come in, and we grow to love them eventually, but not yet. The off-season often leaves a hole in our hearts, one only next season can fill.

But as much as change can be depressing and scary, it’s also the foundation of much a season’s success. After all, it’s hard to win if you don’t have the right players. Having the wrong players is a bit like trying to run a race in boots, or go scuba diving with a gerbil in your mask. It’s possible, but your chances of success aren’t as good.

The Red Sox have a lot of work to do to set themselves up for success next season. But there will be time for that later. For now, let’s look at some things we may be leaving behind in 2022.

From where we stand now, there’s seemingly so much change on the horizon. Bogaerts, Devers, Eovaldi, Martinez, Vazquez is already gone… but all of that, Vazquez excepted, is prospective change. Dennis Eckersley is definite change. The second Red Sox broadcasting institution to leave the NESN TV booth in the last year after Jerry Remy’s passing from cancer, Eckersely is, quite fortunately, leaving on different, healthier, terms. That’s a good thing, and I’ll sleep better knowing Eck is out in California somewhere Ecking it up.

But leaving is still leaving, and we Red Sox fans will be worse off for it. There is nobody who broadcasts a baseball game as uniquely, as incisively, and as distinctively as Eck. And there’s nobody anywhere with any job who has his particular mastery of the English language.

But the traits that set Eckersley apart are less his silly turns of phrase than his honesty and sense of humor about himself, not coincidentally two things he shared with Remy. Baseball is a hard game, and it’s a serious game, especially at the professional level. But there are 162 games a year which is, let’s be honest, crazy! In that many games, weird stuff is gonna happen, and the best broadcasters have to be able to switch tones. Eck could do that, maybe better than anyone I’ve ever heard. One minute he’d be analyzing a pitch, the next he’d be discoursing on a guy’s lettuce (that’s Eck for hair).

The Red Sox booth won’t be the same without him. The great Chad Finn wrote a fantastic piece at The Globe on Eckersley, and I encourage you all to read it. Like the best writers, Finn says it all better than I can. For now though, I’ll just say what a pleasure it has been for me to hear Eckersley’s voice throughout the years. I wish him the happiest of retirements and look forward to him dropping by the Fenway booth in the future.

Eck wasn’t the only one saying good-bye on Wednesday. Future ex-Red Sox great Xander Bogaerts was pulled from the game in the later innings by manager Alex Cora in a successful attempt to get the star shortstop one more Fenway ovation.

Tom Caron @TomCaron

Saying goodbye to Eck. Now this. Man, I need a vacation.

The reason? Bogaerts may have played his last game as a Red Sox Wednesday. His contract contains three years remaining at $20 million apiece, about two thirds in terms of AAV of what he could earn on the free agent market, to say nothing of the additional years he’d like receive. Fortunately for him (but maybe not for us), Bogaerts has an opt-out on his current deal, an opt-out he’ll certainly avail himself of. The Red Sox front office has had lots of chances to add years onto his current deal, or rip that up and extend him to infinity. They haven’t.

That doesn’t mean they won’t, but it does beg the question, if they weren’t going to do it before, what’s changed that they’d do it now, given that now is decidedly more expensive? We shall see, but there’s definitely some writing on that wall over there.

He didn’t get the same ovation, but it’s not impossible that Wednesday marked the last day in a Red Sox uniform for Rafael Devers as well. Devers’ contract isn’t up, he still has a year of team control remaining, but if he’s not going to sign an extension it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the front office opted to move him in a trade for longer term pieces. What a depressing thought that is, huh? Imagine Devers standing at the Fenway batters box talking to himself in between pitches wearing another uniform. I can’t, though I have a hunch that when next season rolls around we may not have to imagine it.

I’ll certainly cover both players off-seasons no matter how events turn out for them, but it does strike me that if you toss Nathan Eovaldi and JD Martinez in with Bogaerts and Devers, you’ve got most of the remaining core of the 2018 championship team. Chris Sale is still here, as is Matt Barnes, but that’s slim pick’ns for a team that won it all just… five seasons ago. My gosh that’s further in the rearview mirror than I thought before I started counting it out on my fingers. If Bogaerts does leave, Matt Barnes will be the longest tenured Red Sox, having joined the major league team in September of 2014. That’s… profoundly odd.

We’ll do proper posts on all these guys once the off-season commences in earnest, but it’s worth pointing out how this team is changing. We knew it would. Change always comes, welcome or not. And perhaps, given this team’s record in 2022, change should be more welcome than I’m making it out to be. This team has a lot of needs and frankly it doesn’t take a baseball analytics genius to see that roster churn for a below-.500 team that finished 21 games out of first place is necessary.

As Hall of Famer Branch Rickey once observed to a player asking for a raise, “We finished last with you, we can finish last without you.” The takeaway from that quote, to me, is that no player is bigger and more important that the rest of the team. Change will come. It will, in all likelihood, be difficult. Sad, even. But we must judge it on its own terms.

This Red Sox team has played its last game. Dennis Eckersley has broadcast his last game. Now there’s nothing left to do but to say good-bye.