A's @ Red Sox Game Thread/ 7th- 9th July 2023

RED SOX NOTEBOOK
With the Red Sox’ rotation battered, Nate Eovaldi’s Fenway return is even harder to swallow
By Varun Shankar Globe Correspondent,Updated July 6, 2023, 7:19 p.m.

It’s hard not to look at the Red Sox rotation, one hammered by injuries and relying often on bullpen games, and not think about Nate Eovaldi.

The former Red Sox righthander returned to Fenway Park Thursday to make his first start against his former team since he signed a two-year, $34 million contract with the Texas Rangers. He earned a round of applause when his name was announced and pitched 5 ⅓ innings, giving up four earned runs and striking out three.

Entering Thursday, the 33-year-old All-Star’s 112 ⅓ innings would lead all Sox pitchers and his 2.64 ERA would be a team-low among those who’ve thrown at least 30 innings this season.

“It wasn’t lack of effort, I can tell you that. I can guarantee you that,” manager Alex Cora said. “There’s a lot of stories out there. I can guarantee you that it wasn’t lack of effort. It just didn’t work out.”

Eovaldi joined the Sox after a midseason trade in 2018 and was a key part of the team’s last World Series victory. He posted a 1.61 ERA in 22 ⅓ innings during the postseason.

“Everything we asked for since day one,” Cora said. “It’s probably one of the best moves that [then-general manager Dave Dombrowski] made that year.”

Eovaldi posted a sub-4 ERA in four of his five seasons with the Red Sox. He made his first All-Star team in 2021 and finished fourth in Cy Young voting after making 32 starts with a 3.75 ERA.
Related: Game story: Red Sox bats finally break out of their slump, erupt in the seventh to take the series over the Rangers

Cora raved about his former pitcher, saying he was “great in the clubhouse, great in the community” and shouted out his wife, Rebekah, for the treats she’d bring to the clubhouse.

“They bought into it. They love it. This is not for everybody. And since day one, he wasn’t afraid of the noise or afraid of the expectations,” Cora said. “He took it and he ran with it … he wanted to win.”

Trading places

The Red Sox swapped backup catchers Thursday, signing Jorge Alfaro to a major league deal and designating Caleb Hamilton — who went hitless in four games — for assignment.

This isn’t Alfaro’s first go-around with the organization. He signed a minor league deal with an invitation to big league camp in January but didn’t make the team. He mashed in Triple-A Worcester, with an .887 OPS in 43 games.

The 30-year-old opted out of his deal to sign with Colorado. He played 10 games before being designated for assignment on June 30.

“It’s been a crazy month … flying around the country,” Alfaro said. “I mean I got a little frustrated with the situation … but I’m happy to be back and I just want to give my 100 percent to the team.”

The Red Sox remain without Reese McGuire, who has been out since June 22 with an oblique injury. Cora said McGuire is progressing but that his return from injury will take a while.

Alfaro could also see time as a pinch hitter late in games against lefthanders or at first base, Cora said.
Duran sits

Jarren Duran, who entered Thursday’s game second among Sox in OPS and leads the team in that metric against righthanded pitchers, was not in the lineup.

“We’ve got some good players and we’ve got to move them around,” Cora said. “I know he’s swinging the bat well, but [Triston] Casas is swinging the bat well too. We’ve got to get [Adam] Duvall going too, which is important.”


Duran’s removal from the lineup is one of the downstream effects from Cora’s unwillingness to play Justin Turner at second base. Turner has primarily been the designated hitter or played first base. He took the former position Thursday with Casas in the lineup, putting Masataka Yoshida in left field.

That left just center field remaining as an option for Duran with Alex Verdugo entrenched in right, and Duvall’s entry into the lineup sent Duran to the bench.

It looked like Duran would pinch hit in the sixth Thursday but the Rangers countered with a lefthander. Cora quickly turned to Rob Refsnyder, who notched an RBI single.

“He actually changed the game tonight,” Cora said of Duran. “... He’s a threat right now. They respected that and they went aggressively to their bullpen and we took advantage of it.”
On the mend

Yu Chang (hamate) will be activated Friday, according to a league source. David Hamilton will be sent down to Triple A Worcester as the corresponding move. Chang will play often at shortstop, Cora said.. … James Paxton (paternity) will start Saturday … Tanner Houck (facial fracture) got good news Thursday and should start throwing on July 11. His role upon returning is undecided, per Cora … Joely Rodriguez (shoulder) will likely join the Sox during their series against Oakland, which begins Friday … Chris Sale (shoulder) is playing catch. He will make a trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., for his son’s tournament … John Schreiber (shoulder) is going on a rehab assignment. The team is targeting a July 21 return against the New York Mets … Corey Kluber (shoulder) will throw a bullpen Friday … Richard Bleier (shoulder) will pitch at least two innings in a rehab game this weekend.

Red Sox can make a serious run if they can end head-scratching trend
It's time for Boston to start taking care of business against baseball's worst teams.
By John Tomase, Red Sox Insider • Published 24 mins ago • Updated 22 mins ago


The Red Sox are a last-place team. It says so right in the standings. They trail the Rays by 11 games, the Orioles by seven, and the Yankees and Blue Jays by three each.

The Red Sox are not a last-place team, though. Their odds of reaching the playoffs are 16 percent, virtually the same as the Guardians, who are only 1.5 games out of first place in the AL Central. The Cardinals own 1.3 percent postseason odds, and every other last-place team (A's, Royals, Nationals, Rockies) checks in at less than one tenth of one percent.

It would be easier to get a read on this season if the Red Sox were just straight abysmal. Instead, they continue to confound us by playing just well enough to avoid oblivion, but not well enough to escape the basement.


Their skittish season continued on Thursday with a rousing 10-6 victory over the Rangers that seemed headed in the same direction as so many of their most demoralizing losses, a pair of defensive miscues opening the door for the visitors to take the lead en route to a series victory.

Instead, the Red Sox exploded for six runs in the seventh to overcome that 5-3 deficit, continuing one of the strangest trends of their season. With the win, they took two out of three from the first-place Rangers, which is pretty much what they do.

In fact, with the exception of teams from Florida, the Red Sox play well against good teams and poorly against bad ones. Take out the Rays (1-7) and Marlins (0-3), and the Red Sox are 35-19 against teams that are .500 or better. Put them back in, and they're still 36-29. Included in that record is a massive 12-1 against the Yankees and Blue Jays that has kept them afloat in the division.

The killer is that they've gone 9-14 against everyone else, including 1-8 vs. the Cards, Rockies, and Pirates, who sit a collective 38 games out of first place. If they played as well against the bad teams as the good ones, they'd be on pace for 90 wins.

They'll get a chance to reverse that streak when the homeless A's come to town on Friday for three. At 25-64, Oakland actually has a chance to cede the worst record in baseball to the Royals, who have fallen to within a half game of the overall basement. The A's are by no means suddenly good, but they're not as wretched as they were in April and May, either.

Since the start of June, they're 15-18, which isn't that far off from the Red Sox (17-16). So now the "challenge" for Alex Cora's club will be playing as well against Oakland as it did against Texas.

The Red Sox need every game they can get ahead of the trade deadline in three weeks. The Yankees are entering one of the easiest portions of their schedule, with only one series against a winning team between now and the final weekend of July, and that's the Angels, who just lost Mike Trout for two months. The underachieving Blue Jays face a tougher road, with series against the Diamondbacks, Padres, Mariners, and Dodgers.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, will spend most of the month on the road, with visits to Wrigley Field, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle sprinkled around five games at Fenway vs. the Mets and Braves.

Maybe by the end of that stretch, we'll have a better handle on who they are, and whether they're even a last-place team at all.

Kiké Hernández not thrilled with benching but delivers big hit in Red Sox win
Published: Jul. 07, 2023, 1:16 p.m.


By Chris Cotillo | ccotillo@MassLive.com
BOSTON — Before Thursday’s game, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said he hoped unplugging Kiké Hernández for a three-game span would help the struggling utility man clear his head and contribute when he returned to the lineup against the Rangers. Though Hernández didn’t quite share Cora’s sentiment, the plan worked.

After not playing from Sunday to Wednesday, Hernández returned Thursday and had the biggest hit of a 10-6 Red Sox win, as he blooped a two-run, go-ahead single into left field to ignite Boston’s six-run seventh inning rally. For a player who had struggled on both sides of the ball all season, the broken-bat hit was a big one. That doesn’t mean he was pleased with the decision that landed him on the bench for three days, however.



Hernández was asked postgame if he agreed with Cora’s assessment that sitting for a few games would serve as a mental reset. His answer was a sarcastic one.

“Um, I guess, sure,” Hernández said. “We can say that. Yeah, sure.”


So, not really?

“I mean, agree to disagree,” Hernández admitted.

After an injury-plagued 2022, Hernández was cast as a key piece of Boston’s resurgence entering 2023. The club aggressively moved to sign him to a one-year, $10 million extension in early September then made a push to anoint him as a team leader in the wake of veterans Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Nathan Eovaldi and others departing. Once Trevor Story had offseason elbow surgery, Hernández was moved from center field to shortstop, where he began the year as the everyday starter for Cora.

Hernández’s lack of production lost him that job by the end of May, as his throwing issues led to 14 errors at shortstop and forced Cora to move journeyman Pablo Reyes (and eventually rookie David Hamilton) to the starting role. Offensively, too, Hernández struggled. Even after a hit and walk Thursday night, he’s hitting just .225 with a .616 OPS in 76 games. His -1.1 fWAR ranks him dead last among qualified major leaguers, according to FanGraphs. With Yu Chang and Pablo Reyes due back soon, Hernández is a candidate to be designated for assignment, or at least, traded to a team looking for a versatile veteran. His time on the roster may be limited.


“It has been tough,” he conceded Thursday night. “Obviously, things haven’t gone my way offensively or defensively. The opportunities have been getting more limited. Things haven’t gone my way. I’m conscious that we have a lot of baseball left this season. So I’m just putting in the work and trying to figure out a way to get out of this hole. I think coming up today for the team is a step in the right direction.”


Even before removing Hernández from the lineup for three games, Cora had made it clear his patience with Hernández’s performance was running low. The Sox consistently pinch-hit for Hernández — formerly one of their relied-upon clutch hitters — late in games. Sometimes, those decisions have been matchup-based. Other times, hitting someone else simply gave the Sox a better chance to win.


With new catcher Jorge Alfaro as the only man on left on the bench in the seventh inning Thursday, Cora had no choice but to let Hernández hit against reliever Grant Anderson with the bases loaded and one out. It ended up working out.


“As of late, the opportunities to come up big late in the game have been limited,” Hernández said. “In that situation, to be able to stay with it, put the ball in play and stay inside it to find a hole out there was pretty big.”

Chang will return to the roster Friday and assume the starting shortstop role, with Hamilton being sent back to Triple-A Worcester to make room. Reyes’ activation is still a ways off and will likely happen after the All-Star break. Until then, Hernández’s roster spot is likely safe, even if his role will be diminished. Cora said Thursday that he expects to have Hernández play some second base and cycle into the lineup against left-handed starters. His time as an everyday starter is over.

“He works hard at his craft,” Cora said after the win. “He worked hard on his craft in the offseason and it hasn’t paid off yet. Today was a huge one for us. He got that huge RBI, he made that double play at the end. Something people haven’t noticed, he has been playing good shortstop lately, the last few weeks. It’s good to have him contribute. I know for him, it’s important because he cares about this organization and he cares about the team and he doesn’t want to struggle. At one point, he’s going to get hot.”

A dejected Hernández remains committed to heating up, even if he’ll have to fight for at-bats.

“There’s nothing else to do but embrace it, I guess,” he said. “It’s just what’s handed at the time. I’m trying to figure out how to make the best out of it.”