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Red Sox Sign Brandon Phillips

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With no clear sign of regular play in the near-term future for Dustin Pedroia and continued concerns about Eduardo Núñez, the Red Sox have signed three-time All-Star Brandon Phillips as infield insurance.

Phillips, who turned 37 years old today, debuted with the Indians in 2002, but he’s probably best known for his 11 seasons with the Reds (2006-16) where he played a club-record 1,586 games at second base and earned himself four Gold Gloves.

Overall, Phillips slashed .279 AVG/.325 OBP/.429 SLG with 191 home runs over 1,614 games with the Reds, the 6th-most in club history. His 1,774 hits and 851 RBIs are 8th- and 9th-most in franchise history. Phillips’ 113 home runs at the club’s ballpark is still the 4th-most for all-time.

The Reds traded Phillips to the Braves in February 2017 for pitcher Andrew McKirahan. Atlanta moved him to the Angels last August 31 for catcher Tony Sanchez.

Phillips hasn’t played at the minor or major league levels since last season. To prepare, Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski says Phillips will start at the club’s spring training facility in Florida before an assignment to Triple-A Pawtucket.

Welcome Brandon Phillips to the Red Sox organization. He’s on Twitter at @DatDudeBP.

Now some other news and notes of interest:

  • Speaking of the Reds, Cincinnati great Joey Votto earlier this month played in the 1,500th game of his career. Votto’s career slash line of .313 AVG/.428 OBP/.536 SLG across his 12 major league seasons makes him just the sixth player since 1871 with a slash line of at least .310/.425/.530 across 1,500+ games played. The others are Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Babe Ruth and Red Sox lifer Ted Williams.
  • The Giants have released veteran infielder and former Red Sox Josh Rutledge from their Triple-A affiliate. Rutledge played in parts of the three last seasons with Boston slashing .252 AVG/.319 OBP/.313 SLG in 104 total games. The free agent signed on with San Francisco last December but hasn’t seen major league action this year.
  • MLB and the players union are negotiating changes to the footwear policy that requires “at least 51 percent of the exterior of each Player’s shoes must be the Club’s designated primary shoe color and the portion of the Club’s designated primary shoe color must be evenly distributed throughout the exterior of each shoe.” Earlier this season, Cubs infielder Ben Revere ran afoul of league rules by wearing all black shoes “to pay homage to the history of our great game.”

Knee Surgery For Pedroia

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Add Dustin Pedroia to the growing list of Red Sox who have gone under the knife already this offseason.

In a brief statement today, the Red Sox said Pedroia underwent a successful cartilage restoration procedure on his left knee. The procedure was performed by Dr. Riley Williams III at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

The Sox said Pedroia’s recovery timeline is seven months, meaning he won’t make his return until late May 2018, at the earliest. It will be Pedroia’s first time off the Opening Day Roster in the last 11 of his 12 big league seasons (2007-17).

Pedroia’s streak of 11 Opening Day starts was eighth longest in Red Sox club history since 1913. Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski had the most such starts (22, 1961-1980, 1982-83), followed by Dwight Evans (17), and Hall of Famer Jim Rice (14).

Pedroia’s sidelining means an added dimension of offseason maneuvering for Red Sox baseball president Dave Dombrowski.

More Surgeries, More Recoveries

Since this season ended, three other Red Sox have undergone surgical procedures: Eduardo Rodríguez (reconstruction of the patellofemoral ligament in his right knee) and Robby Scott (left elbow arthroscopy and debridement), and Hanley Ramírez (left shoulder arthroscopy and debridement).

Ramírez and Scott should be ready for Spring Training. Rodríguez’ recovery will keep him idle until at least April.

All four procedures have come subsequent to Dombrowski’s October 11 press conference announcing the firing of former manager John Farrell. At that time, Dombrowksi told the press he was unaware of any players who needed surgery.


Red Sox Pedroia Beats Phillies in Extra Innings

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It’s likely most Red Sox fans didn’t expect such a tough contest on Monday when Boston faced the Philadelphia at Fenway. The Phillies arrived at Fenway with a 21-40 record, the worst in the majors, and a 9-26 road record. They’d lost all five Interleague games in which they played this season, the only MLB club to do that (only the Dodgers have yet to play in Interleague in 2017). Philly also toted in a 5.02 team ERA, the worst such pitching performance in baseball.

But the Phillies were no pushovers in this first of two games in Boston before two more later this week in the City of Brotherly Love.

Philadelphia jumped all over Rick Porcello for four first-inning runs. The Sox chipped away at that lead but didn’t ever get on top until it really mattered, at the end of the 11th inning. It was the second straight steamy, long night at Fenway with a game that clocked in past the four hour mark. Unlike Sunday’s bout with the Tigers, though, there were likely less complaints thanks to the Sox victory.

Off to a tough start, Porcello did, in fact, calm down to finish 6.0 innings of work, but allowed ten hits and five runs in the process. He walked one and struck out four. Fortunately, he was backed up by five innings of scoreless relief by Joe Kelly, Robby Scott and Craig Kimbrel, each for an inning, and then two gutsy innings of scoreless play from Matt Barnes.

“I can’t say enough about the job that they did.” Porcello said after the game, “and especially Barnsie…huge, gave us a chance to win.” Porcello also recognized the efforts of Mookie Betts who made a tremendous outfield catch. “He cut that ball off in the gap. If he doesn’t do that, they score, and the game is probably over at that point.”

Betts, after a recent cool spell, is torrid again going 4-for-5 on Monday with a career-high three doubles, one off the MLB-record last set for Boston by Brock Holt in 2014.

The bullpen kept the Sox in the game long enough for Dustin Pedroia to drive in the winning run with just the second walk-off of his long and distinguished career.

Pedroia-Nava Connection

Daniel Nava, who played in Monday’s game for the Phillies, went 3-for-6 improving to a full season average to .329 in his first season with Philadelphia. It’s a nice bounceback so far for a guy who had a miserable .590 OPS in 45 games with the Angels and nine with the Royals last season. Nava played parts of five seasons with the Sox, 2010-15.

In a coincidence almost too strange to be true, Pedroia’s only previous walk-off hit in his long career came June 19, 2010 against the Dodgers. In that game Pedey’s hit drove in Nava to secure the win.

But what had to be on Nava’s mind Monday night was his first career at-bat, the first pitch in particular, right here at Fenway, seven years ago to the very day. Not just a hit but a home run. Not just a home run, but a grand slam.

And for a final irony, Nava’s slam came against the Phillies, in just their 19th game ever at Fenway Park.


Life After Farrell

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After a 3-3 road trip that included an embarrassing 1-3 series against the Oakland A’s, the Red Sox have returned home to Fenway for three-game sets against the Rangers and Mariners beginning Tuesday.

The 1-3 weekend series against the Athletics to end the road trip was especially vexing coming after a two-game sweep of what were the first place Cardinals. On Sunday, the Red Sox were in danger of their first-ever four-game sweep by the Athletics in Oakland. The A’s swept the Sox in four games once before at Fenway in 1971.

Red Sox John FarrellThe road trip leaves the Sox just above .500 at 22-21, a full seven and a half games behind the first place Yankees, and six games behind Baltimore.

The Sox team batting average is .267 (compared with .282 for 2016), still good enough for third best in baseball after the Nationals (.274) and Yankees (.269). Boston’s slugging percentage, meanwhile, is an anemic, below average .408 (vs an MLB-best .461 last season), speaking to the club’s power outage when it comes to meaningful production.

The Red Sox team OPS+, a useful measure of on-base percentage plus slugging and accounting for variables in ballpark condition, is 98. The majors’ best teams, the Astros and Yankees, are at 118 and 114, respectively, indicating their performance is 18% and 14% better than average.

Not surprisingly, all of this is leading to easy speculation once again that Manager John Farrell‘s job is in jeopardy. FOX Sports Ken Rosenthal wonders who Sox Baseball President Dave Dombrowski might turn to for a Farrell replacement. Rosenthal notes that the best choice may have been former Sox bench coach Torey Lovullo, who left Boston in the off-season and has so far managed the Diamondbacks to a second place position (27-19) in the National League West.

Rosenthal spotlights two incidents that indicate Farrell may have lost control of his club: the bizarre and prolonged issue involving Dustin Pedroia and Orioles Manny Machado and the more recent heated dugout discussion between Farrell and the struggling Drew Pomeranz. 

Now some additional news and notes of particular interest to Red Sox fans:

  • Ten years ago, in 2007, the Red Sox won 70% of their first 40 games (28-12). The fact is, three of the last four teams to win that many of their first 40 also won the World Series: 2016 Cubs (29-11), 2007 Red Sox, and the 2005 White Sox (28-12). Only the 2010 Rays (29-11) missed the mark. This season, it’s the Astros (29-12) that are looking for their first-ever win in the Fall Classic.
  • Longtime Sox fans might remember the name Joe Lahoud, who patrolled the Fenway outfield from 1968-71. The New England native went on to play with the Twins, Angels, Rangers, and Royals before retiring in 1978. The now 70-year-old Lahoud is in the news again, suing his former employer, New York-based Document Technologies LLC, for age discrimination after, to hear Lahoud’s story, some outrageous behavior on their part. Employers “shouldn’t be able to displace workers because of discrimination of any kind,” Lahoud recently told the Boston Herald.
  • Bill Ballou of the The Worcester Telegram & Gazette caught up with another, albeit more recent Red Sox veteran, Dave McCarty, who joined the club in 2003 and retired after being designated for assignment in 2005. “Boston was by far my favorite place to play,” McCarty told the newspaper. “The pressure of playing for the Red Sox didn’t bother me. I loved that, thrived on it. In Boston, you either love it and embrace it, or you just fold.”
  • On Sunday, Mitch Moreland homered in his third straight game for a new career high. Moreland’s 14 home runs at the Athletics’ Coliseum are the most by a visitor there since 2010. The last Red Sox player to belt a home run in three or more consecutive games was David Ortiz last season (also three games). If Moreland can hit a home run on Tuesday he’ll be the first Boston player with four such games since Adrian Gonzalez in 2011. The club record since 1913 is a HR in five straight, most recently by Jose Canseco in 1995.

Red Sox & Orioles Are Hottest AL East Rivalry

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Sunday’s Red Sox game at Baltimore was a spectacle. And although, after two quiet losses, Boston came away with a much-needed win, the sight of a baseball careening towards Manny Machado‘s head and Dustin Pedroia‘s weird, mid-game, cross-field apology was just downright bizarre.

This mess started Friday when Machado slid late and hard into Pedroia resulting in an injury that has sidelined the Sox second baseman for both Saturday’s and Sunday’s games. 

With a large lead late in the game Sunday, Sox reliever Matt Barnes ostensibly sought some retribution, but the ball sailed dangerously close to Machado’s head.

Today, The New York Post said Pedroia didn’t just throw Barnes under the bus in the aftermath of the near-beaning of Machado, but that he drove the bus and then “put it in reverse to back over Barnes.” Post sportswriter Joel Sherman is calling for a 25-game suspension for Barnes, through the longest suspension for throwing at a batter since 2000 has been ten games.

Over at ESPN.com, Scott Lauber writes that Sunday’s shot at Machado “was hardly the proportional response that jibes with baseball’s unspoken code.”

And while Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports called Barnes’ post-game denials “unlikely,” he also implied that Baltimore’s Zach Britton‘s shot at Pedroia (“If he can’t control his own teammates, then there’s a bigger issue over there”) was silly. Like Sherman, Rosenthal thinks Pedroia should’ve protected his teammates and spoken to Machado privately rather than engage in the mid-game, on-field apology.

After the game Orioles manager Buck Showalter repeatedly and nauseatingly extolled the “courage” of his team. Meanwhile, word came from the Sox Monday that Pedroia had been examined at Massachusetts General Hospital and that he’s now listed as “day-to-day,” therefore likely to avoid the Disabled List.

Pretty much everyone agrees, this isn’t over. Boston and Baltimore are the newest, hottest AL East rivalry. They meet again, this time at Fenway, next Monday May 1.

Benintendi’s Day

After an 0-for-4 outing Friday, a day off Saturday seemed to refresh Red Sox rookie outfielder Andrew Benintendi.

On Sunday, Benintendi went 5-for-5 with an RBI becoming just the second Sox player since at least 1913 with a 5-hit performance in one of his first 52 career games. The other Boston player to do that was the venerable Sox Hall of Famer Johnny Pesky on June 13, 1942 (also a 9-inning game).

Ironically, baseball’s overall last player to collect 5-hits within his first 52 career games was Benintendi’s teammate Steve Selsky, who did it with the Reds last September 26, his 19th career major league game.