Red Sox notes: Another season of godawful defense, the foolishness of comparing Betts and Devers, why the team should be open to trading Jarren Duran, and the play-by-play abilities of Dave O'Brien

Tuesday 6/3/25

The Red Sox committed two more errors last night in their 7-6 loss at Fenway to the Angels, which takes their AL-leading total to fifty--that's ten more than any other team in the league. The Red Sox also led the AL in errors last year and the year before.

They used to say that Tom Menino was Boston's mayor for life. Alex Cora has been treated since he got the job as if he were the Red Sox' manager for life, though that has to be changing now. It's the same issues every year with this team under his watch. Yes, the players are the players, but you can't tell me that this team would have the same problems each season like they do with Alex Cora.

I'm not sure where this stands now--I know they had a fourteen strikeout game after--but it surprised me to learn the other day that two more teams in MLB have struck out more than the Red Sox. What is it like to watch those teams? Because the Red Sox are always striking out. Ten more last night. By comparison: The Angels struck out five times.

David Ortiz was asked about Rafael Devers playing the field, and Ortiz said that Devers is doing what he's supposed to be doing--DHing--and they should leave him there, while adding that he, Ortiz, was someone who'd do whatever was best for the team. He wasn't saying that Devers DHing wasn't best for the team.

The idea that David Ortiz would have had no problem doing what the team asked is funny. David Ortiz wanted what David Ortiz wanted. You could argue that he's the most important Red Sox player in the team's history. I would. As big a winner as I've ever seen in professional sports. But that was a kind of motivation from within rather than without. He wanted to win but he also wanted to be doing what was best for him.

People foolishly bring up the example of Mookie Betts playing all of these positions--second base, shortstop--despite being a Gold Glove right fielder, in relation to Devers not playing the field and moving around. Can they really not see why Betts would want to do this and it'd have appeal to him? He's a great athlete. This plays to his strengths. Devers isn't a great athlete in the same sense and defense and moving around the diamond doesn't show him off to positive effect the way it shows Betts off.

I'm not sure, though, I've ever seen a player refuse to do something like Devers has refused to be open to what might be best for the team, though he also changes his mind a bunch it seems and comes off his stance and I wouldn't be surprised if you see him at third or first--or both--this season and maybe soon.

The Red Sox should be sellers at the trade deadline because they're not going anywhere. A guy to think about moving: Jarren Duran. Last year was his career year. This year, he's average. His OPS+ is 100. So dead average. He's not very good in the field. I believe he was a Gold Glove finalist last year, but that would have had more to do with the season he had offensively and the hype he got. Have a good season and be a speed guy who plays the outfield, and people make this assumption that you're really good defensively. Even now I'll see people who don't know much about baseball history express surprise when they find out that Lou Brock wasn't a good defensive outfielder.

Duran isn't young--this is his age twenty-eight season. His game is speed. He doesn't walk enough, doesn't get on base enough, doesn't hit lefties well. You've seen his best. He's also fragile, I think. He puts a lot of mental duress on his body, you might say. It's almost like a player who carries too much physical weight and how that causes his body to break down and his career to be shorter than it ought to have been, or to really fall off from being a star player to an at-best-average player and then worse. Ryan Howard.

Duran could be an appealing player to a contender and a smaller market might also serve him well. He's not a cornerstone player for the Red Sox. In two or three years, he could be a platoon player. He still has time to rebound this year, but unless he has a couple of really hot months, he won't approach what he did last year. I think that was a classic career year. Earlier I'd written that I thought he could replicate his 2024 season, but I'm less inclined to think that now.

You see this kind of thing--a guy struggles to put it together, he hits that classic prime season age of twenty-seven, has the career year, lives off of it for a bit, but is never the same. And it's hard for guys whose main attribute is their speed. Don't say, "But Rickey Henderson's main thing was his speed and look how long he was good for!" Rickey Henderson had a lot of things going for him as a player beyond his speed, and his speed was more than just speed. He knew how to run, how to steal, how to read a pitcher. He could lose speed and still be a speed player, if you will.

I've seen a lot of negative commentary lately from Red Sox fans disparaging the team's TV play-by-play broadcaster, Dave O'Brien. Some say that he's too negative. He's not negative at all. I find it stupefying--honestly, it's one of the strangest things in sports to me--how important it is to so many fans that people lie to them about their team, say the team is the best ever all the time, that they're going to win it all, win any game in question, and how these fans hate people--they'd probably hate me more than anyone--who says what things actually are and, even worse, can back it up with facts, truth, insight, expertise.

O'Brien doesn't editorialize heavily during Sox' broadcasts. He has to be pretty mild by dint of the job. He'll say, "Another tough loss by the Sox, who didn't help themselves." You can't say that after they lose another one-run game after coming a handful of costly errors? How can you not say that and be doing your job?

He's a perfectly capable play-by-play guy. He doesn't drive you away. Broadcasters are really important in baseball, because there are so many games and chances are your team isn't that good. A broadcaster has to feel like a neighbor you enjoy seeing when you come home and having an exchange with.

Is O'Brien Ned Martin? No, not nearly. Martin was a great play-by-play man, but people today would probably hate him more. He'd reference Shakespeare. He was droll. He didn't get overexcited, he wasn't there to get you pumped or pump you up. Baseball didn't sound like it was the most important thing in his life but rather a thing in his life and when the game was done he'd move on to another thing he found interesting and be back with you the next day at the ballpark. I loved listening to him as a kid. I loved watching Sox games as a kid even when they were bad. They had cool players, I loved the team, I loved Boston, but Ned Martin was a big part of it, too.