@SoxNotes
So, in the first 120 years of Red Sox baseball, it didn’t happen once. This year, it will happen twice:
Alex Verdugo – CF, RF, LF
Marwin Gonzalez – LF, 2B, 3B
Now it will be 4 games, 4 positions for Marwin.
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/04/05/tom-caron-patience-is-not-a-virtue-of-red-sox-fans/
Terry Francona used to say there’s no better place to play well than in Boston. The former Red Sox manager also liked to say there isn’t a tougher place to play poorly.
The 2021 Red Sox already know that. They were swept by Baltimore – the presumptive pick to finish last in the American League East – and heard boos from the 4,500 or so fans allowed at Fenway Park in the early days of the season.
In Boston, overreaction to the start of a baseball season is a tradition. And the reaction to an 0-3 start has not been good. It was just the second time in Red Sox history that Boston began the season with three straight losses at home. The last time it happened, Harry Truman was president.
The good news is that team went 64-27 down the stretch to win 96 games that season. The bad news is Ted Williams isn’t walking through the clubhouse door this time around.
If you sifted through the rubble of a lost weekend you could find a couple of positive notes like J.D. Martinez’s 5-for-10 start (and the team’s only home run) and 3 1/3 scoreless innings from Rule 5 Draft pickup Garrett Whitlock.
But no one was talking about any of that Monday. The talk was about a team picking up where it left off after a season, and a year, we all want to forget. That’s not an overreaction. That’s reality.
There is plenty of time for the Red Sox to put this behind them but it’s going to get late early for a team that desperately needs to build confidence internally, and externally with fans. A good start for this team was critical if it wanted to avoid becoming irrelevant in the Boston sports scene.
Three games isn’t a start. It’s a blip on the radar of a 162-game season. But when those three games come at the start of the year a team’s blemishes are magnified. It’s the worst start for the Red Sox since 2012.
You may remember 2012. That was the year Bobby Valentine managed the Red Sox, a year where the team seemed to hit rock bottom every couple of weeks.
We’re not sure if this is rock bottom for the 2021 Red Sox. We do know there is no where to go but up after being outscored 18-5 over the first three games of the season.