Tuesday, February 16

The Red Sox Bench: Solid Options, or Secretly Terrible?



As Boston got slammed with nasty wet snow all afternoon and I settled back into Eastern Standard Time at work, an interesting topic came up between myself and TMurph: Is the Sox bench as solid as everyone seems to think? Or is it actually pretty terrible?

If I were to share our exact gchat convo on the topic we'd both be fired, but we struggled over the topic for some time. Ultimately, we landed on the opinion that most believe our bench of Tek, Lowrie, Hall, Hermida, and for now, Mike Lowell, is a good one. But think about it, save for maybe Hermy, do you want any of those guys seeing considerable time? Do you want to call Hall, Tek or Lowrie's name when it's close and late and you need a PH?

We also decided Bill Hall is this 2000's version of Brady Anderson, one extreme outlier of a year (2006) mixed into a career of mediocrity. Questionable at best, and let's be honest, if he wasn't in Boston, you wouldn't even know he was still alive.

An assumed bench without Mikey Lowell doesn't leave you with many options, no real pop, speed, or specialities.....and when JD wakes up after a restless night of sleep requiring 4 games off, Hermida will get the call in right, rendering the bench essentially useless.

Maybe that's when Josh Reddick gets the call.

Sure, bench players are benched for a reason, but I have a hard time remembering the last time I felt good about our close and late options. No disrespect Rocco, te vojo bene.




Fingers are crossed that we don't see much of any of these guys this season.

1 comment:

Soxin10' said...

Got to think there are more pressing issues than the bench. Not to mention Tito doesn't seem to pinch hit very often (doesn't want to piss anyone off). Reddick might be on the big league club at the start of the season.

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