Red Sox: Five team members who need to take it up a notch in 2020

If the Red Sox are to bounce back in 2020 amid tightened payroll and possible trade losses, five team members need to take their game up a notch.

The Boston Red Sox seek a return to the playoffs after an uneventful 2019. They will give it a go with one hand tied behind their bean counter’s back. Ownership’s alleged mandate to get thrifty and squeeze taxable team payroll below $208 million likely means trading away one or two key players. It’s all part of new Chief of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom shuffling the deck while cutting costs.

Various trade scenarios presented in recent weeks by baseball experts have pegged the likes of Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Chris Sale, David Price and Nathan Eovaldi as candidates to be wearing different uniforms in 2020. J.D. Martinez has been mentioned at times as well, and there’s always the chance other Red Sox players enter the trade picture as add-ons in order to get deals done.

Imagine a World Series scenario next October in which Eovaldi is slated to start Game 3 with Betts batting leadoff and playing right field . . .  for the St. Louis Cardinals. That would be the result of a multi-player deal envisioned by ESPN’s David Schoenfield, in which the Red Sox get a package of four players led by lefty depth reliever Brett Cecil and RF/INF Tommy Edman (.304 BA, 11 HR, 15 SB, .850 OPS in 92 games in 2019).

This is shaping up to be a Red Sox team with three or four new starters on the field (first base, second base, and one or two in the outfield), one or two new starting pitchers, one or two new relievers, and a new backup catcher.

In making those changes, this could end up being a team with reduced star power, cheaper fill-ins for certain roles, and an expectation that some team members left behind will have to step up their games. This is so the Red Sox can advance beyond last season’s 84 wins while making up ground on the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays.

Hard-throwing righty Matt Barnes remains a pitcher capable of turning his bright future into a scintillating present, even if that sounds like a broken record.

Barnes’s career arc has been a vexing do-si-do of one step forward and one step back. At times he has shown lights-out stuff that hints at All Star-caliber setup specialist, although his Road to Somewhere has been a balancing act between brilliance and abject failure, while littered with starts, stops, stumbles, do-overs, and blown saves, as was especially evident in 2019.

Red Sox brass remains mindful of Barnes’s propensity to overpower hitters in tight spots. Over the last three seasons, Barnes’s strikeouts rate has climbed from 9.6 per nine innings in 2016 to 10.7 in 2017, 14.0 in 2018, and 15.4 in 2019. Remarkable improvement, but not without glitches.

Barnes’s walk rate also has climbed in that time, from 3.6 per nine innings in 2017, to 4.5 in 2018, and 5.3 this past season, suggesting an inability to trust himself to consistently go after hitters and keep them off base. A 1.383 WHIP helps explain his eight blown saves in 2019, the last of which was when he cost Eduardo Rodriguez what would have been his 20th victory on the last day of the regular season.

Barnes’s roughest stretch of 2019 came in June. Feeling the effects of an increased workload no thanks to starters unable to get beyond (let alone to) the fifth inning, Barnes had a 9.69 ERA in 15 June appearances encompassing 13 innings. Beyond that, however, as Manager Alex Cora dialed Barnes back into a comfortable workload groove, the big righthander responded well, ending the season with a 2.28 ERA in months not named June.

Barnes turns 30 in June. Now is the time, once and for all, for him to put it all together and become the consistently dominant set-up man he is profiled to be. If he can cut his walks at least a third, and if Cora can maintain discipline in not overworking him, Barnes could join presumed closer Brandon Workman to form a formidable one-two punch at the back of the Red Sox bullpen.

Left fielder (for now, at least) Andrew Benintendi was the American League’s Rookie of the Year runner-up in 2017. His follow-up 2018 season suggested that a star had been born. The University of Arkansas alum, drafted 7th overall by the Red Sox in 2015, finished 2018 with 16 home runs, 87 RBI’s and a .290/.366/.465/.830 line as well as a well-earned reputation as part of baseball’s best defensive outfield, joined by Jackie Bradley Jr. in center field and Mookie Betts in right.

It was clear in 2018 that Benintendi had successfully navigated his way around the dreaded Sophomore Jinx – only for the equally-dreaded Junior Jinx to catch up with him in 2019. His batting average dipped to .266 but more conspicuously his strikeouts jumped from the 112 and 106 he had notched in 2017 and 2018, respectively, to 140 whiffs in 2019 despite his having 30-plus fewer at-bats than he had in either 2017 or 2018.

Benintendi occasionally looked lost at the plate, mixing in clumsily checked swings with helpless waves at pitches in the dirt that sometimes missed his bat by a half-foot or more. It was ugly at times, nothing like the Fred Lynn-like, lefty-swinging smoothie he had shown himself to be the two years prior.

Part of the blame for Benintendi’s downturn in 2019 – he even appeared out of sorts on occasion with his play in left field – was being moved to the leadoff spot to begin the season. It was believed his ability to make solid contact, get on base, and flash his superior speed on the basepaths would make him an ideal table-setter for the likes of Betts, Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez and, eventually, Rafael Devers hitting behind him.

Instead, the No. 1 spot apparently made Benintendi uncomfortable, making him press more than usual, and setting him on a path to inconsistency. After two months at leadoff producing a .257 batting average (including .081 when leading off games), Cora ended the experiment and moved Benintendi back to No. 2 behind Betts.

Benintendi’s moderately disappointing season (actually, his .774 OPS was just two points below his 2017 OPS) would seem to position him as a prime candidate for Red Sox Bounceback Player of the Year. Ironically, though, he might have to do so while back in the leadoff spot; that is, if Betts ends up getting traded.

Benintendi seems suited for that role better than any other player on the team, and it could motivate him to prove that his brief stint at the No. 1 spot in 2019 was just a fluke.

Alex Cora suffered a Sophomore Jinx in 2019, proving that not only players are susceptible to performance fallbacks. It was a downer of a season for the second-year skipper as the Red Sox finished 24 games behind their franchise-record 108 regular-season wins. Everything had broken right for Cora in 2018, and it at times looked too easy.

Things went awry in 2019 for Cora from the start. The biggest misfire, and it might have been a joint decision also involving former pitching coach Dana LeVangie and ex-President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski, was pumping the brakes on starting pitchers in spring training.

You’ve heard it a million times, how Cora brought along the starters slowly in February and March, choosing to build in added rest on the front end so they would be shipshape to keep the pedal down through September and October. It turned out to be a miscalculation that squandered much of April and May, and, well, forget October.

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Mismanaging the starting staff through spring training was Cora Mistake No. 1. Cora Mistake Part Deux was his managing under the impression that his Red Sox would magically (and inevitably) turn their season around with an extended winning streak, setting their world spinning correctly on its axis once again. It would be just like the 17-2 start in 2018 that set the tone for the rest of the season. He even said so in so many words multiple times.

By the time July rolled around, though, it was apparent that Cora had misplaced the rules and instructions on how to play the game at a championship level.

Cora’s arrival to the Red Sox after the 2017 season had hit all the right notes with his connectedness and availability. His open-door stayed open. He provided a tsunami of fresh air that countered the dour environment left behind by predecessor John Farrell. In motivational, communicative sense, the Red Sox had nowhere to go but up under Cora in his first year.

Cora needs to figure out how to recapture some of that new-manager novelty of 2018. At the same time he should insert just enough of a disconnect between him and players to better assert his authority status, whereby players offer respect as well as a positive response. And when spring training starts Feb. 11 in Fort Myers, it’s TGIF: The Grind Includes February.

Darwinzon Hernandez didn’t do anything wrong in 2019. He surpassed expectations by showing in the second half of the season that he was what many observers had made him out to be – a dynamic thrower with a lively fastball that helped shape his exceptional punchout ability.

Originally seen for his potentially high ceiling as a starting pitcher, Hernandez was brought up to the Red Sox in 2019 to add depth, at least temporarily, to a bullpen worn down by having to pitch an excessive number of innings early and often during the season. He was brought up to make one appearance in April and another in June before being called up for the third time in mid-July, and that’s where he stayed through the end of the season.

In his 30.1 total innings of work spread over 29 games, Hernandez struck out 57, averaging a breath-taking 16.9 K’s per nine innings, although his 26 walks – nearly one an inning – inflated his WHIP to 1.747.

Neither the many strikeouts nor the numerable walks were surprising considering Hernandez’s similar prowess/control issues in the minors. His early success convinced Cora and pitching coach Dana LeVangie to quickly upgrade his role from one of middle relief to more of a back-end bullpen role, along the lines of a left-handed setup role opposite right-hander Matt Barnes.

A couple of other interesting 2019 stats portend Hernandez’s intriguing future. Although he finished the season with an unremarkable 4.45 ERA, it took only three stints out of his 29 appearances to account for 10 of the 15 earned runs he allowed. His ERA in his other 26 games was 1.57. Plus, of particular note, he allowed only one home run all season.

At this still-early stage of his career, Hernandez is best seen as a young pitcher who only needs to harness his control and cut down on the walks while efficiently using his dominating power – an assessment strikingly similar to one used about 60 years ago in describing a then-young pitcher named Sandy Koufax.

Unless Hernandez, who turns 23 later this month, has a regression in spring training, he likely has a reliever’s spot locked up for the Red Sox in 2020. If he can shave off even just a third of his 7.7 walks per nine innings, while continuing to load up on opposing batters’ swings and misses, Hernandez could be a true lockdown reliever and help elevate the bullpen to the upper half of the American League pecking order.