BOSTON -- Emptying the notebook after a long Boston Red Sox road trip and before Alex Rodriguez's final games in Fenway Park:
A 5-6 record on the West Coast felt like a wasted opportunity, especially since the Red Sox lost three games started by purported ace David Price. But while it's reasonable to bemoan a trip that could have gone so much better, it's also worth noting that a .500 record (or thereabouts) on the road really ought to be good enough to reach the postseason.
Consider this: Thirty of the Red Sox's remaining 52 games will be played on the road. If they go 15-15 in those games, they would need to go only 11-11 at home the rest of the way to reach 86 wins, which clinched the American League's second wild-card berth for the Houston Astros last season.
Here, though, is a far more troublesome sign for the Red Sox: They are 4-31 when they score less than four runs. It's difficult to make the playoffs if you're unable to win low-scoring games. It's downright impossible to advance deep into October without doing so.
If we've learned anything about David Ortiz over the years, it's that he should never be written off. He wasn't washed up in 2010, when he looked so lost against left-handed pitching that then-manager Terry Francona briefly platooned him at designated hitter with Mike Lowell. And he wasn't done last season, when his sub-.700 OPS in early June prompted even Red Sox owner John Henry to declare that Big Papi wouldn't finish with his usual 30 homers. (He wound up hitting 37.)
So, only a fool would suggest now -- after a 4-for-30 road trip in the midst of his otherworldly final season -- that Ortiz is finished.
But Ortiz is also 40, with feet and heels that ache so badly he often spends hours in the training room getting them taped in order to play. He's 16-for-74 (.216) with three homers and a .642 OPS since the All-Star break. And while a downturn was inevitable after his outrageous first half, the Red Sox also can't afford for it to be as steep as, say, A-Rod, who hit 18 homers with an .898 OPS in 82 games before the All-Star break last season compared to 24 homers and a .695 OPS in 116 games since.
Seeing Adrian Gonzalez hit his 300th career home run Sunday night at Dodger Stadium offered a reminder of how much he helped Ortiz reinvent himself as a hitter.
From 2004-07, Ortiz batted .284 with an .879 OPS against left-handed pitchers, numbers that dropped to .218 and .685 from 2008-10. But when lefty-hitting Gonzalez joined the Red Sox in 2011, he arrived with a reputation for hitting the ball to left field and left-center and helped get Ortiz back to using the whole field, too. Sure enough, with Gonzalez by his side in 2011-12, Ortiz batted .324 with a .987 OPS against lefties.
"I walked into that funk against lefties, just wanting to pull everything, and at some point, you get caught into that for some reason," Ortiz said in 2013. "Just watching [Gonzalez], how he would get the inside part of the plate to lefties and approach the lefty middle-away, watching that, it was like, 'Wait a minute, I think I can do that.' Put it in play and it works. I'll tell you what: He might be the best left-handed hitter against lefties that I've seen. He makes it look easy."
***
After rookie left fielder Andrew Benintendi notched his first two major-league hits last week in Seattle, his father was asked if he imagined it would happen so quickly -- only 14 months after the Red Sox drafted Benintendi in the first round (seventh overall) out of the University of Arkansas.
"Not really," Chris Benintendi said. "He's got talent. He's had things break his way. He surprised us a little bit. It's not for lack of effort. He tries. And things have fallen into place for him. I think his really greatest asset, and if you've met Andrew, he's kind of like this [even-keeled]. You could say, 'Andrew, your house is burning down' or 'You've won a million bucks,' and he reacts the same way, which is good for this game. You're going to get hits, and you're going to strike out and end the game. But his approach is the same. Even as a boy and a high-school player, whether it be basketball or baseball, he could handle the success as well as the failure."
Finally, something to ponder as A-Rod returns to Fenway for the final time: What if the players' union hadn't nixed the December 2003 trade that would have sent Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers to the Red Sox in exchange for Manny Ramirez and then-pitching prospect Jon Lester?
"It's definitely a 'Sliding Doors' study for the ages," one major-league executive said last year when I posed that very question.
Indeed, it would make for a fascinating alternate history. Would the Red Sox have still won the World Series in 2004 and again in 2007 and 2013? Would Rodriguez have continued down the path paved by performance-enhancing drugs?
Another major-league executive guessed the Red Sox "definitely would have let [Rodriguez] walk" after the 2007 season, referring to the opt-out clause in his contract. The Yankees allowed A-Rod to opt out but then re-signed him to a 10-year, $275 million extension.
"It's easy to pile on Alex -- and for good reason -- but people forget how good he was in the relevant years [2004-07]," the second executive said. "Despite popular opinion, I do think it would have worked out well for the Red Sox. Of course he would've helped them win. His personality and behavior might have evolved differently playing shortstop as 'The Guy' in Boston vs. third base in [Derek] Jeter's shadow in New York. Now, that part is fascinating."
