The Red Sox are shuffling up their infield alignment, most notably dropping Enrique Hernandez from the everyday shortstop role and returning him to his more familiar split between center field and second base, manager Alex Cora announced to reporters last night (Twitter links via Alex Speier and Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe). For the time being, utilityman Pablo Reyes will take the reins at shortstop. Cora also started Justin Turner at first base over Triston Casas last night, calling that the team’s best defensive alignment and noting that the Sox plan to work with Casas on his defense. (Turner, however, made a key error late in the eventual loss.)
Trevor Story’s offseason elbow surgery threw a wrench into the Red Sox’ infield plans, prompting the team to sign Adam Duvall to man center field and push Hernandez to shortstop — a position where he’d logged just 163 innings in the preceding four seasons combined. The Sox also picked up Adalberto Mondesi in a trade with the Royals, hoping he’d bring some additional depth, but he’s yet to play in a game this season due to ongoing injury woes.
Hernandez, 31, proved himself to be a lights-out defender in center field during his first season with the Red Sox in 2021, and Defensive Runs Saved has long credited him as an above-average second baseman. The shift to a less-familiar shortstop position wasn’t necessarily expected to be easy, but it’s been far more difficult than the team envisioned. No player in baseball has more errors than the 14 Hernandez has committed in just 411 innings at short. Defensive Runs Saved (-7) and Outs Above Average (-8) have graded him as one of the game’s six worst defenders at any position so far in 2023. As a team, the Red Sox rank 26th in MLB in DRS (-20) and are tied for last in OAA (-16).
Hernandez’s struggles haven’t been confined to his glovework. This year’s .228/.296/.356 is a near-mirror image of last year’s lackluster performance. When Boston inked Hernandez to a one-year, $10MM extension last summer, the hope was surely that his bat would rebound closer to it 2021 levels (.250/.337/.449) and that the versatile Hernandez would continue to provide premium defense at multiple spots. That hasn’t happened, and Hernandez’s trouble on both sides of the ball is just one of the many reasons Boston sits two games below .500 — 14 games out of the division lead and 5.5 games back in the AL Wild Card race.
Casas, too, has fallen shy of expectations — particularly at the plate. Were the burly 24-year-old performing up to expectations with the bat, the team would likely be willing to live with any defensive shortcomings at first base. Instead, Casas is hitting just .200/.324/.368 with seven home runs. He’s walking at a sensational 15.8% clip but also fanning in 26.6% of his plate appearances. On top of that, he’s been dinged for -6 DRS and -4 OAA at first base.
The veteran Turner is outperforming Casas in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage alike thus far, and he’s looked comfortable enough in his 133 innings at first base that it seems the Sox are comfortable giving him some increased work there. Cora didn’t declare that there would be a full-time switch from Casas to Turner, but it certainly seems the Boston club is taking a hard look at its defense as it searches for ways to improve.
Story’s eventual return could help to solidify things in the infield, though he’ll likely return as a designated hitter before he takes any reps in the middle infield. Story said just this week that he’s hoping to return in a DH capacity sometime next month, but he isn’t likely to play any defense until August. Yu Chang’s impending return could give the Sox a more experienced option at short than Reyes, though Chang is a utilityman with a career .206/.271/.358 batting line, so installing him into the lineup isn’t likely to help the Sox’ offense.
Rearrange those deck chairs.
Everyday their shuffling!
Judge – They need to shuffle Casas down to AAA. Keeping a .200 hitter who also can’t field is ludicrous.
I thought Dalbec was bad, until I saw his older brother, Tristan Casas. Just another Bobby Dalbec 2.0. It used to be easy to find a 1bman who could hit, but couldn’t catch a cold. Now, the Rsox are going with 1bmen who can’t hit OR catch.
Unless a Dalbec trade is coming, why not try him again? He’s raked in AAA and deserves another shot somewhere.
Because they already have Turner and Duval who are better options at first than either Dalbec or Casas.
Don’t forget Michael Chavis and Lars Anderson before him. Sox traded the only decent 1B { Anthony Rizzo} before he played a game for them.
Dalbac will probably be traded because his stats are good in Triple AAA but his value will go down if he is brought up to the major leagues and struggles. I am not impressed with Dalbac at the major league level.
Sycophant – Time to move Devers to DH for the future and put Dalbec at 3B or Arroyo or just about anyone with a glove will be as good. Heck the ball girl plays better defense than Devers.
If you fix SS and 1B why not fix 3B permanently so expectations for the future are set and not an issue. If he doesn’t like it, trade him once the new GM shows up.
AL34 – If we can hope a lifetime .237 hitter can be hot enough to be in the line-up why not give the guy with real talent a chance to prove he just needs more ABs at the MLB level. He may always strike out a lot but when he hits for an acceptable average (.250 or more) and puts up isolated power numbers like he’s done twice, he’s a big step up from Kiki. So cut or trade Kiki and keep Dalbec.
I know you don’t like him but he has exceptional power when he is right and the team should be working on making him right again. AAA seems to have helped but he needs to be promoted to a team where the manager doesn’t treat him like crap. Confidence is a huge part of the game so buy Dalbec a DEVERS MASK and have him wear it so Cora treats him better and shows confidence in him.
Had to be done. Hard to believe that Ki Ki would be this bad.
Joe- Just because he’s good at two positions doesn’t mean he’s good at all of them.
Too many people seem to think anybody can be the next Zobrist. No, they cannot.
I wasn’t expecting “good”. But the numbers I just posted to GA indicate that he should’ve been slightly weak, but not awful.
Just to take a single stat, errors, did anyone in the world think he would go from 1 error per 103 IPs to 1 error per 29.36 IPs? That’s a factor of over 3x the error rate.
Not at all Joe. I said he would be exactly this bad all winter if you recall.
Fangraphs data called it.
I’m looking at the FG data. Before this year, he had +9 DRS, -4 OAA, and -2 RAA. and 6 errors at SS, in 618 IPs. He is way, way off those rates right now.
Remember Joe – his earlier outings at SS while in LA he wasn’t playing with someone as defensively bad at 3B or barely average at 2B as he has in Boston. He also doesn’t have a very good 1B on the other end.
You have to account for the weaker support. A bad throw isn’t an error when your teammate bails you out because of how good they are.
An error doesn’t happen if your tandem-mate went to the ball before you.
That could certainly be the case. But if it is, then we would need to account for that in his error total. If half of his errors are the result of throws that the LAD 1B would’ve handled, then his 14 errors is not as bad as it looks.
Not really.
When you’re bad at something but someone else bails you out, you are still just as bad in both cases.
Only the effects are masked. It’s like picking up a hideous woman due to beer goggles. She was just as bad looking last night, you just couldn’t tell.
Hernandez playing drunk would explain a lot now that I think of it.
So they have a bunch of guys that can’t hit or pitch, and they think moving guys around defensively is going to solve this problem? IMO, the Red Sox have overperformed this year as it is.
“So they have a bunch of guys that can’t hit or pitch, and they think moving guys around defensively is going to solve this problem?”
Uh no, they think moving guys around defensively will solve the problems with the Defense.
I probably should’ve read your response before I responded. We’re never going to find a single solution to make us a great team. But addressing fielding and baserunning should make us a better team.
they think moving guys around defensively is going to solve this problem?
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But that’s not really what this is about. All this is about is trying to mitigate some weaknesses. That’s the way most of the world operates.
Just don’t rearrange it too much to the point that you have too many players on one side.. MLB doesn’t seem to like that idea anymore. They’re another one of those No Fun Leagues, along with the NFL.
Old York – NO problem. With Cora as manager, he’ll have 7 guys on the line up the middle breaking as the pitcher releases the ball. Cheating is his game and he has proven twice that he’s great at it and perfectly willing to lie about what he does!!!
When Story and Chang come back, is there even a place for Kike on the team? His D in center is great, but that doesn’t make up for the poor bat. Better to platoon Duran and Refsnyder out there and play Duval at first,
Casas has just been a disappointment in general, the tools seem to be there, but the execution is severely lacking.
2
months and all veterans will be traded so it doesn’t matter
Lets hope.. They need to blow it up like they should have last year.
Like they were last at last year’s deadline?
Casas has actually been much better offensively since the first month of the season. His defense at first is surprising because he was pretty good defensively at first in the minors. I will say this I don’t think advanced defensive metrics are really very good for first baseman mostly because, to my knowledge, they don’t track digs on throws in the dirt. This is the first baseman’s most important job still Casas has disappointed defensively at first this year even though he has picked a lot Devers errant throws and saved him some errors.
Enrique, on the other hand, has been flat awful at short defensively throwing the ball. He has 13 of his 14 errors are throwing errors and they are really bad throws.
Casas has actually been much better offensively since the first month of the season.
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He has a .745 OPS since 4/17, .773 this month.
Kike is a league average player and always has been, so what you see is what you get.
Casas is the Red Sox version of Joey Bart and/or Jo Adell – all the ingredients of success are there…….except for the results.
Not fair given the short window. He needs to be sent down to regain his confidence.
“Joey Bart and/or Jo Adell”..Spot on.
Kike is Cora’s “adopted son”. He’ll always have a place.
“Chang is a utilityman with a career .206/.271/.358 batting line, so installing him into the lineup isn’t likely to help the Sox’ offense.” An inconvenient truth Bloom doesn’t want to hear. Mondesi provides false hope, and most Sox fans know this by now. The FO has been subliminally suggesting Chang’s return will solve everything. Anyone who actually believes that will have their illusions shattered by Chang’s career-long inability to hit which will continue.
Solaris- I think the hope for Chang when he returns is to be a stopgap for the month or so story will still have in his recovery who can bring above average shortstop defense along with the occasional homer
You need defense as it saves pitchers’ arms. When healthy, play Chang at short and Story at second where he was great last year. If this team needs a bogie type bat at short to win, they’re not gonna find it (unless we’re talking about the ’23 version). By the time Story is back Arroyo will be hurt again…
deweybelongsinthehall;
B I N G O
Teams have been counting pitches for years. A pitcher goes into a game knowing the general amount of pitches he’ll throw that day. He needs the defense to make plays whether the official scorer or anyone else says it was a difficult play. The object is for the pitcher to get as many outs as possible in the pitches he’s allotted.
Whenever I analyze a MLB team the first thing I look at is defense up the middle – which starts with Catcher – easily the most important position on a team (not only for D but for working a staff and calling a game); followed by the SS – then the CF and 2B. Teams that play offensive guys at those positions are undercutting their pitching staffs…and pitching is the name of the game. Furthermore, both C and SS call for extremely high baseball IQ’s (to make instantaneous decisions), consistency and discipline. Guys like Tim Anderson and Oneil Cruz can wow the stat geeks along with the national baseball media and many fans that don’t know better, but they cost their team games because they undermine their pitchers…..and no amount of offense makes up for that when we’re talking about a teams W-L record. I’ll take a Kevin Newman instead any day of the week.
Kiki is a very good player – excellent at toggling between CF and 2B. He had no business as the Sox primary SS for more than a 3-5 day stop-gap because the SS was out injured. This is where I ran out of patience with Mr. Bloom. Coming from Tampa Bay one would think he understood the necessity of a quality SS and how it impacts a teams pitchers….especially a young staff that the organization is trying to grow.
Samuel – Sorry the data says he sucks. You can declare him whatever you want but the facts refute any positive comment about Kiki during his 10 year career. Yes, he has sucked for 10 years but if you think he’s a very good player I can’t imagine what adjective you would use for Ted Williams. The scale can’t stretch from Kiki to Ted, the gap is too overwhelming.
KD17;
Sorry – Compared to Ted Williams every player on the Red Sox sucks….as do 99.44% of players in MLB.
Samuel – Completely agree but the point was strictly related to the adjective used for Kiki and what a gross exaggeration it was. There was no upside adjective to describe a guy like Ted Williams talents.
Ted was the best hitter ever and in the top 5 for best overall player.
“The FO has been subliminally suggesting Chang’s return will solve everything.”
Uh, what?
Boston’s front office is using a form of mind control to convince people a terrible player will make a mediocre team great.
As much as MLB tries they can’t stifle innovation.
I’ve taken the recordings of all Bloom’s interviews over the past 3 weeks, played them backward, and you can clearly hear him saying, “Yu Chang’s return is gonna solve everything. Yu Chang’s return is gonna solve everything.”
The only way Chang should be seeing a major league field is if he buys a ticket.
Assuming that Story would ultimately return to shortstop, why not determine, once and for all, if Arroyo can be a long-term second baseman? Keep him or shop him at the deadline, just stop endlessly fiddling around with guys.
Trade Arroyo now as he’s likely to return to the IL next week.
Shop Arroyo for WHAT ??? Some very low level prospect so Bloom can continue to build his GREAT farm system ??
Gomez – The verdict is in on Arroyo. At best a utility player on an average team that doesn’t need to him to do much or often. That’s his upside. He’s been around too long to not see that as his upside.
To my knowledge there are no dime stores left in America. Consequently, there is no market for most of Bloom’s adds.
Guys, we have a SS on an expiring contract. It won’t cost much on the return. We could even take Kluber if you throw in something decent. You need to stabilize your IF defense. We need to clear some dead wood and still allow Mo to save face. Let’s make a deal.
I know, I know. “We have to wait until closer to the deadline. We have to gather more information. We have to see where we are in the standings. Blah, blah, blah.” Let’s just throw a wrench in the system and make a deal anyway.
At point DeJong for Kluber might be ripping off the Cardinals…
They deserve it.
DeJong has been far from dead wood this season. He’s actually worth some decent prospects now.
Correct. I only meant from the standpoint that he doesn’t factor into the Cards long term plans.
Although, they might want to wait until the offseason, pick up what now looks like a pretty resonable option, and then trade a full year of DeJong’s services.
Kike is on the Red Sox for the postseason, where he is markedly better than Error in Judgement. A .900 OPS in 200 plate appearances is valuable. That said, he needs to be playing center and second about 2 out of every 3 games, and batting somewhere inconsequential in the lineup. He’ll never be an All Star like Brock Holt, but he can mash in the big games.
wjujauzee = What kiki did that you are referencing is written off as a blind squirrel finding an acorn. Nothing more. It’s not repeatable.
Sorry about the name spelling. I was tired but I didn’t think that tired!!
whyhayzee !!! Got it right this time.
At the ML level, most throwing errors are cause by poor footwork. Whether it be from taking poor angle to the ball, or not being a good enough athlete to put your body in a balanced position to make a strong, accurate throw. I know analytics say he plays a above average CF. When I see him play CF, all I can remember is the ball he didn’t catch in the playoffs that Bradley JR would have caught in his back pocket.
notagain – OUTSTANDING commentary and incredibly accurate!!
Let me add tonight’s play in left center where the ball almost hit him on the head. While he and Refsnyder almost cost the team a win with their inept outfield play. They looked like dancing clowns.
Nobody will remember that play but Kiki’s routine sliding catch that he should have caught without the slide will be a highlight promoted by the front office to help Cora keep his old buddy’s son in the starting line-up.
casas will be fine. a bigger long term problem is paying a gazillion dollars for a .300 obp DH pretending to be a third baseman
Devers’ career OBP is .338, not .300.
Or, if you are someone that wants to extrapolate based on short-term results, then he has a .300 OPS with projections of 40 HRs and 131 RBIs.
he’s obviously a great hitter but he goes through extended periods where he swings at everything and he’s a liability in the field. after the team traded betts and lost bogaerts devers was a “must sign”
It drives me crazy when paid writers use bad grammar, clunky syntax, and misuse punctuation like this:
“Casas, too, has fallen shy of expectations — particularly at the plate.”
Adams tried to be so fancy that he broke the rules of English.
“Casas has also fallen shy of expectations, particularly at the plate.”
“Casas has fallen shy of expectations too, particularly at the plate.”
Either of these is correct. Adams’ is not, but what else is new?
So, tonight Cora has FINALLY put Devers in the 3 hole where he belongs and he can’t figure out that Yoshida needs to bat before him. If he has to do alternating batters then hit Yoshida first then Turner then Devers then Duvall and then Verdugo. The right left has very little impact on opposing teams since Boston only has four hitters to fear normally unless Duvall is hot or Duran.;
1 – Devers LEFTY
2 – Yoshida LEFTY
3 – Verdugo LEFTY
4 = Turner RIGHTY
5 – Duvall (when he’s hot) – RIGHTY
6 – Duran (when he is hot) – LEFTY
Does it hurt the offense to bat three lefty hitters in a row? Absolutely not if they bat 1 – 3 because they are the three best hitters. Maybe Bloom should have thought about this issue before he decided to procure Yoshida for $18MM after he gave up his RIGHTY star hitters in Bogey and JD. Balance should be part of the equation when building a line-up. Just one more thing Bloom doesn’t understand about his job.
Personally, if you must put a righty in the middle of the three lefties I’d bat Yoshida first because of his OBP, Turner second to drive in Yoshida when he doubles, Devers third in hopes he comes to bat 2/3 of the time with a runner on basse, then Verdugo fourth since he’s hitter much better than normal this year. Verdugo in the 4 hole would mean 100 RBIs for him.
Cora can’t manage his way out of a paper bag!! What a waste of money signing the cheater. Let’s hope this is the end for all his inept moves.
If you think about what hitters did tonight,
Verdugo 2 for 5
Yoshida 4 for 4
Devers 0 for 4 (slumping badly right now)
Turner 3 for 5 (how many more RBIS if Yoshida leads off?)
Duvall 1 for 4
Duran 1 for 1
So you have your four top hitters performing well except Devers.
You have both Duvall and Duran as good players for the 5th and 6th spot in the line-up. Then you have to cross your fingers and hope the bottom of the order with Casas, Wong/McGuire and Reyes will occassionally get on base. Since we sat Kiki and scored the most runs all season the front office should tell Cora to put Turner at 2B for Arroyo and start Duran in CF with Duvall as DH (so he doesn’t get hurt)
That would maximize the hitting. You can only do so much with Bloom has provided. If you put Turner at 3B, Devers at DH, Duvall in CF and put Duran at 2B the team would improve significantly on defense and the best 9 hitters would be in the line-up.
I looked at the line-ups tonight and the Yankees without Judge look very comparable to the Bloom Red Sox. Not much defense, limited hitting with only 3 or 4 decent hitters and frankly I think our pitching is better!! They need Judge back asap if they want to make the playoffs.
So here we go – Tomorrow’s starting line-up
Yoshida LF
Turner 3B
Devers DH
Verdugo RF
DUvall CF
Duran 2B
Casas 1B
Wong C
Reyes SS
That’s the best line-up available from a defensive and offensive perspective.
Less errors and more run production at the top of order even if Devers stays in his slump for a bit longer. That team can sweep the Yankees without Judge as long as Kluber doesn’t pitch!!