* Saturday was not a good day for the Red Sox.
First came the news that Vaughn Grissom was dealing with a groin strain and will likely not be available for the start of the season.
Grissom had been penciled in as the team’s starting second baseman. The team prized his athleticism and bat-to-ball skills when he was acquired him over the winter from Atlanta. In Grissom, they saw someone who could be their everyday second baseman for years to come, and his arrival was supposed to improve the Red Sox in the middle of the field, an area in significant need of an upgrade after last season.
Grissom had already been sidelined with a hamstring issue before the groin pull further complicated things. As such, he hadn’t been able to do a lot of on-field work with shortstop Trevor Story. Now that he’s shut down, there will be little of that the rest of spring, so even when Grissom is cleared to return, he won’t have had a lot of reps with his new double play partner.
In his place, the Sox will give playing time to Enmanuel Valdez, who was a disaster defensively at the position in the first half of last season before showing some improvement in the final two months. Valdez has some pop from the left side, but he’s not the defender Grissom is, and the team’s pitching staff will suffer the consequences.
Next came a rocky showing from Brayan Bello. Yes, it’s only one spring outing, but the fact of the matter is, Bello has not looked crisp this spring. Bello has been the hailed as the organization’s best homegrown starter in more than a decade, but his growth hasn’t been linear. To the contrary, he’s been highly inconsistent. Bello turns 25 in May, and as Alex Cora pointed out earlier in camp, the younger starters — Bello included — “aren’t kids anymore.”
It’s not worth overreacting to a groin injury and a shaky Grapefruit League start. But for a team with very little margin for error, the Red Sox don’t need any more bad news less than four weeks from Opening Day.
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* I don’t envy Don Sweeney. The Bruins GM has some tough calls to make in anticipation of Friday’s NHL trade deadline.
For one thing, there’s the question of how good his team is. Currently, while they’re contending for the President’s Trophy, they’ve looked less than stellar since the All-Star break. For another, Sweeney has very little trade capital, having already dealt off draft picks in past deadline deals. And finally, he’s got next-to-room up against the salary cap.
About all he can do is make a “money-in-money-out-deal’ in which the B’s trade from one area to improve another. That’s always a risky proposition.
It might be best to stand pat and see where this Bruins team goes in the postseason. Then again, eventually, the contention window is going to slam shut for the B’s and given the unpredictability of the NHL playoffs, you never want to miss out on a chance to win the Cup.
* If your son or daughter got the kind of grades Robert Kraft got from the NFLPA — and by extension, his own players — you’d ground him or her for a good long time.
Once again, we’re reminded that Tom Brady covered a multitude of sins in Foxboro, including, apparently, an aversion to spending money that would make Jeremy Jacobs, in his prime, blush.
It’s not a good look when the Krafts preach treating players like family, only to be given some of the worst grades in the league when it comes to their family room and game-day day care facilities.
But hey, that new lighthouse sure is something.
* The decision by UMass to move to the Mid-America Conference looks suspiciously like Boston College’s equally silly choice to spurn the Big East in order to join the ACC. (It’s understood that BC moved en masse with others from the Big East, and not alone. But that doesn’t make the call any less misguided)
It’s a reminder, as if one is necessary, that football is the tail wagging the dog in big time college sports. BC hamstrung its basketball program with their switch, all in service to a football program that hasn’t benefited. And now, UMass is making the same mistake.
* If I’m the Patriots and Jayden Daniels isn’t available at No. 3, I’m trading back. Just because one of the three top quarterbacks is still on the board doesn’t mean you have to take one.
* Maybe Kiké Hernandez is correct when he says owners are colluding in free agency to depress salaries. But being that Hernandez, with a cumulative .639 OPS the last two years, just got a $4 million deal from the Dodgers, is he the right guy to be making this allegation?
Also: while Anthony Rendon hasn’t attracted plenty of criticism for saying baseball isn’t a top priority for him, what about Hernandez acknowledging he’s a better player when playing for a contender? Meaning, what — he isn’t as committed when his team’s not winning?
* If teams are tripping over themselves to bid for 34-year-old Jacob Markstrom, a pending UFA, what would they pay for 30-year old, Vezina-winning Linus Ullmark, who has a year of control remaining? Just asking.
* Scott Boras is the gold standard among baseball agents. But he’s far from infallible. His decision to wait out the market for some high-end clients (Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman, J.D. Martinez et al) has proven to be a poor one. It’s obvious that a sea change has taken place in baseball free agency, and if you don’t strike early in the offseason, you risk not having a seat when the music stops.
* Others have said it and I’ll join in: if you need any additional evidence of just how unfair life can be, look no further than the Wakefield family. Less than six months after she buried her husband Tim, Stacy, too, passed from cancer last week. Those of us privileged to have attended Tim’s memorial service at Fenway late last fall will not soon forget the grace with which she eulogized him.
* If you enjoy a good mystery, check out Hulu’s Death and Other Details, with Mandy Patinkin starring as a modern-day Hercule Poirot.
* If the NCAA wanted to stop the court storming epidemic, it could do so tomorrow by warning schools that they risk forfeiture should fans rush the court post-game. But because the NCAA is otherwise occupied with counting its money and making life miserable for the majority of student-athletes, that isn’t about to happen.
* There’s more than a little bit of irony to the fact that the player the Red Sox acquired for Chris Sale is set to start the season on the Injured LIst.
