McAdam: Red Sox players will face 'produce ... or else' edict in shortened season

Patience can be a virtue in baseball.

Over the course of a six-month-long, 162-game season, form usually holds. The established player who's struggling to hit weight in April is probably going to play up to his capability. The .200 first month is often made up with a rebound in the second month and a .400 average.

"It's amazing how that works out,'' Terry Francona often marveled. "As bad as a guy might start, you just know that eventually, he's going to get as hot as he was cold. It always seems to even out.''

Indeed. In normal seasons, that is. But the 2020 season, as we already know, isn't going to be anything close to normal.

In an ordinary year, manager Ron Roenicke would be likely to give a veteran position player time to come out of a slump, knowing that his track record is all the proof he needed to know that a poor stretch would be temporary.

But this season, there's no time to wait. In a 60-game schedule, each game actually represents 2.7 games in a standard season. So while a manager might be willing to stick with a hitter who's gone cold over 20 games, that now represents a full third of the season.

And rare is the manager who can afford to keep an underachieving player in the lineup for that long.



A good start is imperative. Roenicke has said as much countless times in the last two weeks. But for that matter, every stretch of games is important and players have to produce -- or else.

The Red Sox have established everyday players all over the diamond -- behind the plate, the left side of the infield, at DH and most of the outfield spots. But again, this year is different and Roenicke has already warned his position players as much.

"I've talked a little bit about it so far,'' Roenicke said. "I never like to do things just out of the blue, because if you catch a guy off-guard, it's like, 'Well, why is he doing this?' I'd rather be proactive with it, let them know what I'm thinking, what the possibilities are that could help us and could help us win. I think as long as you're up front with them and they know what the possibilities are, I think that they realize that sometimes, if you're not playing well, you're not going to play as much.

"I think that goes with veteran guys as much as the young guys. But I'll make sure that those conversations take place before they happen.''

Managers often gain the trust of a team with a willingness to back veterans by giving them sufficient time to make adjustments at the plate or otherwise find themselves out of a slump. Recently, former Red Sox second baseman Mike Andrews remembered the late Eddie Kasko here fondly in large part because Kasko stuck with Andrews when the infielder hit just .213 in the first half of 1970 before rebounding to bat .293 in the second half.

It would not be difficult to find dozens of other similar examples over the year.

But time doesn't allow that this year.

So, as an example, if Jose Peraza doesn't contribute at the plate in the first homestand, it may not take long at all for Roenicke to shift Michael Chavis over there full-time while finding another platoon partner (Jonathan Lucroy?) for Mitch Moreland. Or, alternately, he could take a look at either Jonathan Arauz or Tzu-Wei Lin.

Either way, action will be taking it. No team -- and perhaps this is especially true of the Red Sox, who don't possess the pitching that division rivals New York and Tampa Bay do -- can afford to punt on a quarter of the season. When something isn't working, it will require immediate correction.

Roenicke isn't the only one who will be poised to act quickly. That goes for chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, who might have to act more aggressively than usual to address needs.

"I think that's one of the unique things that this season presents for all 30 clubs -- is that a small sample is still just a small sample in terms of what went into producing it,'' he said. "But the fact of the matter is it's going to represent a much larger portion of the season. And that's true whether it's something good that happened or not so good. I think that's going to be a constant conversation. We've already talked about it a little bit.

"There's a lot of different things that we will have to factor into evaluations this season that might not be the same things that we usually factor in and we're going to have to make sure we have a good process and use good judgment to factor those things in.''