Sweet relief: Red Sox season a disappointment, but not a disaster

The Red Sox season ended on Sunday with Mookie Betts outsmarting the Orioles, sprinting all the way from first base to score on a single.

The reigning American League MVP slid head-first into home. He popped up and pounded his chest, his fist banging hard on the “Sox” part of his uniform as the crowd let him hear it for perhaps the final time.

All of the frustration and disappointment of the 2019 season was over. The Red Sox won, 5-4, and finished the season 84-78.

“It was rough, a lot of ups and downs,” said Betts. “We never really got hot. When that happens, this happens. It’s kind of disappointing but there’s a lot of good things that kind of happened throughout the season to be proud of.”

Betts has been vocal about his decision to test free agency after 2020 and could be traded this winter as John Henry looks to cut payroll and start thinking more diligently about the future.

“It’s been amazing here,” Betts said. “I can’t thank the fans and teammates and front office enough for everything. I’m still here. It’s not like I’m gone until whatever. I’m not going to focus on that now.”

Alex Cora was asked if the season-ending win felt bittersweet given the Sox were headed home to watch the postseason from the couch.

He said it was.

To most of us, it felt more like sweet relief.

The pleasure of watching the 2018 Red Sox break records and perform the equivalent of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 on a baseball diamond had already started to evaporate in spring training.

In February, Cora said to turn the page, then quickly changed his mind. No sense in turning the page, he said. Write the next chapter instead.

“Was I wrong saying continuation? Well, maybe the other guys saying ‘turn the page’ and ‘it’s a new season,’ for 20 years, maybe they’ve been wrong too,” Cora said Sunday. “So we’ve got to ask those guys if they were wrong.”

Stubborn until the end.

In the first week of the regular season, Rafael Devers kept making errors. Sale was throwing in the 80s. Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. let a fly ball drop between them in right-center. The starting rotation was on fumes and the bullpen didn’t look up to the task.

The pressure from trying to become the first repeat champion in 20 years was following this group like a plague.

“We weren’t as sharp,” Cora said. “That ball that landed in right-center in Oakland, I mean, we didn’t see that in probably three years here. It’s not, like, lack of being in tune with the game or, ‘OK, we won, it doesn’t matter.’ It’s just, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there.”

The season was a disappointment, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Cora and his team learned about having the right attitude, always playing with urgency and having something to prove.

They learned that taking the foot of the gas in March in April doesn’t set the tone for a successful year.

They learned that Xander Bogaerts and Devers are superstars, that Eduardo Rodriguez might be a reliable pitcher afterall, that Christian Vazquez has power and Brandon Workman can close.

They learned that Cora isn’t going to change.

He’s growing as a manager and learning from his mistakes, but remains steadfast about his decision-making process.

He acknowledged that using Matt Barnes as a relief ace was too much to ask, and that Betts should’ve been in the leadoff spot from the beginning. He did not apologize for the way he used his starting pitchers in April, or the generous and perhaps way-too-accommodating approach to player rest, or many other decisions that failed throughout the year.

He was the same confident and stubborn manager he was in 2018, when everything went right, and plans on taking the same attitude into 2020, even if everything goes wrong.

This is who the Red Sox hired and who they entrusted with the most expensive team in history, and who they will trust again, no matter who the next general manager is.

Change is coming, but the Red Sox will be OK. They can lean on a young corp that isn’t going anywhere.

Henry always invests in his team, even if that means staying under the $208-million mark next year. That can’t be said in most big league cities, and for that there is something to be grateful for heading into the winter.

The same fanbase that remained hopeful after Bill Buckner’s error and Aaron Boone’s home run shouldn’t run away from this team yet.

The 2019 season was ugly but not heartbreaking. It was flat but not hopeless.

It just was.

And — deep breath — it’s finally over.

Bogaerts was one of the last to pack up his things before leaving the clubhouse.

“I’ll see you guys on the beach,” he said.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2mesXgY