Under the headline “Did the Red Sox lack fire needed to compete?”, Nick Cafardo in his Sunday Baseball column singles out Xander Bogearts and Jackie Bradley Jr. “The lows they experienced didn’t bring any negative emotion,” according to an unnamed player no longer with the team. According to Cafardo, the player stated that the youngsters should have taken their lead from Dustin Pedroia, who “was said to be distraught over the team’s poor play.”
The player is a bit off base. Prospects like Bogearts and Bradley should not have to break bats and jaw at umpires. That’s the job of the vets. Pedroia, always competitive, did try. But where were the others? Mike Napoli? Daniel Nava? Clay Buchholz? At trade time, it seemed that Jon Lester and John Lackey were simply in a hurry to get out of Boston.
It is difficult for a young player, especially one who is struggling like Bradley, to be a “holler guy” and try to wake up the team.
Cafardo also cites other factors, such as the absence of Shane Victorino for most of the year. Rightly, he questions whether John Farrell and the coaching staff should have done more. But player X should not be singling out young players when there is so much blame to go around.
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