As for Pena, Manny played in 130 games last year. He was consistently in the 150s for years previous, so let’s assume he gets into 140. That’s 22 games for Pena at 88 AB. J.D. Drew (barring injury of course) should get into about 140 games like Manny, so that’s 176 there for Pena. Adding in Coco’s probably 140 games, Pena jumps to 264 ABs. Now for David Ortiz, he should play in about 150 games. That gives Pena a total of 312 AB, close enough to 400 AB that that is a reasonable target without factoring injury woes in.
It’s the Hinske projection that worries me. I’m sure Hinske will end up with well over 100 AB due to late inning replacements, pinch-hits, etc. but it’s still a far cry from 400, and Francona has called it a “challenge” to do so, and rightly so, but he’s not ruling it out. Rather, it sounds like he wants to get Hinske as close to 400 AB as he can, and I think that’s a bad idea. For one, for as good as Hinske can be, he is a bench player and bench players by design are not as good as the starters, so why put so many at-bats on a bench player when you can use them on a starter?
How does the first spring training game (tie, 4-4 v. MIN) go over with you?
* I think the Red Sox looked good and will be a team to be reckoned with this year!
11% of all votes
* Pretty good. A little rough in some areas, but that’s what ST is for.
24% of all votes
* I can’t make a good judgement on just one game. Let’s see how we progress.
60% of all votes
* If this is how we play in the regular season, wake me up in April 2009!
5% of all vote
The results were exactly what I expected. I think it goes without saying, though, that the Red Sox are fielding quite the team this year. As always, there is a new poll up!
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