I am a lifetime procrastinator. In middle school, I used to do schoolwork on the bus in the morning, embarrassedly handing in assignments covered with scribbles and pencil holes because, as it turns out, completing long division on a moving bus while it rumbles over potholes and railroad lines isn’t a good idea. In college, I never left for class until the last minute — or what I believed was the last minute — and I was always late. Even as an adult and father of three, I procrastinate.Have I finished my taxes yet? Did you book that foreign flight for next month? I scheduled that doctor’s appointment since my jaw has been clicking in the mornings. No, and no. But I will get to all of it. Eventually.
As fellow procrastinators know, procrastination is not caused by the difficulty of the task at hand, nor by laziness. No, procrastination is a psychological and emotional problem. It’s about deferring difficult decisions or acts because, once taken, you’ve established a new reality that you must now live in, no backsies. What happens if you make the wrong decision? What if you despised the new reality you’d created? What if that decision drives you to make even more difficult decisions? We don’t want to confront these uncertainty, so we don’t. We disregard whatever problem we are currently facing and expect it will go away on its own.
Sometimes it works! Sometimes you receive a temporary break from the pressure to act. You walk into the classroom, still hurrying to finish your homework, and there’s a replacement teacher. You wake up one day, and your jaw feels normal again. April 15 arrives, and it makes no difference that you haven’t completed your taxes because the entire federal government has been demolished, and the IRS has been replaced with a single 22-year-old college dropout auditing people on a Google Spreadsheet that he failed to password-protect. Nothing feels better than a momentary stay of execution. Unfortunately, they are just transitory. Eventually, the axe falls.
All of this is to say, Craig Breslow, I recognize you.
The Red Sox signed Alex Bregman to a big three-year free agent contract over a month ago. As I previously stated, while adding talent to the roster is always a good idea, the deal created a number of concerns due to Bregman’s strange positional fit. In fact, as I later stated on The Monsters of Sox podcast, I felt that I couldn’t completely analyze the deal at the time since there would undoubtedly be a comparable move to relieve the positional logjam the Red Sox created by acquiring a third baseman while already having one. Someone would be traded, assigned for assignment, or moved around the diamond. Right? Right?? Once that happened, we’d be able to evaluate the agreement as a whole, with all of its intended and unexpected repercussions.
We’re fewer than three weeks away from Opening Day, yet no corresponding action has been made. We don’t know where Alex Bregman, Rafael Devers, Vaughn Grissom, Kristian Campbell, or Masataka Yoshida will play. Despite an original statement that Bregman would play second, he has yet to play a single inning of spring ball on that side of the bag and, according to reports, isn’t doing much work there. So, what does Breslow say about this now?
“Yeah, I mean, there’s a good chance that we would want to have him taking more reps [at second]. But also, it’s March 6, so I don’t want to say anything conclusively outside of, there are a number of young guys that we’re also really excited about, and there are only so many second base reps, third base reps, shortstop reps to go around.
“We have a pretty good idea of what certain guys are able to do, and we’re still trying to understand what others are. Obviously, at some point here soon, we’re going to need to make some more definitive decisions.”
Welcome, fellow procrastinator! What is up, guy! We should hang together someday—not now, tomorrow, or next week, but sometime in the future. There’s no need to commit to anything right now!
To be honest, I’ve never had a stronger connection to the Red Sox front staff. Craig Breslow and the Red Sox have yet to decide where Bregman, Devers, and Yoshida will play because they have not been forced to. Devers’ strange and prolonged shoulder issue has provided them a temporary reprieve. As Breslow mentions, it’s even allowed them to get a better look at Mikey Romero at second and Marcelo Mayer at third. No troubles here! In some ways, the Red Sox’s best player’s injury has worked in their favor. Alternatively, it has benefited the Red Sox’ delaying front office.
But, as Craig Breslow points out, they won’t be able to put off the choice indefinitely. There will come a time when Devers, Bregman, and Yoshida are all healthy and ready to contribute to the big league team, not to mention Grissom, Campbell, Mayer, and David Hamilton, who proved himself to be a viable Major Leaguer last year but now has no idea where he ranks on the second base depth chart. And I forgot about Mikey Romero, despite having mentioned him in the previous paragraph!
Some will argue that these issues resolve themselves. And there may be some validity to that in the short term. Kristian Campbell is not currently pressing his way into the Red Sox lineup. With Devers’ injury delaying his training and maybe limiting his ability to throw, the Opening Day lineup may write itself: Devers at DH, Bregman at third, and Vaughn Grissom at second. However, the 26-man roster still includes two left-handed DHs, one of whom will become the world’s most expensive pinch hitter.That still leaves five guys (Yoshida, Hamilton, Romy Gonzalez, Rob Refsnyder, and the TBD backup catcher) competing for four bench slots. That leaves the Sox with no clear plan for what to do when the roster becomes even more packed as their top prospects advance to the big leagues.
Oh, and Alex Bregman may opt out at the end of the season, forcing us to start from scratch. But it is a long time away—at least eight to nine months.
There’s no need to rush into anything, right Craig?
