Alex Verdugo Benched Vs. Guardians For Not Hustling Out Ground Ball
The Boston Red Sox are 10-17 in their last 27 games and are continuing to fall further and further out of the postseason race.
On Wednesday night they struggled to get the bats going in a forgettable 5-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians.
Ahead of Thursday's night rubber match for the series, Red Sox manager Alex Cora confirmed to reporters that right fielder Alex Verdugo was benched in Wednesday's loss for not hustling to second on a slow grounder in the 7th inning by Masataka Yoshida.
On top of being benched for the end of Game 2 of the series, Cora also confirmed that one of the most productive Sox players of the season in Verdugo would not be playing in the series finale due to his lack of hustle.
I rarely disagree with Cora, but this one genuinely makes no sense to me.
Verdugo was challenged by Cora in the offseason to be more locked in and ready to go this year. He took that to heart and came into camp in better shape and has been playing great ball through the first 62 games of this Red Sox's season. He's hitting .286 with a .814 OPS and has been responsible for the majority of the Red Sox's clutch moments this year.
"I don’t like when people talk (expletive) about me." Alex Verdugo said in February of his manager after being called out for an underperforming 2022 season. "I don’t like when people say anything about me in certain ways. But in his aspect, he wasn’t saying it to bash me. He wasn’t saying it out of spite. He was saying it because he truly believes that there’s so much more and that he wants to figure out a way to spark it and to get it. I think he did."
He's already been in a tough position on this team from the jump with fans saying he's no Mookie Betts following his arrival from the Los Angeles Dodgers in that blockbuster trade in early 2020, which was never going to be a fair comparison anyway.
Now with a new-and-improved Dugie, this just doesn't seem to be a necessary move to make. Benching one of your most productive players on a team that has been average at best into early June is a real head-scratcher. Verdugo isn't some young, up-and-coming player that needs to be put in his place. He knows what it takes to perform at this level and just seemed to let his foot off the gas ever so slightly in a game that the Sox weren't going to win anyway.
I'm never going to excuse a lack of hustle, that part of baseball is very important. But being benched for more than a game over that simple a play feels like overkill. Especially with the position this Sox team is in right now. Just can't have it.
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