Striking Out

Let's see how (former) Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers is doing in his new role as designated hitter after three games:

Something’s amiss in Rafael Devers’s move to DH

ARLINGTON, Texas — The Rafael Devers DH project is not off to a great start in Texas. In three games, Devers is 0 for 12 with 10 strikeouts. That’s an MLB record. Seriously.

In the galaxy of Boston sports stars, Devers has never been a controversial figure. In seven-plus seasons, he’s been a sweet, silent, savant swinger who smiles and keeps to himself. His nickname is “Carita,” which translates to “Baby Face.”

See the ball. Hit the ball. Mind your own business. Show up tomorrow and do it again. That’s been the Raffy Devers Way.

All that changed when Devers signed a 10-year, $313.5 million contract, in the post-Mookie, post-Xander chaos that took the franchise to the bottom of the AL East in 2022 and 2023. The big money brought new attention and responsibilities, and Sox Nation came down hard on Devers last month when he balked at the notion of moving to DH to accommodate new Sox third baseman, Gold Glover Alex Bregman.

Opening Days

Shank takes a trip to Texas to cover the 2025 Boston Red Sox's opening series against the Texas Rangers, winning the first game on a 9th inning home run by Wilyer Abreu, and Shank devoting an entire column to Kristian Campbell's first hit in the major leagues, which may or may not be ruled an error after the Rangers challenged the call.

Petty things - right up Shank's alley...

DHL Dan CCXLVI - Change Of The Guard

The Boston Celtics were sold on Thursday for $6.2 billion dollars, a record for a professional franchise in the United States. Shank, of course, has a few questions about the deal:

Why not Pags? It seems odd that Steve Pagliuca’s Celtics ownership bid was turned down, and other thoughts.

Picked-up pieces while doing the math on a $360 million investment that turned into $6.1 billion . . .

⋅ Why not Pags?

This is the takeaway after Thursday morning’s news bomb, fan agita, official corporate statements, and private equity high-fiving that went on after the Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach broke the story that the Celtics have been sold to an investor group led by complete unknown William Chisholm — a North Shore native who went to Dartmouth and has pledged to “work to bring more championships home to Boston.”

Swell.

So here’s just one little question?

“Why not Pags?” I followed. “Seems to check all the boxes and would make fans super comfortable.”

“Our goal was always to take the best bid from a suitable buyer, and that’s what we did,” responded Irv Grousbeck.

So, there you go. The Chisholm group made the best offer, according to Irv Grousbeck.

And that’s that.

But this isn't as straightforward as it seems:

Pagliuca issued a statement shortly after it was learned he didn’t get the team early Thursday, stating, in part, “We made a fully guaranteed and financed offer at a record price . . . We had no debt or private-equity money that would potentially hamstring our ability to compete in the future. We have felt it was the best offer for the Celtics . . . ”

The Grousbecks did not feel that way.

The Globe has learned that the Chisholm bid was higher than Pagliuca’s.

Not seeing the offer sheets, and not knowing which package had more guaranteed financing, it’s impossible to measure the offers. That is what the Grousbecks do.

Also contributing to the muddy waters - it's not much of a secret Steve Pagliuca and Wyc Grousbeck aren't friends, to put it mildly. I think that's playing a big part in this one.

March Blandness

It seems like Shank's off the NCAA Tournament bandwagon, and maybe with good reason:

The men’s NCAA tournament used to be great. But now that it’s professional basketball? No thanks.

March Madness! How’s your bracket looking? Got tickets to the big subregional in Providence this coming weekend? Do you think Rick Pitino and Coach Cal could match up on Saturday? Is Cooper Flagg better than Bill Walton? How about that Dan Hurley, huh? Think we’ll see a No. 16 beat a No. 1? Do you hate Duke?

Sweet 16 . . . Elite Eight . . . Final Four . . . Whee!

No thanks, Basketball America. I’ll be sitting this one out. I’m not sure I’d watch the men’s championship game if they played it in my driveway on Monday, April 7.

Seriously. The NCAA men’s basketball tournament used to be great, but I have a hard time understanding how folks invest dollars and emotions in today’s farce that has almost nothing to do with colleges and universities.

“With the Power Four conferences, it’s fraud in terms of terminology,” says Leo Papile, former player personnel director of the Celtics (14 seasons) and presently a senior adviser with the Clippers who founded the Boston Athletic Basketball Club (BABC) 48 years ago. “They use the term ‘student-athletes.’ That’s fraud. If you brought that to trial, it would be very easy to prove that that does not exist. I’m not a scholar, but I know that in order to get a degree, you can’t bounce around three or four schools in four years.”

True that. Not that anyone cares anymore, but when we watch the big schools in this tournament, it’s impossible to buy the notion that we are watching students at play. Oregon traveled more than 26,000 miles to play its Big Ten schedule — yes, Oregon is in the Big Ten — this season. That’s more than the circumference of the Earth. Think those kids are cracking the books or interacting with their schoolmates?

Today’s NCAA basketball is unregulated professional basketball. Frothy fans boost their favorite school, screaming their heads off for skilled professional players, most of whom have zero allegiance to said college, and some of whom maybe never set foot in a classroom or interacted with anyone on campus outside of the athletic department and compliance office.

I largely agree with this, because it is really stupid having a West Coast college like Oregon in the Big Ten (Stanford's also in the Big Ten, or maybe it's the Big Sixteen now) and the NIL money's why all this is happening.

DHL Dan CCXLV - It's Anyone's Race

With a week or so to go until Opening Day, Shank takes a peek at the Red Sox and the rest of the American League East division:

Suddenly, the AL East is wide open, so now’s the time for the Red Sox to get it together, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for this weekend’s Massachusetts high school state hockey and basketball finals . . .

⋅ We are two weeks away from the start of the baseball season and the American League East is suddenly wide open. The reigning division king Yankees are reeling and all five teams think they have a chance.

It’s been awhile since I could seriously consider picking the Red Sox to finish first, but after the winter acquisitions of Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler, and the stunning signing of Alex Bregman, I was ready to go Full Rochie and pick the Sox to win the division.

And yet . . . the Sox are stalled in Fort Myers. Spring training stats don’t count for much, but the Red Sox seem to have set a record for most players showing up in camp already injured (Rafael Devers, Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, Lucas Giolito) or sick (Wilyer Abreu, Triston Casas). Meanwhile, Trevor Story has new back issues, the team has no closer, no second baseman, suspect defense, and zero catching depth. Sound like division winners to you?

Disrespected

Some analyst dweeb gave Red Sox legend Jim Rice a hard time at spring training last week:

Red Sox staffer’s disrespect of Hall of Famer Jim Rice is unacceptable … yet accepted in today’s MLB

... I was reminded of all this when I read Sunday’s Globe and learned that one of the Sox army corps of baseball engineers interrupted a casual batting cage conversation between Jim Rice and a prospect, who’d solicited some batting tips from the former American League MVP. The Sox staffer asked Rice to back away from the kid hitter.

According to Rice, the spreadsheet staffer’s message to the Hall of Famer was something to the effect of, Mi>“Please leave our young hitter alone. That’s not the way we teach hitting here. We know better. We want to hit the ball in the air and hit it hard.”

Rice said he asked the uniformed staffer if he’d played and was told no.

DHL Dan CCXLIV - Pete Rose In The Hall Of Fame?

In this week's (or last week's, based on the delay in posting) Picked Up Pieces column, Shank talks about the possibilities:

Has a post from President Trump given Pete Rose’s Hall of Fame candidacy new life? And other thoughts.

Pete Rose.

Hall of Fame.

Here we go again.

I thought this topic was dead, but now that Pete has died, his ever-controversial Hall of Fame candidacy has new life, thanks to the President of the United States and Major League Baseball’s commissioner.

Everyone agrees that Rose was a Hall of Fame ballplayer. He compiled 4,256 hits, more than anybody. He was National League MVP, a three-time World Series champ, and started All-Star Games at five positions.

However, as most of you know, baseball has a specific character clause regarding Hall of Fame credentials. Some cheaters, criminals, and ne’er-do-wells have been denied Cooperstown or delayed entry for a variety of transgressions, on and off the field.

Pro football’s Hall largely doesn’t care about this kind of thing. The late O.J. Simpson is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

DHL Dan CCXLIII - Taking Stock

When you have nothing to write about, write about everything instead!

Taking stock of Boston’s big four professional sports franchises, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while taking stock of our traditional big four professional franchises …

Bruins: Spoked-B Nation is restless. Everything Brother Dupont has been telling you is true. The local skaters might not make the playoffs for the first time since 2016, Cam Neely and Don Sweeney are on hot seats, and there’s a possibility that captain Brad Marchand could be traded between now and the March 7 deadline.

Dealing the Lil’ Ball O’ Hate wouldn’t rise to the level of dealing Ray Bourque to Colorado (2000), but would flood the secondary sweater market with a few thousand Black and Gold No. 63 jerseys.

Marchand has been a Bruin since the 2009-10 season. He is the last member of the Boston’s 2011 Stanley Cup champs still skating at the Garden. He’s a top-10 all-time Bruin in games, goals, and assists. He’s the captain. Will the Bruins deal him to build for the future, the way the Celtics dealt aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Nets in 2013 to set the table for a championship run that we’re still enjoying today?

Read on, if you want to read Shank dumping on Patriots owner Robert Kraft yet again...

Hail To The Chief!

It's been a while since we heard from Boston Celtics legend Robert Parish, and it's not entirely positive:

Decades later, Robert Parish reveals in Celtics doc why he chose to sit out Larry Bird’s legendary fight with Dr. J

There’s new information on a very old Boston sports moment.

Celtics Hall of Fame center Robert Parish is acknowledging he harbored bad feelings toward legendary teammate Larry Bird, and demonstrated his disappointment by letting Bird take a beating in a landmark brawl with Julius Erving and the Philadelphia 76ers during a regular-season game at the Old Garden way back in November 1984.

“This is the first time anybody’s hearing this,” Parish says in a new HBO documentary on the Celtics (first episode airs next Monday). “This was the only time that I didn’t feel a closeness to Larry . . . [because] after I was beefing about contracts with the Celtics [in 1983], to be honest, Larry didn’t support me.”

Who cares? Why give fresh air to this old topic now?

Because this is Boston and this is Larry Bird and everything from back then still matters now. The Chief’s somewhat distant relationship with his starry teammates has always been mysterious. Parish snubbed the team-sponsored reunion of the 1985-86 Celtics in 2016 and has been scarce around TD Garden since retiring.

Well, now it's out in the open, for better or worse...

DHL Dan CCXLII - The Fab Four? Really?

It's been a while since Shank dropped a Beatles comparison on us. Let's see how that's going to work out:

‘Boston’s Baseball Beatles’ are sure to be the talk of spring training for the next month, and other thoughts

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Picked-up pieces after nine days at Fenway South . . .

▪ Roman Anthony, Kristian Campbell, Marcelo Mayer . . . John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison.

Hot-shot prospects Anthony, Campbell, and Mayer are Boston’s Baseball Beatles. They are the The Fab Three (prospect catcher Kyle Teel, the Ringo drummer of this Sox crop, was traded for Garrett Crochet).

All approximately 6 feet 3 inches, all drafted by Chaim Bloom, Anthony, Campbell, and Mayer dress side-by-side-by-side in the Red Sox clubhouse at JetBlue Park. They were together in Portland and Worcester last summer, and here in Fort Myers they walk together to the batting cages almost every day. After workouts and spring games, they go to the beach, watch movies, and eat dinner with one another.

Labeling these guys “highly touted” is an understatement. Anthony, Campbell, and Mayer are three of the top 25 prospects in all of baseball.

Trouble In Paradise?

With the speculation that new acquisition Alex Bregman might play at third base for the Red Sox, let's see how the current third basement feels about it:

Does Rafael Devers have any interest in becoming the Red Sox’ full-time DH? ‘No!’

FORT MYERS, Fla. — We have a legitimate Red Sox spring training controversy. Just like in the good old days of Roger Clemens and Oil Can Boyd.

The Sox want third baseman Rafael Devers to become a designated hitter to make room for prize free agent acquisition Alex Bregman, who’s been a Gold Glove third baseman for the Astros.

And Devers has one word for them . . .

“No.”

Monday at JetBlue Park was one of the wilder spring training days in club history. That’s no small statement for a franchise that gave us general manager Lou Gorman saying, “The sun will rise, the sun will set, and I’ll have lunch,” when MVP Clemens stormed out of camp over a contract squabble . . . or when Oil Can was nearly arrested for overdue adult videos in Winter Haven — an episode that came to be known as “The Can’s Film Festival.”

I'm sure this one will be as good as some of those other ones but as far as a funny name, nothing's topping “The Can’s Film Festival” !

Alex Bregman's Introductory Press Conference

The newest memeber of the Red Sox held a press conference yesterday, and Shank was there to cover it (with a lot of other reporters):

All smiles at Alex Bregman’s Red Sox introduction, even if the feel-good story has flaws

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Everyone said all the right things Sunday morning at JetBlue Park when the Red Sox finally rolled out their new acquisition, $40 million per year man Alex Bregman.

Side-by-side, the Sox presented Bregman’s agent Scott Boras, Bregman himself, Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, manager Alex Cora, and team president/mouthpiece Sam Kennedy.

It was so big that NESN delivered it live to snow-bound New Englanders at 8:30 a.m. (must have killed NESN to cut away from “The Mad Fisherman”).

This was so big a number of Sox stars gathered at the back of the tent to listen to their new teammate/leader (not Rafael Devers, who was seen walking by the group, presumably to get to his car).

This was so big we had actual national baseball reporters from ESPN and USA Today present, a first for a team that has faded from relevance since trading Mookie Betts and pivoting to fiscal responsibility five long years ago.

Emphasis on that last point, as it seems even the national reporters are interested in the team again.