Camp sights: Hanley Ramirez's Monster spring for Red Sox
Note: Paste BN Sports' Paul White, via car, causeway, plane and rail, will reach every major league camp this spring.
Follow his exploits on Twitter -- @PBJWhite - as he makes his way through the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues before he imparts all you didn't know about every team right here.
TODAY: Boston Red Sox
FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Red Sox's spring ballpark doesn't resemble Fenway Park just to be a tourist attraction.
It's also part of the Hanley Ramirez immersion project.
"I'm a left fielder," says the now apparently former shortstop and third baseman of his willingness to take on a new position after signing as a free agent with the team that originally developed him. "This is my home and I want to play here."
His home includes the imposing Green Monster that casts a long shadow over his new position. And having a replica in Florida not only helps Ramirez's transition but also helps the Red Sox assess a player whose commitment to his past teams hasn't always been a safe assumption.
"The work has been very consistent and this has everything to do with Hanley's attitude," says manager John Farrell. "And his willingness to engage with Arnie Beyeler and the work they do."
Beyeler is the coach who takes Ramirez out to left field and helps familiarize him with the strange angles and caroms of the 37-foot structure that turns outs into doubles and fly balls into adventures.
"Balls are going to bounce differently," Ramirez says of quirks that will come from the ancient, pock-marked version at Fenway compared with the sleek 4-year-old wall in Fort Myers. "But I can get a lot of it now."
He's added about 10 pounds this year, hoping to add some strength now that he's away from the infield positions that demand more agility. He's also pretty much attached himself to David Ortiz, which the Red Sox see as a positive.
"I just want to have a freakin' trophy in my hand," he says. "I can't wait. So if I have to catch or pitch, whatever it takes to win. That's why I'm here with this organization, so I can play left field. One day I'm going to play all nine positions. All of them … and the DH. I'm going to DH the same day."
Joking boasts aside, a competent left field will be just fine, as long as the offense accompanies it.
"It's been a building-block approach," Farrell says. "It started with some jumps and reads and routes to get balls off the wall and playing that carom. He's still transitioning but we're confident he's going to be adequate in left field and is going to improve through the season."
Says, Beyeler, "He'll be as good as he wants to be."
**
Ace du jour
Justin Masterson felt comfortable once he got the shirt.
That Red Sox jersey – the first one he wore as a major leaguer – is nice and after nearly six years in other uniforms the pitcher who now qualifies as a veteran smiles and says, "Not too bad."
Masterson seems somehow always linked to the Red Sox, though he's made just 15 of his 175 major league starts for Boston. Maybe it was his significant work as a set-up man during the playoffs in 2008, his rookie season. Or was his most important contribution being traded (with others) to Cleveland for Victor Martinez at the 2009 trade deadline?
He's back now and, in Masterson's own words, "I'm one of them."
Indeed, he is. He's part of a rebuilt Red Sox rotation that's competing for top billing on what ought to be called Team Speculation. Pick an area of the team to wonder about who will play and how well, but starting pitching is the most likely season-breaker.
The ongoing concern from outside the organization is the lack of a No. 1 starter after Jon Lester was traded at last season's deadline.
Clay Buchholz is back from last year and he's been that guy, actually out-pitching Lester in an All-Star year at the top of the 2010 Red Sox rotation, when Buchholz led the AL in ERA Plus. He was even better in 2013 – 12-1, 1.74 ERA – but lost three months to neck and shoulder issues. And last year's 5.74 ERA raises legitimate questions about his role going forward.
The only other returnee is Joe Kelly, a Red Sox for all of 10 starts after his inclusion from St. Louis in last year's deadline shuffle.
Lester didn't return, nor could Boston entice or deal for any clear aces. The solution?
Well, in 2014, 34 pitchers who threw at least 125 innings had a ground ball rate of 50% and above. The Red Sox acquired three of them within two days in December – Masterson, Wade Miley and Rick Porcello.
Their rankings, however, in more mainstream categories vary widely. Porcello's ERA for Detroit was 3.43, Miley's with Arizona 4.34 and Masterson's for Cleveland and St. Louis 5.88.
They are the rotation.
"I've got the shirt and everything," Masterson boasts.
Actually, it's two shirts for each of the five starters that Buchholz had made to poke fun at all the ace angst. All have the pitcher's name and number on the back.
A gray shirt, worn by that day's starter, has "I'm the Ace" on the front. A blue shirt, worn by the four guys not starting that day, has "He's the Ace."
As Masterson said after his first spring start, "I was the ace today. I will not be the ace tomorrow. Someone else will be the ace. The five of us are having a good old time and I think we're all progressing exactly the way we want to and it's pretty cool."
It's not like they're the only candidates to start. Farrell has seen enough from the collection of young starters emerging from the farm system that he says there might not be room at Class AAA for everyone who deserves to be in at least that rotation.
"How we accommodate all that?" Farrell says, "We'll work that out."
But there's little question that, barring injuries, the experienced guys get the jobs.
Banking on too many unproven kids became Boston's 2014 too-green monster that contributed mightily to what's now a three-year trend of alternating last- and first-place finishes. If it's to be four years, Buchholz and his shirt-mates must pitch well.
The glib Masterson, also the biggest question mark in the group, is confident good health will make a huge difference for him.
"There never was really a point where everything was right," he says of fighting through knee and oblique problems in 2014. "It was kind of trying to tough-guy through it, which is probably not the smartest thing to do but is a great learning experience. There wasn't really anytime that it just felt great in an overall sense except for the last outing of the year when I threw two innings and got the win."
He says he clearly feels different this spring, with two shutout innings in his first start, three perfect innings in his next one.
"Last year it was please, maybe, hopefully, let's go," Masterson says. "Now it's, alright, let's go do it. Oh, we're mechanically a little bit off? OK, we can work on that. We're supposed to have those mistakes, leave the ball in the zone every once in awhile. Those are the better things to be trying to work on, rather than will it get up there, will it have any rotation."
**
Young arms on the way
Farrell remains very much the pitcher and pitching coach he's been far longer than a manager.
And no matter how much he wants this season to turn on the work of veteran pitchers, he can't help but enjoy the prospects smorgasbord in his camp this spring.
No matter what prospect list you take as gospel, at least four of Boston's 10 best are pitchers in the major league camp this spring – Henry Owens, Brian Johnson, Matt Barnes and Eduardo Rodriguez.
And Farrell even likes to see them struggle.
"We understand what the physical abilities are," he says of the quartet and more who are close enough to big-league ready to contribute sometime this season. But they often only get one- or maybe two-inning looks in spring games. That's hardly enough for a starter to showcase his whole repertoire.
"You try to get a sense of how are they managing when they're getting challenged inside of an inning," Farrell says. "Are they handling it in a calm manner? Is their poise, composure remaining the same? Or are you seeing it play out a bit. You're almost anticipating there's going to be a little bit of an emotional spike."
There's certainly plenty of reason for that spike.
"I'd be lying if I said it didn't happen," says Johnson, a 2012 first-round pick who's posted a 2.23 working from Rookie ball to Class AA in two seasons. "But I think in a natural good way. This is my first big league spring training, the first time the coaches have ever seen me. You want to showcase yourself well, you want to show them, 'You can rely on me.' "
Johnson knew several days in advance that he'd get an inning in Boston's first spring game. So, his parents drove across the state from Cocoa Beach and his brother made the drive from Tampa – just a little added emotion.
He had exactly the kind of inning Farrell was talking about. A one-out walk and a passed ball created some adversity, as coaches like to call it. Johnson got the second out and then induced a slow roller to the third base side of the mound.
He got to the ball, spun and made a bad throw to allow a run. Then he got the final out on another grounder he had to field himself.
The next day, Owens breezed through a perfect inning with two strikeouts, then allowed three hits, a walk and two runs the next inning. And he came back a few days later with two perfect innings, including two strikeouts.
It's all part of the process these guys are sharing.
"It helps to have people your own age you can relate to and talk to because you're all going through it," Johnson says. "I just want to go out there and have fun. It's really exciting to me. The most anybody said to me was, 'How'd you feel?' It wasn't even, 'How'd you do?' Just, 'How'd you feel?' "
Rest assured someone who matters knows full well how he did.
GALLERY: Spring-training scenes