In a couple of weeks, baseball will begin anew, and one of the annual guarantees, at least where the Red Sox are concerned, is the emergence of a phenom.
Every team has phenoms, but the Red Sox seem to have more than the other three Boston franchises. They also have more phenoms that don’t pan out.
And that’s a problem, particularly among the front office that has a tendency to read the organizational propaganda and believe every word of it.
Then, of course, they trade said phenom at the first opportunity and watch him flourish somewhere else.
I speak immediately of Roman Anthony, a good-looking lefty who has “Fred Lynn” written all over him. For those who may be a little too young, Lynn came up during the tail-end of the 1974 season and took the league by storm.
Lynn and Jim Rice carried that dominance over to the ’75 season and led the Red Sox to a pennant and one of the most dramatic World Series of all time.
A few more breaks and a few less injuries, and Lynn could be in the Hall of Fame.
Anthony was a midseason call-up last summer, just about at the same time Rafael Devers was unceremoniously traded to the San Francisco Giants. General Manager Craig Breslow said, at the time, that the Devers trade would make the team better, presumably because getting rid of the “malcontent” would lessen distractions.
The Red Sox went on a tear that included a 10-game winning streak right after the trade. But it wasn’t because of the Devers trade or any of the future Hall of Famers they got in the deal. It was because they finally pulled the trigger and brought Anthony up to the club. He terrorized pitchers to the point where he was runner-up as Rookie of the Year.
Why did they wait so long? Why did they promote other rookies who didn’t measure up to Anthony? It may be one of the great Red Sox miscalculations, right up there with trading Jeff Bagwell for a rent-a-lefty-reliever named Larry Andersen.
But Anthony only really played two months before hurting his oblique muscle and missing September, as well as the playoffs. Two months is not really a significant sample.
The whole situation reminds me of Phil Plantier’s time with the Red Sox. Plantier could rake. He might have looked odd up at the plate (his manager, Joe Morgan, said he had a “toilet seat stance”), but when he got his power behind a pitch, the ball went a long way. He also hit .331 and was called “a young Yaz (Carl Yastrzemski).”
As the Red Sox put on a second-half push to vie for the American League East title (unsuccessful), Plantier caught fire. He was the team phenom that season.
During the winter, the Red Sox counted on him to be just as prodigious in 1992, but, of course, he wasn’t. The glass slipper fell off.
By the next season, Plantier was banished to the San Diego Padres for José Meléndez, who made such an impression on me I don’t even remember him. Plantier, meanwhile, had his best season, hitting 34 homers with 100 RBI. For the Padres . . .
Some of our phenoms have had tremendous success. Tony Conigliaro was touted in some circles as a future right-handed Babe Ruth. Tony C came every bit as advertised and were it not for his tragic beaning in 1967, he might be in the Hall of Fame.
On the other hand, there are a ton of pitchers who got the star treatment while they were in fourth grade, or so it would seem. One was Craig Hansen, the 2006 phenom. The Red Sox were so high on him that they rushed him to the majors and completely ruined him. They’ve done that a lot.
It remains to be seen whether Anthony can withstand the curse of high expectations. (Thanks, Ken Brett.) The Red Sox have done due diligence, even trotting out David Ortiz to praise him to the heavens. Anthony has established himself as a player to watch during the World Baseball Classic, but let’s keep the Hall of Fame plaque on hold for now. Let him go through an entire season, with the usual dips and surges, before beginning to pass judgement.
It would be a crime if Anthony ends up in the dustbin of Red Sox phenoms.
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