Visit to Detroit reminds Red Sox aren't the only young, promising team in baseball

COMMENTARY

The roller-coaster ride is hardly easing back into the station. The 2024 Red Sox, who spent most of their first two-and-a-half months ponging a game either side of .500, feel like they’re returning to their roots.

After two losses Monday, in which they made more errors (6) than runs (4), came two wins. They won a two-hitter, backed by eight Brayan Bello innings, on Wednesday. They lost a two-hitter, Toronto tower Bowden Francis again flirting with history, on Thursday.

“We’re still in the hunt,” manager Alex Cora told reporters.

It will require better baseball than this. At 69-65, a 19-9 run equal to their pre-All-Star peak would mean 88 Red Sox wins. Minnesota (72-61), which hosts Toronto this weekend, has lost eight of 10 and is a .500 team since the start of July. But .500 is about all they need coming home, with a schedule including Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, the Angels … and the Red Sox at Fenway from Sept. 20-22.

That series may only matter to them if the Sox find winning consistency, imminently. The sort that Kansas City has, erasing a seven-game hole in the AL Central to tie Cleveland for first before losing Wednesday. The sort of another from that division, which won 13 of 16 as the Twins skidded to creep into the fringes of the wild-card race.

The Tigers, Boston’s hosts this weekend as we reach September.

“It’s fun. This is why you play the game,” Tarik Skubal, Detroit’s young pitching star, told reporters after Detroit lost on Thursday. “But when you get caught up in that, it takes away from what we need to do. … The standings don’t matter if you don’t win.”

It largely echoes the words of his manager, AJ Hinch, who sounds appreciative that the Tigers are in some form of August postseason chatter for the first time in nearly a decade, but also entirely uninterested in it.

“I just don’t get anxious over what’s ahead. I don’t think about the series ahead. I don’t look to see what-ifs. I live in the moment and I ask our guys to do that and we’ve been very consistent,” he told reporters before Thursday’s loss. “How we respond today matters. What’s ahead doesn’t matter until we get there.”

The manager, Hinch, and his wayward lieutenant, Cora, are closing on four years from the end of their exiles after the Astros trash can spectacle. For some, the link will never disappear.

For others, the tie has grown more toward each trying to steward a young, potential-laden roster into something tangible. Hinch committed to sticking around for the task last winter, signing a long-term deal to stay in Detroit. Cora remained noncommittal to that deep into this season, but signed his extension in July.

The pitching will be the first thing you notice. Detroit has, not unlike the Red Sox, pieced together success despite injuries and departures. Four of the 14 starters used by the Tigers this season are on the injured list, and a fifth (Jack Flaherty) was traded away at the deadline.

The Sox, however, will see them get healthier. Casey Mize, who hasn’t pitched in two months due to a left hamstring strain, is expected to come off the 60-day injured list to start Friday. (He’s looked sharp in rehab work.)

They’ll also see their best — Skubal, the clear favorite to win the AL Cy Young with a 2.58 ERA and all the supporting metrics to back it, is in line for Saturday.

The Sox, for what it’s worth, hit Skubal hard in 2022 (4 2/3 innings, 6 runs) and 2023 (5 1/3 innings, 4 earned runs) visits to Fenway. Rob Refsnyder and Triston Casas slugged homers off him in each game, respectively.

There’ll be no Javier Báez, the Tigers announcing at the beginning of the week he needs right hip surgery. What is it about shortstops signed in the 2021-22 offseason?

Javier Báez (Signed December 2021): 360 games since, .221/.262/.347, 1.9 fWAR

Trevor Story (Signed March 2022): 145 games since, .227/.288/.394, 2.9 fWAR

What there will be is a young roster that, much like the Red Sox, is finding themselves. Detroit’s top five hitters during this year are all pre-arbitration 20-somethings — Zach McKinstry, Matt Vierling, Parker Meadows, Kerry Carpenter, Spencer Torkelson, followed closely by Jake Rogers (all of 29 behind the plate) and Colt Keith, who signed a six-year deal before the season … and before his major-league debut.

“We have a variety of guys on this team. Some who are established and they’ve been here … [and] others that are trying to make a case. We’re trying to do that under the umbrella of, take advantage of all the opportunity you can,” Hinch told reporters earlier this month. “Everything matters.”

Torkelson’s story feels most interesting. The first overall pick in the 2020 draft broke camp with the Tigers as their starting first baseman in 2022. He struggled, but stuck and hit 31 homers in 2023, playing in all but three games.

The struggles came harder this season, and he was demoted to Triple A after Detroit’s June series at Fenway, hitting .201 with strikeouts in nearly a quarter of his at-bats and ugly defensive numbers at first base. He remained in the minors until mid-month, and though he wasn’t overpowering there, he’s hit .311 with seven extra-base hits in 12 games since his recall.

He’s also turned 25 since his recall, a reminder that young players often do not have linear ascensions to their potential. (It’s been argued, somewhat smartly, that the contraction in the minor leagues has made such struggles more common.)

It’s a reminder I dare say fewer of us need after watching the 2024 Red Sox for five months.

These specific three games this weekend likely won’t loom large in the larger paths of these two franchises. Tigers fans are, speaking generally, just happy to be back in the late summer discussion. Red Sox fans are in a bit of a different place given the mood around the franchise and the complaints about its direction, but I suspect they aren’t far off from that either.

A playoff berth, at the best of times this season, was probably a 50-50 proposition. Now, we’re in the phase where we must still humor the idea, even if we know that’s what we’re doing.

What comes next is what matters. Building on this somewhat surprising rediscovery of optimism about the Red Sox, and noting that, actually, there might really be some light on the horizon.

It will not simply rise like the Sun, though. Because there are teams like the Tigers out there, seeing its peak from much the same place these Red Sox are and just as eager (if not more) to shed the darkness.