Why Trevor Story signing ultimately will be a win for Red Sox
Why Trevor Story signing ultimately will be a win for Red Sox originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Someday the Red Sox will be good again, and not merely in a fighting-for-the-last-wild-card kind of way.
When that day comes, don't be surprised if Trevor Story is right in the middle of it.
The shortstop remains the biggest free agent acquisition of the Chaim Bloom Era, and it's hard to qualify his six-year, $140 million deal as anything other than a bust at the moment. Story hit .238 last year at second base before a broken wrist effectively ended his season in July.
Then came offseason elbow surgery to address the throwing issues that had eased a move off shortstop in deference to incumbent Xander Bogaerts, and his contract suddenly looked extra terrible.
But after months of rehab, Story is finally back, and demonstrating why he was worth pursuing in the first place.
In addition to playing error-free shortstop, he is hitting .368 in five games. Since starting 0 for 9, he has gone 7 for 10 with four doubles. The Red Sox are 4-1 with Story in the lineup, and as much as I hate the argument that injured players can be trade-deadline acquisitions, it's fair to say that Story may end up being the most impactful hitter to join the pennant race this August.
Whether that translates to an actual playoff push is not really the point. The Red Sox continue building what they hope is their next great team, and Story has a ton to offer and a few weeks to remind us why he's an essential piece of the future.
An All-Star and Gold Glove finalist in Colorado, Story might be the best pure athlete on the roster, and that includes the more physically impressive Jarren Duran. Everything about Story's game is smooth, from the way he attacks balls in the field to his deceptive speed running the bases. He exudes baseball athleticism.
In Story's very first game back vs. the Royals, he dove at the edge of the grass to glove a Bobby Witt grounder headed for the hole, looked the runner back to third, and then easily erased the speedy Witt from his knees with a strike across the diamond. The play demonstrated Story's instincts, awareness, dexterity, and accuracy, all in the span of two seconds. Anyone worried about arm strength following his modified Tommy John surgery could breathe easy, too.
Story plays short with a high IQ. An easily forgotten play from last season made that clear when he fielded a Ji-Man Choi grounder to his right, tried to race Wander Franco to the second base bag, realized he would lose, and instead gracefully pirouetted to fire a strike to first that Franchy Cordero unfortunately dropped, because there was a lot of that last year.
No one would've faulted him for losing a footrace to Franco by half a step, but Story made the split-second calculation that he should take the out at first, because he possesses what basketball players would call court awareness.
"Anyone else, and I would've tried for second," Story said last year. "But I knew who was running and I didn't think I was going to get there."
That's a winning play, even if it wasn't technically an out, and the Red Sox are going to need more of that to set an example in the coming years as their roster presumably gets younger with the arrival of Ceddanne Rafaela and eventually Marcelo Mayer, among others. While stopgap veterans like Justin Turner, Kenley Jansen, and Kiké Hernández will come and go, Story should be here for the long haul, and that's a good thing.
He's always going to strike out a lot, especially when he falls into ruts of struggling to identify sliders away, but he compensates with power, and a successful final two months could help convince chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom that it's OK to spend on the right players in free agency.
To this point, Story has qualified as more of a cautionary tale, but if his arm troubles are truly behind him, there's still time to make his mark in a Red Sox uniform.
