The Boston Red Sox have a lot on their plates these days, between espionage, six-hour games and trying to stay away from the New York Yankees and close to the Cleveland Indians, but at least they wake up every day knowing this much:
They’re not watching how Pablo Sandoval spends the $8 million he’s costing them, or the $41 that comes after that. They may even have forgotten he ever existed at all.
Sandoval is now becoming a point of national curiosity, as his hitless at-bat streak has reached 37 at-bats, nine short of the all-time record held by Eugenio Velez. In doing so, he has become the enduring metaphor for this ephemeral Giants season – good in the room, bad at the plate.
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Sandoval was a risk anyway, a what-the-hell move by a team that wanted to turn Eduardo Nunez into assets and hasn’t convinced itself that Kelby Tomlinson or Ryder Jones represent the future in a genuinely excitable way. He came back to San Francisco as a non-conquering hero of the bygone days, but the rust and decay seems to have been too much to overcome. He is no longer swinging at egregiously bad balls, but he is not making noteworthy contact either. He’s just makin’ outs, day in and day out.
Again, not unlike the vast majority of the team.
We do not bring this up to make Sandoval the raison-d’etre for Gigantes 2017; they got to bad way before he arrived, and they’ve remained exactly that. It’s just the streak that has caught America’s attention, at least to the extent that the Giants can capture anyone’s attention in these whirlwind days.
And 37 is a lot of nothing to string together. He can break out of this at any point, of course, but it’s no longer the way to bet.
Meanwhile, back in Boston, they don’t think of him any more – except every two weeks for the remainder of this season, and the two seasons after this. $41 million biweekly, plus a $5 million buyout check that almost certainly has already been cut.
No wonder the Red Sox are resorting to rampant brigandry to hold off the Yankees. They clearly need the dough.