Red Sox camp, such as it is, is winding to a close.
The team will play a pair of exhibitions against the itinerant Blue Jays before opening the season on Friday against the Orioles.
While there have been some standouts in camp — right-hander Nathan Eovaldi arrived at spring training 2.0 ready to throw 100 pitches at 100 mph, it seemed — there have been disappointments, too.
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We're going to focus on three of them while avoiding members of the starting rotation, who didn't arrive with meaningful expectations anyway.
This list is for players being counted on to contribute in 2020. The Red Sox can only hope they find their form once the games start counting for real.
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1. Rafael Devers
This is a tale of two Devers. The left-handed hitter is mashing the ball, with a 475-foot batting practice home run off David Ortiz's retired No. 34 on the right field facade an example of his prodigious power.
If Devers were a DH, this wouldn't be an issue. He's also required to play the field, however, and his production has suffered during intrasquad games, where he has made a handful of errors at third base.
"Raffy over the last two years, just watching him, he goes through some streaks at times that he's not going to play as well and then he will turn it around and work," manager Ron Roenicke said. "Raffy, one thing about him, he works as hard as anybody I have seen defensively. The first year I saw him in '18 to last year, tremendous improvement. I would say last year the first month was just so-so and the last five months of the season I think he played a great defense. I still think he's going to play a really good defense."
There's an additional issue, however, and it's conditioning. The first indication that Devers was going to have a breakout 2019 was when he arrived at camp noticeably slimmer. It was a response, he said, to a pair of DL stints for a hamstring strain that he attributed to carrying too much weight.
Devers showed up this time around looking a bit thicker, though Roenicke downplayed it.
"He may have gained a little bit, but not to the point where I'm worried about it," the manager said.
If there's one player capable of turning a so-so spring into a whale of a summer, however, it's Devers.
"He's got tremendous power, no question," Roenicke said. "First day here at batting practice when he joined us, the ball comes off the bat differently. He hits the ball the other way, you think he just missed it and then it ends up halfway up the wall. So, he's one of those special talents that has a little bit more bat speed or strength or whatever it is to allow that ball to carry farther. It's a huge advantage to be able to hit the ball that far the other way and still be able to turn on balls like he does. It makes it really tough to pitch to him."
2. Brandon Workman
When you're the only pitcher in history to author both a 10-1 season and a 1-10 season, consistency may be elusive. And so it is that the Red Sox are holding their breath that Workman will figure things out after a poor intrasquad performance.
A year ago, Workman became the hardest pitcher to hit in recorded history. His .123 batting average against broke Koji Uehara's big league record of .130 set in his own unhittable 2013.
But Workman has surrendered consistently solid contact vs. his teammates, including an opposite-field home run to Michael Chavis in a recent scrimmage. Workman has been a topic of conversation between Roenicke and pitching coach Dave Bush.
"His stuff is fine," Roenicke said. "I talked to Bushy about it. We thought his stuff was good. He's just missing location. It's coming out nice. Locations aren't very good and our hitters are not missing anything."
Workman will become a free agent in the fall, and perhaps the uncertainty is weighing on him. He's always had excellent makeup, however, which allowed him to make three key appearances in the 2013 World Series as a rookie, and then to come back from a two-year absence due to Tommy John surgery and dominate last season.
"He's obviously frustrated, so I guess my concern is — I'm OK with his stuff, I think he's going to find it — but my concern more is to make sure that he knows he's going to find it," Roenicke said. "Right now, like you said, he's competitive, he doesn't like this. He wants to get through every inning clean and he's scuffling to do it and you can see it on the mound. I guess the good thing is, go through it here and get it over with and get locked in again in the season."
3. Alex Verdugo
It's easy to forget that the centerpiece of the Mookie Betts trade is coming off an even longer layoff than most of his teammates. When the pandemic shut down spring training in March, Verdugo was just starting to work his way back from a stress fracture in his spine that ended his 2019 season in August.
He opened eyes during batting practice when workouts resumed this month at Fenway Park, but that stroke hasn't yet carried over to games, with Verdugo frequently rolling over to second base.
"I think he's getting better," Roenicke said. "He's still fighting it at times, but he's getting better. He feels better. I see a little better swings all the time."
When Verdugo is right, he slashes the ball to all fields, hits lefties as well as righties, and even shows developing power.
"I think just my conversations with some of the guys with the Dodgers where he came from, they all like him and think he's a really good player," Roenicke said. "I know he's replacing a real tough guy in right field and it's not fair to put that on him, to carry that kind of load. But I think when this guy gets comfortable and he gets his timing right, we're going to have a real exciting player. He's going to be really good offensively, he runs well, he'll steal some bases and he'll play very good right field. Everything we've heard and the things shortly that I've seen makes me believe what we have is a really good player for a lot of years."