The Red Sox turned heads on Wednesday, when lumbering corner infielder Bobby Dalbec was penciled in as the starting shortstop.
The move was made in desperation, with usual starting shortstop Enrique Hernandez pressed into action in the outfield with left fielder Masataka Yoshida sidelined by a hamstring tweak.
During the weekly Front Office Report on WEEI's Greg Hill Show on Thursday morning, Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom conceded that starting Dalbec at shortstop wasn't "ideal" but added that it wasn't expected to happen very often.
Bloom also cautioned that there was no need to panic about the unusual alignment for one game, instead advancing a theory that the long campaign is actually comprised of 162 one-game seasons.
This did not sit well with show producer Chris Curtis, who fired back that the Red Sox did not adequately address their roster holes in the offseason.
"If it's 162 one-game seasons, then why is Bobby Dalbec starting at short on April 12. Like it's not like you're in July and there has been this — it feels like the club opened the year with holes that it failed to fill in the offseason, and it's already coming back before we're even at Patriots' Day."
Bloom responded that the team was caught shorthanded while trying to rest players and also optimize the lineup against a string of mostly left-handed starting pitchers.
"I mean, whether April or July, sometimes you end up in situations on a given night where you don't have everybody available that you want. And in that case, and I know Alex spoke to this last night, Rob [Refsnyder] had played a bunch of days in a row, which comes with having this stretch of lefties. That's something we want to make sure he's available for, and it makes sense to give him a day [off]. That is ultimately going to benefit us more over the long haul, because you've got to make sure you're using players right, you've got to make sure you're taking care of players. Obviously with everybody who was down last night, that wasn't ideal for us.
"But there's a reason that we explored that possibility in spring training just so we were ready for it if it did happen, knowing that we had this stretch coming up on our schedule, and you know, is it perfect, is it ideal? No, but that's going to happen over the course of the season. Obviously, you don't want it to happen every night, but you are going to go through stretches for a day or two or three where guys are gonna have to step up. Every team goes through it. This is happening around the league in a lot of different places. You can look at different teams and not always see them having their ideal lineup out there on a given night. That's part of the game. And, you know, no excuses, guys need to step up. You know, we need to make sure we've got different options. But this is, you know, this is part of the game, and it creates opportunity. And obviously, you need to see what guys do with that opportunity."
The Dalbec experiment didn't exactly go smoothly. The 27-year-old slugger committed an error in the bottom of the first inning when he booted a relatively routine ground ball.
And it's not exactly like Hernandez has been flashing Gold Glove-caliber defense, either. The veteran utility man has already been slapped with five errors in 38 total chances, good for a fielding percentage of .868.
Of course, Hernandez took over as the everyday shortstop from Xander Bogaerts, who signed with the San Diego Padres in free agency. That development didn't sit well with Red Sox fans, who largely saw it as a payroll decision.
But Bloom said the Red Sox "feel good" about Hernandez playing shortstop close to every day, though he hinted that Hernandez's role may not be secure with the anticipated eventual return from injury for Trevor Story and Adalberto Mondesi.
"As we get healthier over the course of the season, we'll have other options who I think will see time over there," Bloom said. "But we have a lot of confidence in him."
After the call ended, Curtis ripped Bloom's comments.
"How do you say it's 162 one-game seasons, and you put THAT lineup out there last night? THAT lineup. It's not July 16. ... The absence of any form of self awareness is staggering. And he says, 'Panic is never a good idea.' I don't know how you are a sentient human and you see that lineup, and you don't panic. We're not talking about September callups here."
On Thursday, Hernandez remained the starter in center field, while Yu Chang started at shortstop. Dalbec was not in the starting lineup.
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