Back on June 24, Nick Sogard and the Red Sox weren't in a good place.
The infielder had found himself having to put any major league momentum garnered during his month-long May stint with the Red Sox on hold. An oblique injury had derailed a season for Sogard, whose team had already seemingly fallen off the tracks. With the Sox's FanGraphs odds to make the postseason sitting at 9.4 percent, salvaging any sort of optimism for either the player or the club appeared like the longest of longshots.
Two months later, life certainly looks a whole lot different.
For starters, the Red Sox's playoff odds now sit at 98.2 percent. And for Sogard? Well, he has reemerged to enter into the fabric of the Sox's run to October.
In the last three series, Sogard has not only proven he deserves to live the life as a major leaguer, but he has also hinted at the notion that maybe his role should be more than up-and-down, stopgap. Over those nine games, the infielder has managed the ninth-best OPS in baseball (1.185) and the 10th-highest batting average (.394).
He has started every one of those games, playing second base in all but one of them (the other seeing him land at first base). Not a single error has been made by the 28-year-old in that stretch, as well.
The player everyone said you have to watch play every day to appreciate is playing every day. Needless to say, he is being appreciated.
The latest example came in the Red Sox's 5-4 win over the Giants Sunday, in which Sogard followed up his Saturday night heroics with a homer and double to help his team complete the three-game sweep of San Francisco.
"You can't say enough about it," said Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy. "You’re getting power swings on the left side, powerful swings on the right side. You're getting great defense. It's been enormous, the at-bats he's taken."
While the current level of appreciation is at an all-time high, it has been a battle for the infielder to consistently draw kudos at the major league level. Sure, he got some folks' radar with his two hits in Game 1 of last season's Wild Card series against the Yankees. But Sogard's presence was never valued enough by the organization to consistently pursue other avenues to fill the infield, whether by signing Isiah Kiner-Falefa or prioritizing Marcelo Mayer.
Perhaps it was because Sogard entered into the Red Sox's world as almost an afterthought, joining catcher Ronaldo Hernandez as the return from Tampa Bay in a deal that sent the Rays Jeffrey Springs and Chris Mazza prior to the 2021 season. Or maybe the lack of attention from those making the depth charts was due to a skill set that didn't align with what the organization was prioritizing, with metrics like bat speed and hard-hit percentage measured on the lower end.
Now, however, Sogard is forcing the club - and the world of baseball - to look at him in a different light.
It's unclear where the switch-hitter will find himself when October rolls around. Kiner-Falefa and Trevor Story will be returning, and despite a recent slump, Andruw Monasterio has established himself as a logical fit on the big league roster. But what Sogard has done is make the Red Sox rethink things a bit, potentially riding this switch-hitting hot hand through the final 32 regular-season games.
Sogard has been that good, and that important.
He has absolutely established himself as at least part of this soon-to-be postseason puzzle, a notion that would have been almost unthinkable two months ago, for both the player and his team.
