It had been the kind of debate that was hard to find a definitive answer to.
Who is the true leader of the Red Sox?
The fail-safe will always be manager Alex Cora, who undeniably has more control over the clubhouse than any one player. But when it came to the player who might be driving the bus, it wasn't so clear.
Xander Bogaerts was certainly a leader in his own way, although it was most likely never going to come in the form a fire-and-brimstone, middle-of-the-clubhouse speech. J.D. Martinez? He was one of the veterans who had helped steer the ship. Nathan Eovaldi certainly is a player most everyone on that team looks up to.
But what we're uncovering - even with no clubhouse access for the media - is that Chris Sale is the alpha on this team. Case in point, pregame leading into the Red Sox' 4-0 win over the Rays Thursday.
“I mean, there was a good vibe," said Cora after his team's second straight win. "Chris was talking to the guys today and he’s been saying all along, nothing is going to stop us. He’s been very loud in the clubhouse just letting them know, it doesn’t matter what’s going on, we’re going to keep pushing, we’re going to be OK, and when you have guys like that that can speak up in the clubhouse and then they go out there and they perform, it’s a lot easier. There was a lot of energy today. The guys were into it from the get-go and to be able to do that is a testament to them, as a group. They understand that teams go through stuff like that. It’s not the first team that has a Covid issue, but there have been teams that went through this and then they took off, right? Hopefully this is our ‘taking off’ and we can play solid baseball all the way through September and get to October to play in October.”
Make no mistake about it, it is rare for a team to be led by just one player. That's not usually how it works. There are too many position groups, too many language barriers and too many personalities.
As Mookie Betts told WEEI.com, David Ortiz was that rare player, with the understanding that all issues pass through the former designated hitter. But, once again, he was that rare player.
"All we knew here was David Ortiz," Betts said in a 2017 interview on the Bradfo Sho podcast. "Just knowing that not one guy has taken the brunt, we have to understand that. And it took a little while to understand that. It took us a little while to find our identity. I think we're starting to figure it out. Nobody is going to take a month and we are going to know. It may take us a couple of more years to fully understand it."
It seems like, thanks in large part to Sale, they are starting to understand it just fine.
