TORONTO - Garrett Crochet stood in front of his locker at Rogers Centre on Wednesday afternoon on the outside looking in when it came to participating on the Red Sox's active roster. He had just been placed on the injured list with an inflamed left shoulder.
That, however, didn't mean his presence wasn't being felt.
Crochet is one of those in that clubhouse who have lived this life of switching managers in the middle of a season, having experienced it twice as a member of the White Sox. He may be just 26 years old, but he knows of what he speaks. And when he does speak, it hits.
"You can only do what you can control, and what you can control is preparation and effort," he told WEEI.com. "Maybe now it's at an 11 instead of being at a 10. And maybe that's where we need to be."
He's not wrong, and he's also spot-on when using the levels of amplification to paint the picture. Perhaps Crochet didn't even realize it, but the be-all, end-all when referencing the "11" instead of "10" idiom is the 1984 mockumentary "Spinal Tap."
The scene:
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to 11. Look, right across the board, 11, 11, 11 and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to 10?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to 11.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to 11.
Even though 42 years apart, all of it fits perfect. Maybe for good reason. If Netflix was rolling on this season instead of two years ago, it would have been hard to view it as anything but a mockumentary. This entire Red Sox existence in the past four days has become that out-of-the-ordinary.
On top of moving on from the manager before May hits, just potentially needing to rely on "My name is ..." tags for half the coaching staff while still in April is so outside the realm of normalcy. That was certainly the vibe throughout three days at Rogers Centre, with the Red Sox's 8-1 loss to the Blue Jays only pounding home that point.
There were times the Sox's existence seemed somewhat palatable, such as after Ranger Suarez's eight shutout innings calmed things down Monday night. But then came more and more reminders regarding how even more off the rails this thing can get.
It wasn't just another defeat, this time moving the Red Sox to 12-19, eight games in back of the first-place Yankees.
You had the image of Brayan Bello emphatically shaking his head from the time interim manager Chad Tracy stepped on the field to take the starter out of the game in the fourth inning until when the ball was handed over.
"Obviously, I was upset," Bello said through Red Sox interpreter Carlos Villoria-Benítez, having been charged with four runs while throwing 63 pitches. “I haven’t been able to pitch well in the past few starts. I haven’t been able to pitch deep into the games. That’s what I want [to do], and today, it went that way, as well."
And, of course, there was an offense that went from seemingly having figured things out to scoring just one run over the past two games, having to now lean on a group of hitting coaches who were almost all far from living their current existences with the big league club as of Saturday.
While it is easy to pick apart the flaws in this plan, both before and after Saturday's firings, ultimately it comes back to another prescient quote from Crochet.
"We keep saying the business of baseball, but we're in the business of results," he said before the latest loss. "Ultimately, it's that this team hasn't had them."
They can turn the effort level up to 11, or even 12, but if this results business doesn't start booming, it will make us surface another apropos quote from Spinal Tap: "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."
