The Thursday, April 22, 2021

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Garrett Richards mostly relied on one pitch, and that didn’t play against the Blue Jays

Julian Benbow

A 30-minute rain delay on a night where temperatures barely cracked 50 degrees are by no means unusual conditions for in Boston.

But for Garrett Richards, the entire concept was foreign. Up until this season, he had spent the first 10 years of his career in the parts of California that never rain — Los Angeles and San Diego.

“I mean, I didn’t even pack a jacket for a season until this year,” he said.

It’s another part of pitching for the Red Sox that Richards will have to get adjusted to.

After seeing the 32-year old starter bounce back from an ugly opening-day debut with back-to-back solid outings, Sox manager Alex Cora hoped that Richards would find control over his slider and give the Sox six or seven innings Wednesday against the on the back end of a snappy two-game series.

The slider, to Cora, was the keystone for Richards. But Richards was still searching for the feel.

“The slider is not where we want it to be or where he wanted to be,” Cora said. “I do believe when the slider starts playing, he’s going to be dominant.”

Richards couldn’t deliver the deep start Cora was looking for. And over his 4.2 innings of work in the Sox’ 6-3 loss, his slider was still elusive.

Richards fell to 0-2 on the season after giving up four runs on four hits and six walks.

“I just think the delivery was off a little bit the whole night,” Richards said. “And [I was] just kind of fighting it the whole night. Then obviously just couldn’t get my release point under control. So just kind of a combination of things. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

He was barely able to get to his slider — throwing it just 15 times, nine for strikes — and when he did, the Jays did damage.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was 2 for 3 with an RBI single off his slider in the first inning.

“I don’t know why he had trouble commanding, but that put him in a bad spot, right,” Cora said. “He finishes out strong, but we’ve got to find a way to throw the slider for strikes. He’s been very inconsistent with it, even in spring training. That’s something that we have to work and try to find it.

Richards had to work himself out of trouble from the start against the Jays.

He started the game by walking on four pitches, hitting on his elbow protector, then giving up an RBI single to Guerrero. But he managed to minimize the damage when he got a - play ball out of and got out of the inning thanks to a groundout from .

But Richards couldn’t find a feel for his fastball and paid for it in a three-run second inning.

He left a four-seamer over the plate to that Semien slapped to left for a leadoff single. He walked on five pitches. A wild pitch to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. moved the runners to second and third with no outs and Gurriel scored Semien with a sacrifice fly to right.

With first base open, Richards walked Danny Jansenon four pitches. He got the ground ball he wanted out of Biggio, but couldn’t get the double play to make it worthwhile. Palacios scored from third to give the Jays a 3-0 lead. Then Bichette tacked on with an RBI single to center that stretched the lead to 4.

With no feel for the slider, Richards threw 66 fastballs.

“It’s hard to maneuver a big-league lineup with one pitch,” Cora said. “If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball, too, we’re going to have the guy that we envisioned before the season.”

Richards’ only clean inning was a 1-2-3 third, in which he struck out Grichuk and Palacios.

The Sox cut into the lead when J.D. Martinez gave them a leadoff double and scored two batters later on a ground out from Rafael Devers.

Richards made it to the fifth inning, but after walking Guerrero to lead off then giving a free pass to Semien with two outs, Cora took the ball while the Sox were still in striking distance.

Enrique Hernandez’s RBI double cut the deficit to 4-2.

“The way he finished his outing was a positive,” Cora said. “He gave us a chance actually to stay away from some guys early on and then in the bullpen, we tried to patch it up all the way to the end, but it didn’t happen.”

The Sox made it a one-run game in the eight on Xander Bogaerts’s second homer of a season and threatened to tie it when Christian Vázquez worked a two-out walk and Marwin González reached on an error by Biggio that set up a second-and-third situation. But Bobby Dalbec grounded out to end the inning.

The elements caught Richards off guard.

“We had rain tonight, it was cold, there was a lot of things going on,” he said. “But that’s not an excuse. You’ve got to be better. You’ve got to make pitches and you’ve got to get outs.”

But Richards is still taking the long view with some confidence that he’ll put it together.

“Obviously, I want to do better and pitch better, but it’s a constant grind,” he said. “Throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things. I’ll get with [pitching coach Dave] Bush tomorrow to see what we can improve.”

Red Sox manager Alex Cora on Derek Chauvin verdict: ‘The more we talk about issues, the better we are as a society’

Julian Benbow

In the wake of Derek Chauvin being found guilty Tuesday of the murder of George Floyd, Red Sox manager Alex Cora offered his thoughts on the significance of athletes using their platforms to raise awareness about issues of social justice.

After cellphone video spread a year ago showing Chauvin driving his knee into Floyd’s neck, there was an overwhelming public outcry for justice. Athletes across all sports were vocal in calling for change. Once the verdict came down, those same athletes saw it as a victory for accountability.

Cora felt the same way.

“It’s been something that we’ve had over our head for a year,” Cora said. “Justice, I don’t want to use that word. I think it’s more about accountability. I hope that we all understand as a society that if you don’t do things right, you’ve got to pay the price.

“And hopefully this means that there’s a change in society, that this is the beginning of something. It’s a huge day, right? It was a huge day yesterday, and hopefully from now on we understand that that’s the way things are done now.”

To Cora, the figures across sports speaking out validated the power of using their voices.

“There’s something about us that people can see us as you just have to entertain people, just stay in your area, right?” Cora said. “You read and write, ‘Stick to sports.’ And that’s not only with coaches or players or front-office people, business — you guys too, you guys cover sports — stick to sports.

“Like I told you guys a few weeks ago, we’re in a state right now, I do believe that the more we talk about issues, the better we are as a society. I think our young people, they’re more willing to do that than when I grew up. And I think that’s a positive.”

While the Red Sox weren’t among the teams who issued a statement regarding the verdict, Cora said he knows the weight his words can carry.

“The platform is the platform,” he said. “Right now, I’m the only guy talking to the media about this right now, from the Red Sox organization. I understand that. But at the same time, I don’t have to limit my platform, to be a spokesman. I can be a regular human being in the barbershop — although I haven’t been in a barbershop in years — to talk about issues that impact our lives, and I think it’s refreshing that we live in a society that people are willing to do it.”

Much of the conversation regarding Floyd’s murder was driven by young protesters calling for justice. Cora said the public as a whole is better off when it can engage in discourse about social issues, and it creates bright possibilities for future generations.

“Having a daughter that has gone to college, she’s very lucky to be living in a society like that,” Cora said. “Do we have to get better? Of course we have to get better. No doubt about it, in every aspect. But the fact that they’re willing and they can do it, it’s a great thing.”

Vaccination update

More Red Sox players received COVID-19 vaccinations prior to Wednesday night’s game against the Blue Jays.

Major League Baseball will ease COVID restrictions once teams have 85 percent of their rosters vaccinated.

Cora said he would have a better sense by the end of the week if the Sox will actually reach that 85 percent.

Cora is fully vaccinated and said he’s feeling fine. He added that for players who do get vaccinated, he’s anticipating building in time for the possibility of side effects.

“That’s something that’s been happening throughout the league,” he said. “We know that’s something that might happen.”

Scoring changes

A pair of official scoring changes were made to the Red Sox’ win over the White Sox on Monday. Franchy Cordero’s fourth-inning hit and RBI were changed to a fielding error by first baseman Jose Abreu, making the run that scored unearned. Also, Cordero was given a for a play in the seventh inning that originally was ruled defensive indifference … Despite having the second-best record in baseball (12-6), the Red Sox came into Wednesday only 6-5 at Fenway.

How the Red Sox pitching staff has improved so much from last season

Alex Speier

Improvement seemed inevitable, even unavoidable, for a Red Sox pitching staff that ranked among the worst in baseball in 2020. But even with a significant overhaul that started in the middle of last season, it seemed hard to anticipate the magnitude of the performance jump in 2021.

The team entered Wednesday with a 3.60 ERA, almost two runs better than last year’s 5.58. That improvement of 1.98 represented the second-largest in the majors from a year ago.

While the Red Sox endured one of their uglier pitching performances of the season in Wednesday’s 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays, in a sense the game offered a reminder of how far the staff has come. After all, last year a six-run yield was an average nightly occurrence. This year, the poor performance represented enough of an exception to seem out of character. For the most part, the Sox staff has reliably given the lineup a chance to win, holding opponents to four runs or fewer 14 times, most in the American League.

What’s allowing that leap forward?

Something old, something new

Last year, the season-long losses of Eduardo Rodriguez and Chris Sale devastated the rotation. Now, while Sale is still months away from a return, Rodriguez has been back and attacking the strike zone with the conviction and relentlessness borne of his breakthrough 2019 campaign. Nate Eovaldi has also been dominant at the front of the rotation.

“I think both are elite starting pitchers,” said catcher Christian Vázquez.

Nick Pivetta, Garrett Richards, Martín Pérez, and Tanner Houck have been serviceable or better in most of their starts, a far cry from the revolving-door rotation of a year ago. Bullpen newcomers Garrett Whitlock, Hirokazu Sawamura, and Matt Andriese have been outstanding in passing the baton to Matt Barnes, who has been dominant (9 innings, 1 run, 16 , 2 walks) at the end of games.

“He’s got electric stuff this year,” raved Vázquez, Barnes’s teammate dating to 2012 at High-A Salem. “I’m seeing the best Matt Barnes I’ve ever seen in all my years with him.”

Count the differences

Staff-wide, perhaps the most dramatic change has been the ability to suppress an opponent’s quick-strike offense. In 2020, the Sox allowed 1.8 homers per nine innings, most in the big leagues. This year, they are yielding just 0.3, the lowest mark in the big leagues.

How does that happen? Vázquez surmised that the change related to doing a better job of attacking on the first pitch.

He’s wrong. Surprisingly, it turns out that Red Sox pitchers have done a poor job on first pitches. Not only are they throwing fewer first-pitch strikes (58.5 percent in 2021, down from 60.8 percent last year), but they’re getting hammered when doing so, allowing a major league-worst 1.199 OPS and seven homers when opponents put the first pitch in play.

However, Sox pitchers have done a great job of getting back into counts and putting away hitters regardless of whether throw a first-pitch ball or strike. That represents a contrast to 2020, when a first-pitch ball often snowballed into the most favorable counts (2-0, 3-0, 3-1) for hitters.

The Sox threw 7.8 percent of their pitches in those three counts in 2020, the third-highest rate in baseball. This year, they have thrown just 6.8 percent of pitches in those counts — 15th in the majors.

With more control over counts, the Sox have seen their walk rate drop from a putrid 10.5 a year ago (third- worst in MLB) to a more reasonable 9.0 percent (15th) this year, with fewer acts of self-sabotage creating fewer scoring opportunities for opponents. They’ve increased their rate from 20.5 percent last year (20th in MLB) to 24.1 percent (15th).

And when they haven’t struck out opponents, Red Sox pitchers have allowed far less hard contact. They went from a gruesome 36.8 percent hard-hit rate a year ago (third-highest in the majors) to 28.6 percent (fifth-lowest).

Of course, the across-the-board improvement boils down in many ways to a fairly straightforward cause.

They’ve got stuff

A year ago, the Red Sox had a few power arms (including Eovaldi, Ryan Brasier, and Barnes) but leaned heavily on pitchers whose limited velocity placed them as outliers in the modern game. Starts from Ryan Weber, Matt Hall, Kyle Hart, and Zack Godley featured pitchers who only occasionally cracked 90 miles per hour.

This year, the Sox feature many more hard throwers. Their average fastball velocity is 95.2 m.p.h., second- highest in the big leagues — a bump from 94.0 last year (10th). The starters have seen an increase from 93.8 m.p.h. (10th-highest in MLB) to 95.4 mph (second), while the relievers have gone from 94.2 m.p.h. (10th) to 94.9 (fifth).

“It’s easier when you have a good arm on the mound,” said Vázquez. “You’re not afraid to attack the zone. When we have electric arms like we have now, it’s easier to call games.”

Velocity is not the be-all, end-all for pitchers, but it remains an incredibly important predictor of success.

“I noticed in ’19 we were behind velocity-wise in spring training,” said manager Alex Cora. “Then I noticed we were back in the game in spring training this year.

“For how much we love pounding the strike zone and yeah, put the ball in play, weak contact and make plays, when they don’t put the ball in play and you get swings and misses late in games, it’s a lot better.”

Thus far in 2021, there has been a lot of “a lot better” for the Red Sox. The vault from one of the worst pitching staffs in the game last year to the top third of the majors (the team’s 3.60 ERA entering Wednesday was ninth-best) has positioned the top-scoring offense in the majors to prove difference- making, allowing for the Sox to open the year with the sort of stretch that proved impossible for any sustained duration in 2020.

Catching up with , who says he ‘shouldn’t have taken that job’ to manage Red Sox in 2012

Stan Grossfeld

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Bobby Valentine stands behind dozens of fans at a recent Sacred Heart baseball game. He’s not hiding, as in 1999 when he was manager of the Mets and got ejected from a game but sneaked back into the dugout wearing sunglasses and a fake mustache. But he definitely is keeping a low profile.

“I don’t want to be a distraction,” says Valentine, who has been Sacred Heart’s director of athletics since 2013.

Today is a tough day for the energetic 70-year-old. The women’s volleyball Northeast Conference championship match was canceled because of a positive COVID test. Sacred Heart was unbeaten in conference play.

“I’m a little sick to my stomach,” he says.

Valentine still cares, after a more than a half-century as a player, manager, restaurateur, baseball analyst, and AD. At Sacred Heart, he has expanded programs, won championships, and raised money for the state- of-the-art $21.8 million Bobby Valentine Health & Recreation Center. Last month, ground was broken for a $70 million hockey arena.

“It’s been a great, joyful experience,” he says. “I’ve done everything that I wanted to do here.”

Being an AD is a lot different than being a big-league manager. Instead of a 40-man roster, he has 800-900 Division 1 student-athletes to oversee.

“We’ve got young, energetic people and about 80 coaches that I get to coach,” he says. “It’s just cool.”

But today the Stamford, Conn., native is concerned that there are water problems in the women’s restroom at Veteran’s Park, and that foul balls hit into the woods are slow to be retrieved.

“They are $8.50 apiece,” he says.

Valentine disagrees with those who consider being athletic director of Sacred Heart a step down from his previous job: manager of the Boston Red Sox.

“I would think that [after] the experience that a lot of people have had being a manager of the Red Sox, this would be a step up,” he says with a chuckle.

He was fired a day after the 2012 season ended, his one-year stint ending with a last-place finish in a controversial season.

Any regrets?

“I shouldn’t have taken that job to begin with,” he says. “I should have stayed at ESPN, where I was making $2.5 million and didn’t have a care in the world, instead of working my ass off and not being appreciated for seven months of my life.”

Tumultuous times in 2012 Valentine succeeded Terry Francona after the disastrous chicken-and-beer 2011 season, with a management mandate to provide discipline. That meant a no-beer-in-the-clubhouse policy.

“They insisted on that coming from me,” says Valentine.

It didn’t go over well.

“I know a lot of guys didn’t like it, and they blamed it on me,” he says. “And I said, ‘What the [expletive]? I’m going to have a cooler in my office. You want to come in? Come on in.’ ”

He also did not choose his own coaches and felt that some were undermining him.

“It’s real hard to have disciples who are loyal to you when they don’t think that you’re responsible for them being where they are,” he says.

Valentine said he asked for advice before spring training.

“You have to stress fundamentals,” he says Youkilis told him. “We’re terrible at fundamentals.”

Valentine introduced some highly regimented drills he learned while managing in Japan. Players didn’t like it.

“God forbid that it’s not the same as they did it before,” he says.

He also made pitchers take batting practice.

“The pitchers didn’t like hitting,” he says. “We were going to play interleague games and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t like the idea.”

In a mid-April interview with Channel 7, Valentine was asked why Youkilis was not playing like his usual self, striking out and not walking.

“I don’t think he’s as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past, for some reason,” Valentine told Joe Amorosino.

The comment created a firestorm.

“I don’t regret saying that,” says Valentine. “I was one of the only people that was Youk’s friend. I was the one trying to protect him.

“He wanted to do anything but be a Red Sox, and his back bothered him. He didn’t want to stay here. So everyone — the front office, the agent, and Youk — seized an opportunity to get him out of town, and it made my life miserable.”

He says the media “baited” , who had not seen the interview.

“One of those brain-dead writers said, ‘What do you think about your manager criticizing Youk?’ ” says Valentine. “And he said, ‘Well, that’s not the way we do things around here.’ ”

All hell broke loose in Red Sox Nation.

“It was stupid,” says Valentine. “Stupid.”

Years later, wrote in his autobiography that his former manager was “arrogant.” He also called him “clueless” and “aggravating as hell.”

“I am arrogant,” Valentine says, laughing. “I think he wrote that when he was trying to sell books.

“David hurt his Achilles’ and he didn’t have a contract for next year. And I said, ‘You’ve got to make sure you’re healthy before you get back on the field. Don’t worry about the team. Worry about yourself.’ ”

Valentine says Ortiz worked hard and returned Aug. 24, getting two hits. But he reinjured his Achilles’ tendon running the bases and went back on the disabled list.

The next day, the Red Sox traded Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez, and Carl Crawford to the Dodgers.

“David talked to the owners and the owners said, ‘We’re not trying to win anymore,’ ” says Valentine. “And David said, ‘Good, then I’m not going to play and risk getting an injury.’ ”

But Ortiz was furious when Valentine said in a postseason TV interview that the slugger “decided not to play anymore” because the Red Sox had given up on the season.

“What was written in the papers was that I said David quit playing. I never used the word ‘quit,’ ” says Valentine.

Beset by injuries and discord, the Sox finished 69-93, their worst record in 47 years.

“It wasn’t even a good A roster,” says Valentine.

It’s been quite a journey

Still, Valentine says he enjoyed life in Boston.

“The people of Boston are spectacular,” he says. “I never got a boo at the ballpark. I mean, we should have, because it was a terrible, terrible, terrible team.”

Valentine’s life journey has been eclectic.

“My most famous thing is that I invented the wrap,” says the 40-year restaurateur, who put the ingredients of a club sandwich into a tortilla when his cheap toaster broke.

He has sung “My Girl” with the Temptations, carpooled to Shea Stadium with Tom Seaver, and watched a 5-year-old Patrick Mahomes — son of his best reliever with the Mets at the time — shag flies.

As a teenager, Valentine was a champion ballroom dancer and perhaps the greatest all-around high school athlete in Connecticut history. He was recruited by former Southern Cal football coach John McKay, who told him he would replace O.J. Simpson in the Trojans backfield.

While Valentine was at Southern Cal, a Dodger scout named Tommy Lasorda surreptitiously recruited him.

His roommate in college, in the minors, and with the Dodgers was Bill Buckner. Valentine calls it “tragic and unfair” how Buckner was forever haunted by his error in Game 6 of the 1986 .

Valentine’s own playing career was diminished by injuries. On May 15, 1973, he was playing center field instead of his usual shortstop position for the California Angels when Nolan Ryan tossed his first no-hitter.

Angels manager Bobby Winkles was superstitious and didn’t want to change anything, so he kept Valentine playing center field. Two days later, Valentine grotesquely fractured his leg crashing into a fence.

He was just 23 years old, hitting .300, and batting third in front of future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. But he would never be the same again. He became a utility player who wound up retiring at age 29. The last guy on the bench, he says.

“I have a crooked leg and I limp,” he says, the smile fading behind the mask. “So maybe I think about it all the time.”

But mostly he counts his blessings.

Valentine became the first American manager to win a title in the Japan leagues in 2005. He was so popular as manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines that there was a beer, a hamburger, and a street named after him.

He is writing an autobiography, and the production company he co-founded is producing Peter Farrelly’s next film, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” It’s about a guy who brought a case of beer to his buddies during the Vietnam War.

Valentine is also teaming up with Joe Torre as executive producers on a Turner Sports documentary about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

When Valentine told the late Lasorda he was thinking about running for mayor of Stamford, his longtime mentor said, “Why not?”

He is still undecided.

“Yeah, I might. I’m considering it,” he says. “It’s a real tough road to hoe because I don’t have the ground game, but I’m figuring it out. I wouldn’t do it unless I really thought I could win.”

Winning a championship in Japan ranks as one of the coolest things he’s ever done. The team scoops up the manager and tosses him skyward three times and catches him.

“It symbolizes what it takes to be a champion, and that is you need to have trust in teamwork,” says Valentine.

“The problem with the 2012 team was they didn’t trust me. Obviously. That was my problem and theirs.”

A huge victory for soccer fans, a huge setback for John Henry

Dan Shaughnessy

You’ll never walk alone.

This is the anthem for the Liverpool Football Club. It speaks to fans’ hopes when all seems lost. And defiance in the face of adversity.

Red Sox/Globe owner John Henry has found great riches and success as owner of Liverpool FC since 2010, but today he walks alone at Anfield in the wake of his role in a botched attempt to form a European Super League.

Plans for the elitist, money-grabbing league were unveiled Sunday night, triggering universal condemnation and galvanizing fans against the 12 owners who proposed the tone-deaf breakaway. In Liverpool, Henry endured a fan-driven pummeling 100 times rougher than what happened in Red Sox Nation after he traded Mookie Betts.

The Super League collapsed under the weight of its own greed less than 48 hours after it was introduced, and Henry posted an apology video hours later in which he said, “The project put forward was never going to stand without the support of the fans. No one ever thought differently in England. Over these 48 hours you were very clear that it would not stand. We heard you. I heard you.”

We don’t follow European soccer much on these pages, but Henry plays a critical role in the day-to-day joys and sorrows of sports fans. In his two decades as Red Sox owner, he has overseen the rebuilding of Fenway Park and delivered four World Series championships to a region that endured an 86- year title drought.

Owning the Red Sox involves routine criticism from fans and media because most New Englanders have an opinion about the ball club and we all think we could run it better than whoever happens to be in charge. It’s part of the charm and beauty of the Boston baseball experience. People care, and with that passion comes some occasional tough sledding.

You can count Henry’s Red Sox crises on one hand. There was ’s surprise resignation in 2005 when the young general manager left Fenway Park in a gorilla costume. At that time, Henry said, “Maybe I’m not fit to be the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox.” There was more noise when Henry fired popular manager Terry Francona after the chicken-and-beer collapse of 2011. That’s when he burst into the studios of 98.5 The Sports Hub, unannounced, and complained of a “media riot.” Most recently, the salary- dump dealing of Betts and 2020′s last-place finish put Henry behind the 8-ball and drove him deeper from the public eye. He has not taken questions from independent Boston baseball media in 14 months.

None of those Hub hardball dustups could have prepared him for what just happened across the pond. This was Henry’s Bay of Pigs moment. After launching their surprise takeover, Henry and his Super League co- conspirators were pounded relentlessly by virtually every media outlet and soccer fan group in Europe and North America.

The New York Times characterized blowback over the proposed league as “a great torrent of caustic condemnations, each one flecked with scarcely concealed rage.” Corporate sponsors threatened to withdraw support, and Henry’s own Liverpool players and coach ripped the proposal, noting that none of them were consulted before the announcement.

Henry was caught in a landslide of outrage that made my occasional Red Sox critiques in the Globe sound like a Channel 4 postgame show after a Patriots win.

A sampling:

▪ The UK-based Football Supporters Association stated, “The motivation behind this so-called super league is not furthering sporting merit or nurturing the world’s game — it is motivated by nothing but cynical greed. This competition is being created behind our backs by billionaire club owners who have zero regard for the game’s traditions and continue to treat football as their personal fiefdom.”

▪ Aleksander Ceferin, president of UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, called the prospective Super League’s owners “snakes” and “liars” and characterized the plan as the equivalent of “spitting in football fans’ faces.”

▪ Retired star footballer and Sky Sports commentator Jamie Carragher, who grew up in Liverpool, said, “I actually think the situation with Liverpool’s owners is that I don’t see how they can continue … I don’t see a future for the ownership of FSG at Liverpool on the back of this … This will never be forgotten. I think the best thing for them would be to find a new buyer. I think it will be a very difficult for them to have any sort of relationship with Liverpool supporters and the club going forward.”

▪ Former Liverpool captain Graeme Souness told Sky Sports, “Certainly with Liverpool, and I can talk with some authority there, I think it’s impossible for those guys to turn up at Anfield ever again. Will they run the club from the other side of the Atlantic? Possibly they’ll hang on to it but they are only custodians.

“This is a monumental time in our game, if you ask anyone in the street they will talk about money spoiling our game, and this was taking it to another level completely. The secrecy and deceit shown by these people goes beyond the pale and I think it’s going to be very hard for them to start again.”

▪ Michael LaVigne, a Boston public high school and collegiate soccer coach for more than 45 years (25 years with Boston College women’s soccer) and a Liverpool fan since 1973, said, “In their blind greed and arrogance these owners have lost sight of the real power in the world of football. The real power lies with the supporters and fans of the clubs — the people! These current owners are only caretakers of great histories and traditions.

“Announcing the formation of this new league as the world is beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel of this pandemic was a slap in the face to the billions of people who put their hopes in a return to normalcy exemplified by returning to the stadiums of their beloved teams.

“This move was one of the worst examples of hubris and bad manners. And now the bad-manners surcharge is being applied and they are finding out where the real power lies.”

So there. It’s over. Order is restored to the futbol universe. And John Henry walks alone on a pitch where nobility, honor, and tradition defeated greed and power by a score of approximately one million to nil.

* The Boston Herald

Red Sox lose to Blue Jays as the Garrett Richards experiment still isn’t working

Jason Mastrodonato

If Garrett Richards could’ve gotten just one of those erratic fastballs in the strike zone, the Red Sox might’ve come away with a different result on Wednesday night.

Unfortunately, Richards looks totally lost on the mound this year.

To say he was erratic would be an understatement. A map of his scattered pitches on the night looks similar to a Georges Seurat painting: dots everywhere.

Richards hit one batter, spiked a fastball about 40 feet in front of him, threw another to the backstop, walked six more and ended the night with 48 strikes on 92 pitches as the Red Sox lost to the Blue Jays, 6-3.

“I was just kind of fighting my delivery the whole night,” Richards said.

That the Jays somehow managed just four runs off him is a minor miracle in itself. He allowed just four hits in 4-2/3 innings, three of them singles, but the constant foot traffic and seven men he put on base for free are what cost him.

Manager Alex Cora has continued to express confidence in Richards and said he will stay in the starting rotation.

“We’ve got to find a way to throw the slider for strikes,” Cora said. “He’s been very inconsistent with it, even in spring training, that’s something we have to work and try to find it.”

When Richards was signed to a one-year, $10-million contract with an option for 2022, the Red Sox knew they had a bit of a project on their hands. He entered the year with less than 200 innings combined over the previous five seasons. But with his high-90s fastball and sweeping slider, they figured it was a project worth working on.

Through four starts, Richards has been painful to watch. He’s thrown 16 2/3 innings and allowed 14 runs (12 earned) while walking 13 batters and striking out 12.

Of his 321 pitches, only 58% of them have been thrown for strikes, well below the MLB average of 63%.

“I’m throwing a lot more curveballs now so I feel like throwing two breaking balls isn’t the easiest thing to do,” Richards said. “So in a way I feel like maybe my curveball has taken a little bit of feel away from my slider. But that’s work that needs to be done in between starts.”

His stuff is plenty good enough, as evident by a few ridiculous swings generated by Blue Jays batters on pitches that weren’t even close to the strike zone. Several times they had checked swings called strikes on balls in the dirt.

But Richards is so wild that when he does come into the zone, it’s rarely painted on the corners. He hung a few breaking balls, including one to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for an RBI single in the first inning.

Richards’ release point was so off that at one point in the second inning, he threw a fastball into the ground right in front of him.

When runners were on base, Richards looked unsettled. He made three consecutive throws to first to check on Marcus Semien, hitting Semien in the foot on one of them. Then he stood there motionless, looking straight at the catcher while Semien took off and stole second base easily.

“Definitely didn’t get lost behind me,” Richards said. “I was varying my holds, which is one thing I’m good at. I’ve got a good pickoff move and I vary my holds and my timing as part of controlling the running game. Honestly, the stars just kind of aligned right there where he took off at the right moment and I was getting ready to go to the plate.

“I feel like, mentally, I would have balked if I tried to step off at that point. I was getting ready to go. So it just happened to line up perfectly. It doesn’t happen often, but it did that time.”

Later in the inning, all Richards had to do was throw a strike to the Jays’ nine-hitter, , who was in an 0-for-21 stretch. But Richards walked him on four pitches, and Jansen later came around to score.

All four runs allowed by Richards were scored in the first or second inning. It’s been a common theme this year, as he’s allowed 11 of his 14 runs to score in the first two innings.

He’s constantly putting the Red Sox in a hole, and they’re now 1-3 when he starts and 11-4 with anybody else on the mound.

A few other takeaways:

1. Alex Verdugo had an off-night on defense. With Richards struggling, it looked like Verdugo tried to make something out of nothing on a routine sacrifice fly hit to about normal depth in right field. With the speedy Semien at third base, Verdugo had no shot to get him at home, but fired up a bullet anyways. It allowed the trail runner to take third base easily, and he scored on a groundout two batters later. Then in the ninth inning, Verdugo botched a bouncing single and let it bounce off his leg while the runners advanced.

2. Xander Bogaerts hit a 1-2 breaking ball near his ankles into the Green Monster seats to cut the Jays’ lead to 4-3 in the eighth. He’s liking the ball inside right now. It was his second homer in as many nights after going his first 15 games of the season without one.

3. Josh Taylor blew it in a key spot. With the Sox down just one run entering the ninth, Taylor coughed up two more runs (including one on the Verdugo mistake) to give Toronto a cushion. After missing the entire 2020 season, Taylor has a 10.80 ERA in 6 2/3 innings this year.

John Henry’s American vision for European Super League a total disaster

Jason Mastrodonato

John Henry listened to his people at last.

Like any good ruler, he made a decision he thought would benefit those he was responsible for. They quickly told him how they felt. Within 48 hours, he changed his mind.

Let’s remember that key factoid as we spend the remainder of this column, and this week, disgusted by Henry and his fellow American owners in the English Premier League for learning a hard lesson that taking as much as you can, whether or not you have the power to take it, isn’t always the best course of action.

Here’s the thing: It’s worked for them in the past.

In America, taking everything you can is often just good business. It’s just capitalism. It’s just the way it works.

When’s the last time the Red Sox made a business decision, only to hear complaints from their fanbase, listen to them and change their minds?

I’ll wait.

And yet within the last 12 months, Henry’s Liverpool Football Club has twice succumbed to public pressure and went the other way.

Last April, Liverpool FC announced it was going to furlough some of their staff and rely on British government funding to pay for 80% of the wages of about 200 employees. Liverpool was eligible to receive the funding, so the club decided to take it.

Almost immediately, the fiery outrage of the fanbase made its way to Henry’s ears. Even LFC’s former longtime captain, Jamie Carragher, publicly denounced the decision.

Shortly thereafter, Liverpool’s then-chief executive officer Peter Moore issued a statement apologizing for the team’s decision and announcing that it would no longer be asking the government for funding.

The damage was done to their public image, but at least the British taxpayers didn’t end up paying for the wages of Henry’s employees.

Meanwhile, in the , all five of the Red Sox’ minor league teams received money from the government’s paycheck protection program. And in the big leagues, the Red Sox announced pay cuts for everybody in the organization making more than $50,000. But, they touted, there wouldn’t be any layoffs through at least September.

Then September came and the Red Sox laid off 10% of their employees.

The fanbase is still here. The team is back in first place. All seems well.

In Europe, it’s a different story.

Henry was part of one of the three American ownership groups, along with those from Arsenal and Manchester United, who were said to be key pioneers in the creation of the European Super League, or if you’d rather call it, “The Money Grab Tournament.”

To summarize, for those who haven’t been paying attention, the ESL was supposed to be an in-season tournament for 12 of the richest teams in Europe. The problem is, unlike every other soccer competition in Europe, there was no barrier to entry.

Every year, the same 12 teams would compete. Because they’re 12 of the most notable teams in the world, the rights to broadcast those games, along with incredible ticket sales, would net those 12 teams loads of money.

It’s sort of like if the Red Sox decided they’d play all 162 games during the regular season, but in October, they’d be playing in a tournament with the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, Mets, Cardinals and Phillies. Regardless of who performed well that year, the eight richest teams would play in their own postseason format.

Even in America, one has to think that such a ridiculous concept would be revolted against.

Soccer lovers in Europe sure didn’t like it. Fans of the very teams who would’ve gained access to the exclusive tournament were outraged. Liverpool’s fans were burning things in the streets and graffitiing banners hanging from their stadium.

Liverpool’s star manager, Jürgen Klopp, seemed agitated as he was left to answer for Henry’s decisions. One can imagine the trust lost there, and the cost of that loss.

Carragher, the Reds former captain, once again spoke publicly with bold comments about , saying, “I don’t see how they can continue … I think it will be very difficult for them to have any sort of relationship with Liverpool supporters and the club going forward.”

Imagine if David Ortiz or Dustin Pedroia went on national television to not only splatter one of Henry’s plans for the Red Sox, but go as far as to say Henry could no longer continue as the team’s owner.

It was a greedy and, it turns out, stupid decision.

Why else would Liverpool, already a giant business success, having won the Champions League and the Premier League since Henry’s group bought the team, need to do something like this?

Henry eventually apologized, took all the blame and Liverpool withdrew from the ESL.

In Europe, tradition, common sense and the spirit of fair competition were victorious.

At least Henry was smart enough to change his mind.

* MassLive.com

Garrett Richards walks 6 batters as Boston Red Sox lose to Blue Jays, 6-3; Xander Bogaerts homers in second straight game

Chris Cotillo

BOSTON -- Nearly half of the 92 pitches Garrett Richards threw to Blue Jays hitters Wednesday night were balls. That’s usually not a recipe for success.

Richards walked six Jays, hit another and allowed four earned runs in 4 ⅔ innings as the Red Sox lost to Toronto, 6-3. The teams split their two-game series at Fenway Park and the Red Sox fell to 12-7 on the season.

Richards, who settled down after a disastrous club debut to post back-to-back solid outings on the team’s road trip to Baltimore and Minnesota, struggled with command from the start, walking Cavan Biggio to lead off the game before hitting Bo Bichette with a pitch. Vladimir Guerrero put the Jays up 1-0, driving in Biggio with an RBI single.

Toronto tagged Richards for three more runs in the second, with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (sacrifice fly), Biggio (RBI groundout) and Bichette (RBI single) driving in runs. Though Richards settled down and avoided more damage, he issued his most walks in a start since he walked seven on Sept. 2, 2013, when he was with the Angels.

Just 48 of Richards’ 92 pitches (52.2%) were strikes and he threw 66 fastballs (72% of his pitches) in his outing. The righty’s ERA now stands at 6.48 through four starts.

The Red Sox chipped away at the Jays despite a slow offensive start, plating their first run when J.D. Martinez doubled and Rafael Devers drove him in on a groundout in the fifth. In the seventh, Kiké Hernández drove in Marwin Gonzalez -- who had doubles in back-to-back innings -- to make it 4-2. Xander Bogaerts hit his second in as many nights in the eighth inning to bring Boston within a run.

Boston threatened to tie the game later in the eighth, but Bobby Dalbec grounded out to end the inning with two men in scoring position. The Jays then piled on two insurance runs against Josh Taylor in the ninth, taking a 6-3 lead on back-to-back RBI singles by and Randal Grichuk.

Christian Arroyo singled to lead off the ninth, but Toronto relievers and Anthony Castro retired the next three batters to secure the win.

Mariners up next

The Mariners will come to Fenway Park for a four-game series starting Thursday night. Here are the pitching probables:

Thursday, 7:10 p.m. -- RHP vs. RHP Nick Pivetta

Friday, 7:10 p.m. -- LHP vs. LHP Martín Pérez

Saturday, 1:10 p.m. -- RHP vs. RHP Nathan Eovaldi

Sunday, 1:10 p.m. -- TBD vs. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez

Boston Red Sox notebook: Christian Vázquez says this is the ‘best Matt Barnes’ he has ever seen, Josh Taylor’s struggles continue; Connor Wong on taxi squad

Chris Cotillo

BOSTON -- Christian Vázquez has caught Matt Barnes for nearly a decade, first teaming up with the 2011 first-round pick at High-A Salem in 2012. In all that time, the catcher has never seen the Red Sox’ de facto closer look as good as he has through the first three weeks of the 2021 season.

Barnes, now 30 and in his seventh major-league season, has been close to lights-out so far this year, allowing a single run on three hits while striking out 16 batters in nine innings. He’s 3-for-3 in save opportunities and has shown increased command of all his pitches compared to previous years.

“It’s electric,” Vázquez said Wednesday. “Electric fastball this year. I’ve seen, I think, the best Matt Barnes I’ve ever seen all my years with him.’

Barnes is a free agent after the year and could make himself a significant sum of money if he keeps up his dominance throughout the season. Advanced metrics show both his fastball (which he has thrown at an average velocity of 95.6 mph) and curveball are among the most effective pitches in baseball.

“Before, he had the best changeup in the organization. Now he has one of the best curveballs in the organization and the league,” Vázquez said. “He’s got electric stuff this year. He looks very good.”

Taylor’s struggles continue

Though Garrett Richards’ six-walk performance in Wednesday’s 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays made headlines, another Red Sox pitcher had an ugly night as well. Lefty reliever Josh Taylor pitched the ninth -- with Boston trailing, 4-3 -- and was tagged for two runs and three hits as Toronto added some insurance.

Taylor was one of Boston’s most effective relievers as a rookie in 2019, posting a 3.04 ERA and 62 strikeouts in 47 ⅓ innings. But the southpaw only pitched 9 ⅓ innings in 2020 due to a bout with COVID- 19 and shoulder tendinitis and is off to a horrendous start (10.80 ERA in 6 ⅔ innings) this season.

Taylor and Darwinzon Hernandez entered the year as Boston’s two top lefties in the bullpen but Taylor has minor-league options remaining, so it’s not out of the question that he’d get sent to Triple-A Worcester if his struggles continue. Righties Eduard Bazardo and Kevin McCarthy and lefty Stephen Gonsalves are potential replacements.

More Sox receive shots

Another group of Red Sox players and coaches received their COVID-19 vaccines before Wednesday’s game, manager Alex Cora said. The first wave of participants received their shots after Monday’s game.

Cora received his second dose Wednesday and said the Red Sox still aren’t certain that 85% of their players and coaches will get vaccinated. The club is monitoring players for potential side effects that could hold them out of game action this week.

“That’s something that has been happening throughout the league and we know that’s something that might happen,” Cora said.

Renfroe off as struggles continue

Outfielder didn’t play in Wednesday’s loss with righty on the mound for Toronto. Renfroe has gotten off to a dismal start this season, batting .171 (7-for-41) with a double, a homer and a .486 OPS.

Since homering against the Twins on April 13, Renfroe is 3-for-18 with three singles and seven strikeouts. Cora believes his mechanics are out of whack.

“He was down there working with (hitting coaches Tim Hyers and Pete Fatse) today. Just out in front,” Cora said. “He’s a little bit off balance, kind of like lunging toward the ball. That’s why, you see those pitches outside… he probably feels like they’re way off and they’re actually good pitches. It’s something that we saw last year with the Rays. He was in such a good place in spring training. We feel like we can get him back to do that again.”

Wong on taxi squad

Catching prospect Connor Wong is with the Red Sox in Boston as a member of the club’s taxi squad, according to Joe McDonald of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Wong, who is on the alternate site roster in Worcester, is the only player working out with the Red Sox, as big-league teams are allowed to have an extra catcher on hand while at home.

Boston can carry up to five players -- including one catcher -- on its road taxi squad. The Red Sox leave for their next road trip Sunday night, heading out to face the Mets and Rangers on a six-game, seven-day trip.

Mariners up next

The Red Sox will finish off their longest homestand of the season with a four-game series against the surprising Mariners, who are off to an 11-7 start. Here are the pitching probables:

Thursday, 7:10 p.m. -- RHP Justin Dunn vs. RHP Nick Pivetta

Friday, 7:10 p.m. -- LHP Yusei Kikuchi vs. LHP Martín Pérez

Saturday, 1:10 p.m. -- RHP Chris Flexen vs. RHP Nathan Eovaldi

Sunday, 1:10 p.m. -- TBD vs. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez

Boston Red Sox lineup: Garrett Richards on mound in finale vs. Blue Jays; Marwin Gonzalez at second base against righty starter

Chris Cotillo

BOSTON -- Rafael Devers and Alex Verdugo return to the Red Sox’ lineup -- weather-permitting -- as Boston tries to sweep the Blue Jays in the finale of a two-game series at Fenway Park on Wednesday evening.

Devers and Verdugo were both out of Tuesday’s lineup against Jays lefty Hyun Jin Ryu. Verdugo will start in left field while Kiké Hernández (center field) and Franchy Cordero (right field) are also in the lineup against Jays righty Trent Thornton.

Marwin Gonzalez is starting at second base and batting seventh while Christian Arroyo sits. Bobby Dalbec is starting at first base.

Righty Garrett Richards will look to post his third solid start after striking out four and giving up two unearned runs in Thursday’s loss to the Twins. On the season, Richards owns a 6.00 ERA in 12 innings.

The Red Sox won the series opener, 4-2, on Monday night behind Xander Bogaerts’ first homer of the season and another strong start from Eduardo Rodriguez. Starting Thursday, they’ll welcome the Mariners to town for a four-game series to conclude the longest homestand of the season.

Toronto Blue Jays (7-10) vs. Boston Red Sox (12-6) · Fenway Park · Boston, MA FIRST PITCH: 7:10 p.m. ET

TV CHANNEL: NESN

LIVE STREAM: NESN | fuboTV - If you have cable and live in the New England TV market, you can use your login credentials to watch via NESN on mobile and WiFi-enabled devices. If you don’t have cable, you can watch the game via fuboTV, in New England | MLB.tv (subscription required)

RADIO: WEEI 93.7 FM

PITCHING PROBABLES: RHP Trent Thornton (0-0, 2.35 ERA) vs. RHP Garrett Richards (0-1, 6.00 ERA)

RED SOX LINEUP:

1. CF Kiké Hernández

2. RF Alex Verdugo

3. DH J.D. Martinez

4. SS Xander Bogaerts

5. 3B Rafael Devers

6. C Christian Vázquez

7. 2B Marwin Gonzalez

8. 1B Bobby Dalbec

9. LF Franchy Cordero

BLUE JAYS LINEUP:

1. 3B Cavan Biggio

2. SS Bo Bichette

3. 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

4. DH Rowdy Tellez

5. CF Randal Grichuk

6. 2B Marcus Semien

7. RF Josh Palacios

8. LF Lourdes Gurriel Jr.

9. C Danny Jansen

Boston Red Sox rain delay: Wednesday’s game against Blue Jays to begin at 7:40 p.m.

Chris Cotillo

BOSTON -- Wednesday’s Red Sox-Blue Jays game is in a rain delay and will start at approximately 7:40 p.m., according to the team. The tarp is off the field at Fenway Park and the teams are warming up for the start of the game.

Rain in the Fenway area meant the two teams could not start on time at 7:10 p.m. The Red Sox have already had two home games postponed due to rain this season but it appears they’ll play Wednesday’s series finale against Toronto.

Garrett Richards will make his fourth start of the season for the Red Sox opposite righty Trent Thornton as Boston looks to finish off a quick two-game sweep of the Blue Jays. Boston won the opener, 4-2, behind six strong innings from lefty Eduardo Rodriguez and a three-run home run from Xander Bogaerts.

Here are the lineups For Wednesday’s matchup:

RED SOX LINEUP:

1. CF Kiké Hernández

2. RF Alex Verdugo

3. DH J.D. Martinez

4. SS Xander Bogaerts

5. 3B Rafael Devers

6. C Christian Vázquez

7. 2B Marwin Gonzalez

8. 1B Bobby Dalbec

9. LF Franchy Cordero

BLUE JAYS LINEUP:

1. 3B Cavan Biggio

2. SS Bo Bichette

3. 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

4. DH Rowdy Tellez

5. CF Randal Grichuk

6. 2B Marcus Semien

7. RF Josh Palacios

8. LF Lourdes Gurriel Jr.

9. C Danny Jansen

PITCHING PROBABLES: RHP Trent Thornton (0-0, 2.35 ERA) vs. RHP Garrett Richards (0-1, 6.00 ERA)

Boston Red Sox weather: Will Wednesday’s game against Blue Jays be played or rained out?

Christopher Smith

The Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays are scheduled to play at 7:10 p.m. Wednesday at Fenway Park. But some wet weather is in the forecast.

“It doesn’t look like 11:30 (a.m.) when I was with the kids on the playground. I’ll tell you that,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said pregame when asked about tonight’s forecast. “We’ve got to wait and see. We’re waiting to see if we’re going to hit (batting practice) outside. But as of now, we feel like we’re going to play the game.”

The National Weather Service reports about tonight’s weather in the Fenway area, “Showers and possibly a thunderstorm before 11pm, then a slight chance of showers between 11pm and midnight. Low around 34. West wind 14 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.”

There is a 67% precipitation potential chance at 7 p.m. It drops to 55% at 8 p.m., 52% at 9 p.m., 42% at 10 p.m. and 15% at 11 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

Right-hander Garrett Richards (0-0, 6.00 ERA) is scheduled to pitch for the Red Sox opposite Blue Jays righty Trent Thornton (0-0, 2.35 ERA).

Boston and Toronto are playing the second game of a quick two-game series at Fenway. The Red Sox (11- 6) won 4-2 on Tuesday night behind 6 strong innings from starter Eduardo Rodriguez and Xander Bogaerts’ three-run home run.

Boston Red Sox won’t move on from Garrett Richards anytime soon, even if he’s erratic and Tanner Houck is knocking

Chris Cotillo

BOSTON -- No, the Red Sox aren’t considering moving on from Garrett Richards anytime soon, even if Tanner Houck seems to be knocking on the door of a rotation spot.

Though two of Richards’ (0-2, 6.48 ERA) first four starts with the Red Sox have been brutal and Houck has a 1.98 ERA in 27 ⅓ major-league innings dating back to September, Boston isn’t in any rush to make a switch. Simply put, the Red Sox have a lot more to lose if they cut bait with Richards -- one of Chaim Bloom’s most significant off-season additions -- than they do by keep Houck in the minors for the time being.

That leash might shorten a bit with outings like Wednesday’s, as Richards walked six Blue Jays and hit another in 4 ⅔ innings, taking the loss in a 6-3 Red Sox defeat. But considering it’s April 21, expect the club to give Richards a long look in the rotation before putting him in the bullpen or looking for ways to remove him from the roster.

A lot of it comes down to logistics and roster rules. First comes the issue of money, as Richards is guaranteed $10 million -- the highest average annual salary the Sox gave to any free agent this winter -- no matter if the Red Sox cut him before his next start or let him pitch 30 more times. Any player with more than five years of service time can’t be sent to the minors without his consent; Richards has more than eight years under his belt and almost certainly would elect free agency while still collecting his entire salary from the Red Sox.

Houck, on the other hand, can be yo-yoed back and forth between Boston and Worcester exactly the way the Red Sox have done to start the season. It was pretty telling that, despite the righty’s major-league success, the club never really considered putting him in the rotation over Nick Pivetta during spring training. Now, it’s clear club decision-makers view Houck as the team’s sixth-best starter and genuinely feel like -- as a pitcher who is almost entirely reliant on two pitches -- he’s not enough of a finished product to stay in the majors. Bloom and manager Alex Cora have repeatedly lauded the team’s pitching depth as a major strength and having Houck at the ready in case of an injury to a big-league starter is a luxury the Red Sox aren’t taking for granted.

Richards’ erratic outing Wednesday against the Jays will only make the calls for a Houck promotion louder. Though he held Toronto to four runs and kept the Red Sox in the game, Richards had virtually no command and threw 44 of his 92 pitches (47.8%) for balls. The righty relied heavily on his fastball, throwing it 76% of the time, but he couldn’t throw his slider or curveball for strikes, either.

“I just think the delivery was off a little bit tonight,” Richards said. “I was kind of fighting it the whole night. And then obviously, couldn’t get my release point under control. Just kind of a combination of things. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Richards’ rough debut against the O’s has hung over him for weeks, making it easy to forget he was pretty good in two starts on Boston’s road trip to Baltimore and Minneapolis. At Camden Yards, Richards held the Orioles to two runs on three hits in a 6-4 win, with virtually all of Baltimore’s damage coming on back- to-back homers by Trey Mancini and Anthony Santander in the first inning. Against the Twins, Richards struck out four in five innings, allowing two unearned runs in an eventual 4-3 loss.

That’s two pretty good outings sandwiched in between two rough ones. Also working against Richards is the fact Boston’s other four starters (Nathan Eovaldi, Eduardo Rodriguez, Martín Pérez and Nick Pivetta) have combined for a 8-2 record and 3.84 ERA in 13 combined outings.

“It’s not something I’m super concerned with,” Richards said. “Obviously, I want to do better and pitch better. It’s a constant grind. Throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things.”

For Richards, an Oklahoma native who spent the first 12 years of his professional career with the Angels and Padres, the April weather in Boston is undoubtedly having an impact. Wednesday’s game was delayed 31 minutes due to rain and the temperature dropped into the low 40s during the early innings.

“I didn’t even pack a jacket for a season until this year,” Richards said. “I’m going on my ninth, almost 10th year. It’s something different but it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with. I’ve just got to make adjustments. I’m not making excuses. I’ve got to figure out a way to get it done.”

Richards’ next outing is expected to be Tuesday night at Citi Field against the Mets. Between now and then, he has plenty to work on, with fine-tuning his slider right at the top of the list.

“He can work on it in between starts,” Cora said. “He’s an established big-leaguer with a track record. He has been working on it but we have to find it. We have to find that pitch. It’s hard to maneuver a big-league lineup with one pitch. It seems like it has been that way during the season. If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball good, we’re going to have the guy we envisioned before the season.”

George Floyd murder trial: Red Sox manager Alex Cora hopes Tuesday’s verdict is beginning of change and athletes will stay active pursuing it

Matt Vautour

After Tuesday’s 4-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, Red Sox manager Alex Cora was asked about his reaction to Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin being found guilty on all charges in the George Floyd murder trial in Minnesota.

The verdict had come down while the Red Sox were already in game mode, Cora, who had just come off the field, requested to push his answer to Wednesday’s pregame. He’d spent most of the hours before the game Wednesday going through the process of determining that his positive COVID-19 test was actually a false positive.

Queried again Wednesday, the Red Sox manager’s tone was optimistic.

“It’s more about accountability. I hope that we all understand as a society that if you don’t do things right, you’ve got to pay the price,” Cora said. “Hopefully, this means that there is a change in society and this is the beginning of something. It was a huge day yesterday. Hopefully, from now on we understand that’s the way things are going to go.”

The verdict came five days after Major League Baseball’s celebration of Jackie Robinson Day, a celebration of how valuable Robinson was to civil rights. But it was also a reminder of the impact sports can make on social issues.

Athletes across all sports were vocal about Floyd, racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement. After saying “Hopefully this is the beginning of something,” Cora was asked his thoughts on what the role of athletes and sports could be in what comes next. He hoped athletes would use their platform and society as a whole would keep the discussion active.

“We’re in a stage right now, I do believe, that the more we talk about issues, the better we are as a society. Our young people are more willing to do that than when I grew up. I think that’s awesome,” he said. “Right now I’m the only guy talking to the media about this from the Boston Red Sox organization. I understand that. But at the same time, I don’t have to limit my platform to team spokesman. I can be a regular human being in the barbershop, although I haven’t been in the barbershop in years, to talk about issues that impact our lives. I think it’s refreshing that we live in a society where people are willing to do it.

“Having a daughter that is going to college, she’s very lucky to be living in a society like that,” Cora continued. “Do we have to get better? Of course, we have to get better, no doubt about it. In every aspect. But the fact they’re willing (to talk about it) and they can do it, is a great step.”

Kumar Rocker to Boston Red Sox? MLB Pipeline’s latest 2021 mock draft has Vanderbilt righty projected to go fourth overall

Christopher Smith

Could Vanderbilt right-hander Kumar Rocker fall to the Boston Red Sox who own the No. 4 pick in the 2021 MLB Draft?

MLB Pipeline draft experts Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo project the Red Sox to draft Rocker with the fourth overall pick in their latest mock draft. They named their top 20 amateur prospects on the Pipeline Podcast and will publish a more extensive Top 150 list later this week.

Mayo wrote, “No way I was going to let Rocker go further than this, not with that ridiculous fastball-slider combination that comes from his intimidating 6-foot-5 frame.”

Why has Rocker, who once was projected to go No. 1, dropped?

Vanderbilt teammate Jack Leiter — who Mayo and Callis project as the No. 1 pick — has pitched better than everyone in college this spring. Leiter is 7-0 with a 0.98 ERA (55 ⅓ innings, six earned runs) in nine starts. The righty, who turned 21 today (Wednesday), has 94 strikeouts and 22 walks (averaging 15.3 strikeouts and 3.6 walks per nine innings). He has allowed just five extra-base hits (four homers, one double).

Rocker, who turned 21 in November, isn’t too far behind statistically though. The righty is 8-1 with a 1.64 ERA (55 innings, 10 earned runs) in nine starts this season. He has 81 strikeouts and 15 walks (13.3 strikeouts, 2.5 walks per nine innings). He has allowed 13 extra-base hits (three homers, 10 doubles).

The 2021 Draft isn’t until July 11. So a lot can change. It wouldn’t be surprising if Leiter and Rocker went Nos. 1 and 2 overall. Rocker also still could go No. 1 overall. There’s plenty of time for these projections to change.

Mayo and Callis have two high school shortstops going second and third overall. They project Jordan Lawlar to go No. 2 to the Rangers and Marcelo Mayer No. 3 to the Tigers.

Keith Law’s latest MLB mock draft in The Athletic has Leiter going No. 1, Lawlar No. 2, Rocker No. 3 and Louisville catcher Henry Davis No. 4 to the Red Sox.

Boston Red Sox vs. preview: TV schedule, pitching probables, key stories (April 22- 25)

Christopher Smith

The Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners will play a four-game series at Fenway Park, starting Thursday evening.

Boston and Seattle didn’t play in 2020 because of COVID regionalizing the schedule. The Red Sox won four of seven games against the Mariners in 2019 and outscored them 58-42.

Both teams are off to surprising starts. Boston (12-7) is in first place in the AL East, two games ahead of Tampa Bay entering play Thursday. Seattle (11-7) is in second place in the AL West, just a half game behind Oakland.

The Red Sox lead all American League teams with a +27 run differential. Seattle has a -3 run differential. Boston trails only the Dodgers (+38) for run differential.

Boston Red Sox (12-7) vs. Seattle Mariners (11-7) · Fenway Park, Boston, Mass. SERIES SCHEDULE (and TV information):

Thursday, April 22, 7:10 p.m. — NESN, MLB Network

Friday, April 23, 7:10 p.m. — NESN

Saturday, April 24, 1:10 p.m. — NESN, MLB Network

Sunday, April 25, 1:10 p.m. — NESN, MLB Network

HOW TO WATCH:

Thursday April 22, 7:10 p.m. — NESN (Channel finder: Comcast Xfinity, Verizon Fios, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV, Dish, AT&T U verse, fuboTV and Sling) · Live stream: fuboTV, MLB.tv (out of market)

Friday, April 23, 7:10 p.m. — NESN (Channel finder: Comcast Xfinity, Verizon Fios, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV, Dish, AT&T U verse, fuboTV and Sling) · Live stream: fuboTV, MLB.tv (out of market)

Saturday, April 24,, 1:10 p.m. — NESN (Channel finder: Comcast Xfinity, Verizon Fios, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV, Dish, AT&T U verse, fuboTV and Sling) · Live stream: fuboTV, MLB.tv (out of market)

Sunday, April 25, 1:10 p.m. — NESN (Channel finder: Comcast Xfinity, Verizon Fios, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV, Dish, AT&T U verse, fuboTV and Sling) · Live stream: fuboTV, MLB.tv (out of market)

KNOW YOUR OPPONENT:

Baseball Prospectus’ 2021 PECOTA projections had the Mariners predicted to finish fourth out of five teams in the AL West with 74.5 wins. But Seattle has started well. It enters this series with an 11-7 record.

Righty Justin Dunn (1-0, 3.72) will pitch against the Red Sox in the opener Thursday. Dunn pitched at Boston College and was the 19th overall pick in the 2016 MLB Draft.

The Mariners just got 2020 AL Rookie of the Year back from the IL He slashed .262/.364/.437/.800 with 11 homers, three doubles, 28 RBIs and 37 runs in 58 games.

PITCHING PROBABLES:

Thursday, 7:10 p.m. — RHP Nick Pivetta (2-0, 3.68) vs. RHP Justin Dunn (1-0, 3.72)

Friday, 7:10 p.m. — LHP Martín Pérez (0-1, 5.93) vs. LHP Yusei Kikuchi (0-0, 4.74)

Saturday, 1:10 p.m. — RHP Nathan Eovaldi (3-1, 3.04) vs. RHP Chris Flexen (1-1, 3.38)

Sunday, 1:10 p.m. — Eduardo Rodriguez (2-0, 3.60) vs. TBD

THREE SOX TO WATCH:

1. Nick Pivetta

Pivetta again struggled with his command in his last start (four walks in 3 ⅔ innings against the White Sox). He has 11 walks in 14 ⅔ innings (6.8 walks per nine innings). He’s 4-0 with a 2.92 ERA in five starts for Boston since being acquired last August. But he has 16 walks in 24 ⅔ innings.

2. Martín Pérez

Seattle’s is 18-for-55 (.327) with four homers and one double against Pérez while has gone 7-for-21 (.333) with two doubles against him. Pérez needs a good start. He has allowed nine earned runs, 16 hits and five walks in 13 ⅔ innings. Seattle has struggled against lefties (.175 batting average).

3. Franchy Cordero

Cordero should receive at least two starts this series with right-handers starting pitchers going Thursday and Saturday for the Mariners. Cordero has power, but he hasn’t provided much (just two doubles) in 15 games. He also has struck out 18 times in 38 at-bats (42.9%).

SERIES NOTES:

Mitch Haniger has been Seattle’s best hitter. Haniger is batting .315 with a .333 on-base percentage, .575 slugging percentage, .909 OPS, four homers, five doubles, one triple, 13 runs and 14 RBIs in 18 games (73 at-bats).

Ty France has a .306/.405/.516/.922 line with three homers, four doubles, 13 runs and 10 RBIs in 18 games (62 at-bats).

Haniger and France are the only two Blue Jays hitters batting over .250.

The Mariners bullpen has been one of the best in baseball. Seattle relievers have combined for a 2.69 ERA and 1.07 WHIP. They have held the opposition to a .176 batting average.

Mariners hitting are slashing only .175/.279/.304/.583 in 171 at-bats against lefties. The Red Sox have two lefties, Martín Pérez and Eduardo Rodriguez, starting in this series.

Chris Flexen, who starts against the Red Sox on Saturday, has a 3.38 ERA and 2.90 FIP in three starts. But the opposition is batting .333 against him. He’s allowed 22 hits in 16 innings.

J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts both are 1-for-3 with a homer against Yusei Kikuchi, who starts Friday.

UP NEXT:

April 26: OFF DAY

April 27 — April 28: at New York Mets (2)

April 29 — May 2: at Texas Rangers (4)

April 3: OFF DAY

April 4 — April 6: vs. (3)

April 7 — April 10: at Baltimore (4)

What is the Super League, and why is Red Sox (and Liverpool) owner John Henry a soccer super villain now?

Nick O'Malley

While everything is currently great with the Boston Red Sox, the same can’t be said for one of John Henry’s other teams, Liverpool of the English Premier League.

Currently, Henry has been dealing with getting hounded by BBC reporters outside Fenway Park and releasing Twitter apologies to fans at 3 a.m. It’s all because of the European Super League debacle, which as of Wednesday appears to be crumbling before our eyes following an inferno of backlash from fans and players across European soccer.

So what is (or was) the Super League? It was a proposed competition that would include all the powerhouses of European soccer from different countries.

It’s hard to compare to American sports. But for baseball, it would be like if the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs and other big-money superpowers decided to join a league with the top Korean and Japanese league to start their own playoffs and World Series that they’d play for in addition to normal Major League Baseball. Smaller market teams would get a chance to play in, but the big-money teams would always have a seat in the would-be playoffs.

The teams who initially planned to become the founding members of that league were:

Henry’s Liverpool team, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur of the English Premier League

Atletico Madrid, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid of La Liga in Spain

AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus of Serie A in Italy

In the wake of the backlash, 10 of those 12 teams have since backed out, including Liverpool. Only Barcelona and Real Madrid remain, leaving the proposed league in a state of ruin.

The idea would be that the Super League would only have the best games between big-market teams all the time. For the most part, fans and players hated it. The national leagues hated it too, threatening to place sanctions on teams and players that participated in the Super League.

Here’s why: In this scenario, would the Cubs and Yankees still care about their games in the AL East, or would they go through the motions? Would it destroy the status of smaller market teams?

It’s not a perfect one-to-one comparison. But the point is that fans immediately started protesting the idea and directed their ire at the owners of the clubs who would benefit from the new league because of the bonkers TV deals that would inevitably come.

A big part of the narrative for the Super League was that it was promoted as an attempt to make an American-style sports league like the NFL or NBA that has parody and salary caps instead of the normal threat of relegation to lower leagues in Europe.

The attempt to form the Super League was advertised as “The best clubs. The best players. Every week.”

But in the fallout, the Super League has been perceived as a pure money grab with, the ire of the soccer world has fallen on billionaire owners -- particularly American owners -- drawing much of the blame.

Henry isn’t the only American to own a high-profile European soccer club. The Glazer Family, which owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, also owns Manchester United. Stan Kroenke, who moved the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles, owners Arsenal of the Premier League. Shahid Khan, who owns the Jaguars, also owns Fulham.

Henry’s Liverpool team was one of six English teams that were initially set to be included. The club has since backed out, with Henry apologizing. However, the damage has already been done.

* The Worcester Telegram

Red Sox catching prospect Connor Wong continues to make fine progress

Joe McDonald

WORCESTER — The levels of success Mookie Betts continues to have for the Los Angeles Dodgers infuriates Red Sox fans.

Trading the superstar outfielder in 2020 could haunt Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom for the remainder of his career in Boston. Or will it?

Only time will tell, but the return package of Connor Wong, Jeter Downs and Alex Verdugo has the potential to make a significant impact for the Red Sox. The sample size remains too small at this point, but the Mookie Three are making strides.

While Verdugo is in Boston, Wong and Downs have been participating in the Sox’ alternate camp at Polar Park this spring. In fact, the Red Sox recalled Wong Wednesday morning to be part of the taxi squad in Boston.

Despite being part of a controversial trade, Wong is only focused on his development, success and the impact he can have to help the Red Sox now and in the future.

“I’m just focused on trying to make myself as good as a player as I can be and hopefully help this team win some games in the future,” Wong said. “I’m keeping my nose down, working hard and hoping for the best.”

It’s never easy coming to a new team, or a new city as a young professional, but the Red Sox always handle the internal aspects professionally for their players. It didn’t take Wong long to learn that about his new employer when he arrived.

“It’s been a good transition. The guys here made it real easy,” Wong admitted. “It was tough coming over not knowing anyone besides Jeter and Verdugo. Everyone here has been very welcoming and great teammates, and that’s all you can ask for.”

He split time between the Red Sox alternate camp and Boston’s taxi squad last season and learned exactly what he needed to do from a personal standpoint to prepare for 2021. The work Wong did during the offseason is evident this spring. He’s quicker at the plate and behind it.

“A little more emphasis on speed than in years past,” he said. “Just trying to get the body realigned and ready to take on a full season again. Just trying to check off all the boxes and make sure I’m moving well and seeing how fast I could get. I thought I had a really good offseason, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming season.”

Wong is the definition of versatile. A natural-born infielder, he’s played every position during his career and only became a full-time catcher after the Dodgers selected him in the third round of the 2017 draft. His transition has been seamless due to his athleticism.

“It’s been really good,” he said. “Being able to take the time and really focus on one position, and really getting a lot of work in with () and the other coaches, too.”

There’s no better coach for a prospect than the legendary Red Sox catcher. No one prepared for a game, or a series, better than Varitek and Wong has been a sponge with all the knowledge and advice he’s receiving from No. 33.

“It’s great. He’s the man,” Wong said. “He gets it as a player. He’s also learning the new stuff and all of us are trying to buy into what we’re doing as a catching staff.”

Besides his versatility, fans will notice Wong’s receiving style is a bit unconventional. In recent seasons, many major league catchers have adopted the one-knee down approach. It’s trickled down into the developmental leagues, including within the Red Sox organization. That’s what Wong means when he says he learning “new stuff” from Varitek.

There are numerous reasons for the newly acquired adjustment to the catcher’s stance.

Case in point: Varitek’s body, especially his legs, took such a beating during his career, he would say he knew when he was healthy during the offseason because he could finally walk up and down the stairs with ease and no pain. The former Red Sox captain, and current game planning coordinator for manager Alex Cora, believes this relatively new catcher’s stance could help a player’s longevity.

Wong concurs.

“It’s come a long way,” he said of the new stance. “Since last year when we first started it, and being able to focus on one position, the more I do it, the more comfortable I get with it.”

Even before he arrived in the Red Sox organization, Wong already knew what Red Sox baseball meant to fans in New England. He played two seasons in the Cape Cod League, for Yarmouth-Dennis (2015) and Bourne (2016).

“Playing in that league for two years was a great experience,” he said. “Obviously, playing against some of the best players in college, and experiencing the weather, too, that was really cool; not many summers in Houston are that cool, so it was nice to get away from the heat.

“As far as the New England fan base, its just incredible. My two host families were huge Red Sox fans and Patriots fans – all the above. They really take pride in their sports up here, and it makes it fun as a player, knowing that you have a fan base that’s really interested in what you’re doing and backing you through the good times and the bad.”

Red Sox manager Alex Cora had a great line during spring training, saying Wong and Downs are going to make Bloom look smart after these two players make an impact in Boston.

We’ll just have to wait and seen. Meanwhile, their respective abilities will be on display in Worcester this season.

Meet owner : 'The toughest softie you’ll ever meet'

Bill Ballou

WORCESTER — He went to law school with Hillary Rodham before she added the Clinton, played basketball with Bill Bradley and for Bob Cousy, reinvented the art of building ballparks, dated Maria Shriver, helped the Red Sox end an 86-year World Series drought, worked on the Watergate hearings, survived two bouts with cancer and chaired .

Oh, and one more thing about Larry Lucchino.

When he was going to school in , he was the Cal Ripken of students, never missing a day of class from kindergarten through seventh grade. One day during the streak, everything was called off because of snow and Lucchino walked to his school just to make sure it really wasn’t open.

So here is Lucchino in his 76th year, on the threshold of ending a different streak, Worcester’s 117 years without Triple-A baseball.

This city was never really a secret to Lucchino, chairman and principal owner of the Worcester Red Sox.

His mentor was , the legendary lawyer — arguably the greatest of his era. Williams went to Holy Cross and remained closely connected to the school as benefactor, supporter and trustee throughout his life. Williams would take Lucchino up to Worcester with him to watch Gordie Lockbaum play football.

Lucchino’s baseball résumé includes stops in Baltimore, San Diego, Boston, Pawtucket and now Worcester. Along the way, Lucchino has stepped on some toes. Some detractors might say it was more like an amputation. Along that way, however, Lucchino has created a sense of loyalty among those who have worked for him and with, and that says something.

Roots in Pittsburgh

WooSox President Dr. Charles Steinberg is one of those loyalists.

“A high school classmate of his, Chuck Cohen, who I met at an Orioles dream week,” Steinberg recalled, “once said to me that Larry Lucchino is the toughest softie you’ll ever meet. It’s just that his passion comes through a narrow tube.”

It is fair to say that passion has its roots in Pittsburgh. That turned out to be a break for Worcester.

“Worcester is a city I’ve become very fond of,” Lucchino said, “because of the kind of city it is. It’s a polyglot, like Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh is writ larger than Worcester.” Worcester has also historically been industrial and blue-collar, just like the place where Lucchino grew up.

His roots are working-class, he said, but his dad, Dominic “Poochie” Lucchino, was not a steelworker. He owned a bar, owned a grocery store and clerked for a judge. Larry Lucchino, however, did work in a steel mill as a summer job, the famous 100 Inch Plate Mill.

“They used to call me the Princeton kid there,” Lucchino remembered. “Somebody would yell, ‘Hey, get that Princeton kid over here.' ”

Both of Lucchino’s parents were good athletes, his mother perhaps the better of the two.

“My father was a sandlot football player and a good golfer,” Lucchino recalled. “My mother was a great athlete.” Rose Lucchino was the Stasia Czernicki of Pittsburgh, an excellent bowler — although at tenpins — and a star shortstop on a women’s softball team.

The Lucchinos were a family of four, including older brother Frank, who also went into law and became a judge. They lived in the Greenfield section of Pittsburgh, not far from Schenley Park. That’s where the Pirates played at Forbes Field and Lucchino grew up as a fan, both of the Pirates and the ballpark. He remembers very well what he was doing on Oct. 13, 1960, when Bill Mazeroski homered over the left-field fence into Schenley Park to beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

“I was coming home from high school,” he said, “and had one of those little transistor radios pressed against my ear, was walking home and when Mazeroski homered I started screaming my ass off.”

Basketball before baseball

Lucchino excelled in both baseball and basketball at Taylor Allderdice High in Pittsburgh. He went from there to Princeton, where he chose basketball as his sport, sensing that the program was a budding dynasty.

Lucchino was a schoolboy when he first met Cousy at the latter’s Camp Graylag in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. Lucchino still refers to Cousy as “the GOAT point guard” and holds fond and vivid memories of attending the basketball camp.

“I was a camper, a counselor and an instructor,” Lucchino said. “He was the coach of the All-Camp team and I played point guard, so he was a lifetime hero of mine. I treasure the picture I have of us together at his camp when I was 13, maybe 14.”

Maybe if the Worcester team in the Polar Park negotiations had known about the Cousy connection early on, the whole thing might have gotten done in no time at all.

“Larry loves Bob Cousy,” City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. said. “When he speaks about him, it’s like in hushed tones.”

“Yes, Larry Lucchino was a Graylagger,” Cousy said, “but I didn’t really remember that until about 10 years ago. I’m a supporter of Dana-Farber so I get invited to their annual dinner, and Larry was the honoree one night. I knew of his association with the Red Sox and later that night, he came over and introduced himself and said he had been a Graylagger for three years, and did I remember him?

“I was embarrassed that I didn’t, but we ran a bunch of kids through it over the years. I am pleased to say that I’m reminded of it now on almost a monthly basis.”

Lucchino did not consult with Cousy ahead of time on the PawSox move but checked in with him after the deal was done.

“He told me something I’ve never forgotten,” Lucchino said, “that he had lived in Worcester for 70 years and nothing has been more exciting than the issue of Triple-A baseball moving here and building a ballpark.”

Point guard at Princeton

With his high school and Camp Graylag experience behind him, Lucchino headed for Princeton, where he was an off-the-bench point guard for three seasons. Lucchino was a sophomore in 1964-65 when the Tigers, coached by Butch van Breda Kolff and captained by future U.S. Sen. Bradley, beat Penn State, North Carolina State and Providence College to advance to the NCAA Final Four where they were eliminated by Michigan in the semifinals.

Next was and studying with future Secretary of State Clinton, among others. From there, Lucchino applied for work with Williams’ law firm in Washington, D.C.

Williams was, at the time, running the Washington Redskins but that’s not why Lucchino was looking to work for him. Pro sports was not on the to-do list.

“The move into sports was completely unintended,” Lucchino said. “I wanted to go to that firm because it was a great firm, and it was an honor to get an offer to go there. It was a litigating practice and I was very interested in that. Edward Bennett Williams was a mythical figure, but I certainly didn’t think it would lead to a career in professional sports. He first approached me about a Redskins piece of litigation and told me, ‘You played sports in college. You can figure these guys out.' ”

Williams bought the Orioles in August 1979 and assigned Lucchino to help run the franchise, all the while keeping him on the Redskins job. Steinberg preceded Lucchino in Baltimore, having begun as an intern keeping statistics for manager Earl Weaver.

When it came time to build a new ballpark, Lucchino met up with architect Janet Marie Smith. She, Steinberg and Lucchino have worked together ever since. At face value, it is an incongruous partnership — an architect, a dentist and an attorney, but they have collaborated in Baltimore, San Diego, Boston and now Worcester.

“Larry Lucchino is Earl Weaver in a suit,” Steinberg said. “Earl protected his players. He would tell them — ‘You can hit 3-run homers, or win 20 games, but I can’t do that. Let me get thrown out of the game.’ Larry is not just loyal, he is ferociously loyal to his employees, his friends. He will do anything within the rules to win. He’ll master the rules to win, or to get a ballpark done, to win a World Series, to invent new ways to be active in the community.”

Stuff of legends

The story of Smith’s hiring to work on Camden Yards has been the stuff of legends but has evolved over the years, according to her.

The standard version is that Lucchino had her in for an interview and at one point asked her, “What league has the DH?” Insulted, she was ready to storm out of Lucchino’s office and put this whole ballpark thing behind her.

“I don’t think I was that sharp,” she said. “I think I said the question insults me, but I think I said it playfully. In some terms, I thought it was a fair question. We had spent a half day together talking about Camden Yards’ future, the features he wanted to see.

“When I hear it in the retelling, I don’t think the question was meant to be insulting. It’s a funny vignette but it did not truly insult me. I think it was part of his testing to see if the relationship would work. I think Larry wanted to be able to rely on me but didn’t want me to be fragile.”

When Williams bought the Orioles, the prevailing opinion in Baltimore was that he would move the team to Washington. Instead, with Lucchino leading the way, the O’s established an even stronger presence with Camden Yards a major part of that.

The Orioles needed a new place to play, for sure, as quaint a place as Memorial Stadium was. The assumption was that the city would build a facility that could house two sports — baseball and another NFL team to replace the Colts — probably out along the Beltway.

“I remember asking Larry if we’d get a new stadium,” Steinberg said, “and he replied that, ‘No, we’re gonna get two new stadiums, one for baseball and one for football, and the one for baseball will be a ballpark, not a stadium.' ”

Steinberg told his boss that he was crazy, a bold if not career-friendly move.

“He shook his finger at me and told me, ‘You’ll see. You’ll see. A ballpark is asymmetrical, not big. We want to go downtown. Ballparks belong downtown. They’re part of the city.’

“He was right on every count and I was wrong on every count.”

Ballpark, not a stadium

Steinberg was not the only doubter.

Lucchino had to do a lot of convincing along the way and had to be inventive. Before one meeting with a Maryland state group, he got a bunch of brochures for the Yugo, the St. Louis Browns of automobiles, and put a brochure on everybody’s seat.

When the “What the h…. is this” responses started, Lucchino said, “We don’t drive Yugos and we don’t want to play in a Yugo.”

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a ballpark, not a stadium, opened in 1992 and Major League Baseball was never the same.

The Baltimore ballpark marked the first collaboration of Lucchino and Smith, and worked wonderfully even if they did seem like an odd couple.

“What Larry contributes,” Smith said, “is an idea of what he wants to see happen. That’s not always architectural, although in the case of Camden Yards it certainly was. In Worcester, it was less about the architectural form and more about the behavior of the ballpark. He had a clear goal of what he wanted to accomplish and allowed the architectural form to follow that goal.”

Williams died in 1988, just 68. bought the Orioles in 1993 and Lucchino went to San Diego in 1995 to revive the torpid Padres. He did, helping to build Petco Park as part of the deal although he had moved on to Boston by the time it opened.

John Henry, and Lucchino arrived in Boston for the 2002 season, taking over a franchise that had become mildewed under 70 years of Yawkey management. In their final seasons, the Yawkey folks had campaigned for a new ballpark. The arrival of Lucchino changed that vision.

On a flight back east to Boston, Steinberg asked Lucchino if the Sox would build a new Fenway Park.

“Have you learned nothing?” Lucchino replied. “You don’t destroy the Mona Lisa, you preserve the Mona Lisa.”

Settled down in Boston

With the move to Boston, Lucchino settled down. He was in his mid-50s when he married Stacey Johnson and they are headed for their 20th anniversary. It was his first marriage, her second, and he is a stepfather to her son, Davis, and daughter, Blair. Home is now Chestnut Hill, in a Super Bowl neighborhood that includes Robert Kraft and used to include Tom Brady.

After his day-to-day role with the Boston Red Sox ended in 2015, Lucchino headed up a group that bought the . McCoy Stadium would not do as a long-term home. The team’s first priority was to stay in Rhode Island, but a Providence ballpark proposal was shot down and talks to stay in Pawtucket went nowhere.

In 2017, the PawSox began listening to other offers. Springfield had expressed interest, as well as Worcester, but Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno sounded skeptical.

“Lucchino begins with an 'L' and leverage begins with an 'L,' " Sarno said, and he was not alone with his feelings.

However, Lucchino didn’t really want to move the team out of Rhode Island and that state’s leaders assumed he wouldn’t dare, anyway. It was a fatal mistake. After the PawSox agreement to only negotiate with Rhode Island ended on July 1, 2017, the talks with Worcester began in earnest.

They were not just leverage, and they were not easy.

Lucchino had been doing this kind of thing for decades, and doing it well, but it has never been a one-way street, according to Smith.

“He’s always looking to make things better,” she said, “not make things tougher, but make them better and the better is for the greater good. People hear the words ‘tough negotiator’ and they always think it’s self- interest, but in Larry’s case he’s pushing for something better.

“There’s a strong streak of altruism that runs through his projects.”

Augustus was part of a process that stretched on for hours, then days, then weeks, then months. There were times, right up until the final day, when it looked like the deal had fallen apart.

Tough negotiator

“He is a tough negotiator, period,” Augustus said, “but he is also very much a perfectionist. He is very particular about things — in a document, are the pages numbered right? Is that figure $2,400,360 or $2,400,350? That’s why he’s been so successful. He wants to be precise. His words are very thoughtfully chosen, not just off the cuff.

“I really respect Larry and I do like him. We’ve had some really tough negotiating and some really tough problems, but he and I have never had a harsh word between us.”

Lucchino spent almost his whole life trying to win, be it playing high school and college sports or running a major league sports team. Things are different these days. Everybody would like the Worcester Red Sox to win, but that’s not why they are here.

“I’m still a very competitive guy, but I have adjusted to that,” Lucchino said. “I’ve been at it for a few years, since I left the Red Sox at end of the 2015 season, and it’s not just adjusting my expectations, but adjusting those of the people working for Worcester Red Sox.

“Our job is not necessarily to win but help the parent team win. We’re really proud, for example, that when Boston won the World Series in 2018, I think it was 35 of 44 players who played at one time or another for the PawSox.”

Forbes Field was the second concrete-and-steel ballpark ever built. It opened in 1909 and closed in the summer of 1970. After Frank Lucchino got his driver’s license, he and Larry would drive over to the field and see the late innings of games for free, after the gates were opened to let paying fans out.

Lucchino believes that the bases-loaded double, or triple, is the most exciting hit in baseball. Thus, he has brought a little bit of Forbes Field to every ballpark he has built, and that will include Polar Park. He has also brought a little bit of Pittsburgh to everything he has done, and that has turned out to work perfectly for Worcester.

* The Portland Press-Herald

Seven-inning doubleheaders create more urgency

Tom Caron

Boston’s Franchy Cordero jumps to celebrate with teammates Enrique Hernandez and Alex Verdugo (99) after the Red Sox swept a doubleheader from the Twins last week in Minneapolis. AP Photo/Andy Clayton- King

The Boston Red Sox offense been hot to start the season. The Sox have scored more runs than any other team in the American League and and lead the majors in batting average. They’re averaging more than 5.5 runs a game and sit on top of the AL East.

The weather has not been as hot. The Red Sox already have had three games postponed. at Fenway was pushed back a day because of rain, the first game of the series in Minnesota was rescheduled due to safety and curfew concerns in Minneapolis, and last Friday’s series opener against the Chicago White Sox wasn’t played because of snow, wind and rain in Boston.

Basically, it was postponed because of April in New England.

Yet the Red Sox wrapped up that series with Chicago having played all 17 scheduled games. There are no makeups looming in the distance, no loss of precious days off over the next six months.

You can thank the seven-inning doubleheader for that.

The rule, put into effect last year, allows teams to play two games without wiping out their respective pitching staffs. The Red Sox were swept in two shorter games on Sunday, but losing a pair didn’t make Boston Manager Alex Cora any less of a fan of the format.

“It’s an advantage,” Cora said. “For teams that play in big markets, those nine-inning doubleheaders will take a toll on you. One at one, one at seven. Sunday day game. They were tough, very tough. And I think they were tougher on the fans, to be honest with you.

“Now you’ve got that sprint for seven innings. You grab that beer and a steak and then you watch the second game. I wonder who did that last year?”

Cora did. He was a fan at home watching those games, serving his one-year suspension for his involvement in the 2017 Astros sign-stealing scandal. Now he’s back in the dugout managing shorter makeup games for the first time.

And loving it.

“It’s a sprint,” Cora said. “The urgency is something that I really like about it.”

That’s why he had catcher Kevin Plawecki bunting the runner along in the second inning of the doubleheader opener in Minnesota last week. It’s why he had activity in the bullpen an inning later when Nathan Eovaldi struggled. Those are the type of moves we don’t often see in the early innings.

It’s also why the seven-inning game could be the cure to what ails the sport. For one thing, seven-inning games are much quicker. Sunday’s games clocked in at 2:04 and 2:24, respectively. More in line with the time of game for a regular-season hockey or basketball game.

Shorter games are great, and resonate much better in today’s short-attention span world. Action is even better. It isn’t just the length of a major league game that has turned so many young fans away from baseball, it’s the lack of action during those games. Strikeouts and walks are at a record high – and there isn’t much happening when either happens.

The urgency Cora speaks of happens at the very start of a seven-inning game. Teams play to scratch out a run and don’t hesitate to make personnel moves to defend that lead. The game speeds up.

You could feel that in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader with the White Sox. When Boston trailed Dallas Keuchel 2-0 in the fourth inning, it felt like time was starting to run out on them. When Hunter Renfroe was picked off first base with the tying run at third to end the fourth inning, it was a big blow. The Sox ultimately lost 3-2.

Purists don’t like seven-inning games. That makes sense. Yet in an era when the people who run the game talk about pitch clocks and three-batter minimums and other changes to the game, the seven-inning option allows the game to be played the way it always has been. Only quicker.

Monday, it was back to nine-inning baseball, and Boston was back to pounding the ball. The first six batters scored as the Red Sox took an early lead and never looked back in an 11-4 victory.

“We’re good,” said Martín Pérez after losing Game 2 on Sunday, “and we’re not going to quit. We’re good enough to compete with any team and we just need to stay together and stay focused.”

The Red Sox have been focused early. This team continues to build confidence that it can win any game. No matter how many innings those games last.

* RedSox.com

Richards: ‘Nothing that can’t be fixed’

Ian Browne

BOSTON -- With the wind whipping around Fenway Park on a chilly Wednesday night, Garrett Richards felt a lot like a carpenter who was missing most of his tools.

The 4 2/3 inning-performance was quite simply a grind that was exemplified by the stat line that came with it in the Red Sox’s 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays.

Richards had six walks (one shy of a career high), hit a batter and uncorked a wild pitch. He pinned his team in a 4-0 hole by the time it came to bat in the bottom of the second inning.

“I was just kind of fighting my delivery the whole night, release point, the elements, kind of a combination of a lot of stuff,” Richards said. “Just tried to get some outs, didn’t really have a whole lot going tonight, obviously not good. We had a chance there at the end to win the ballgame and [we were] fortunate for that. Just [a matter of] doing some work in between before the next start, doing some release point stuff and some delivery stuff [fixes].”

On a classic April New England night -- it was 55 degrees at first pitch and tumbled colder throughout the night -- Richards had a hard time commanding his arsenal. The start of the game was delayed 31 minutes due to rain.

It had an impact, Richards conceded.

“I mean, we had rain tonight, it was cold. You know, there's a lot of things going on. But that's not an excuse. Got to be better. You got to make pitches and you got to get outs,” he said.

The lanky righty also hopes for some warmer weather. The Southern California native who spends his offseasons in Arizona had only pitched for the Angels and Padres before this season.

“I mean, I didn't even pack a jacket for a season until this year. So I'm going on my ninth, almost 10th year [in the Majors],” Richards said. “So, yeah, it's something different, but it's nothing that can’t be dealt with. I’ve just got to make adjustments. I'm not making excuses. I’ve just got to figure out a way to get it done.”

Though Richards is 0-2 with a 6.48 ERA in his first four starts for the Red Sox, he will get the chance to make the necessary adjustments in the next turn through the rotation.

With an off-day coming up on Monday, manager Alex Cora would have the option of skipping Richards so he could work out his mechanical issues and pitch refinement. However, Cora said he isn’t considering that option.

“No, he can work on it in between starts,” Cora said. “He’s an established big leaguer with a track record.”

Per baseball savant, Richards had a fastball-heavy mix on Wednesday, as 66 of his 92 pitches (72 percent) were heaters. The problem was that just 34 were for strikes (52 percent).

Interestingly, Cora thinks the slider is the bigger issue for Richards, though eight of the 14 he threw were strikes against the Blue Jays.

“He's been working on it, but we have to find it, we have to find that pitch,” Cora said. “It's hard to maneuver a big league lineup with one pitch and it seems like it's been that way during the season. If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball, too, we're going to have the guy that we envisioned before the season.”

The curveball has been an effective weapon for Richards in his four starts, but he threw just nine of them against the Blue Jays, getting six strikes and three whiffs.

“I'm throwing a lot more curveballs now so I feel like throwing two breaking balls isn't the easiest thing to do from a pitching standpoint,” Richards said. “So in a way I feel like maybe my curveball has taken a little bit of feel away from my slider. But that's work that needs to be done in between [starts]. So we're going to continue to hammer that and then improve that, and hopefully kind of get to a finished product soon.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Richards is struggling with command at this point of the season. Remember, injuries have robbed him of repetition.

From 2016-20, Richards threw just 198 2/3 innings. It might just take him getting out there every fifth day for a sustained period to get back in rhythm.

“I haven’t really been out there in the last several years. But yeah, it’s not something that I’m super concerned with. Obviously I want to do better and pitch better,” Richards said. “Yeah, it’s a constant grind. Throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things. I’ll get [with pitching coach Dave Bush] tomorrow and kind of see what we can improve. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Notes: Vázquez on state of Red Sox; Renfroe

Ian Browne

BOSTON -- As the longtime starting catcher and a valued member in the Red Sox clubhouse, Christian Vázquez is more in-tuned than most to the variety of positive developments that are happening with the team these days.

Prior to Wednesday night’s game against the Blue Jays, Vázquez had several insightful comments on the areas that are leading Boston to a better level of success, at least so far than in the previous two seasons.

Here are some of the components he spoke of.

Chemistry: It is the old chicken or the egg theory when it comes to winning and chemistry. Does winning create chemistry, or is it the other way around?

It is a question that can never be answered with certainty, but Vázquez said that he noticed the improved vibe in the clubhouse and on the bench long before the wins started piling up. He started seeing encouraging signs at Spring Training in Fort Myers, Fla.

“I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said. “In Spring Training, everybody was talking about the right language. It’s the same language we talked in 2018 and we won [the World Series] that year. I’m not telling you we’re going to win this year, but we’re going to go on the same track. It’s fun to see the [guys] in the dugout and the clubhouse in Spring Training altogether talking about everything, and about getting better every day. I feel like it’s a family here. We’re together and it’s fun to see this.”

The fact the players are physically in the same spaces more is also of help. Last season, the Red Sox didn’t have a clubhouse at home. The players instead partnered up in luxury suites.

“Some days [last year] I didn’t see my teammates that day until we were in the dugout or when they’re coming in from the bullpen, so it’s tough to have fun like that,” Vázquez said. “We want to see each other every day, and we play cards and have fun together, like, in the gym and together. Obviously with the masks, but we’re together -- like a family.”

Pitching, pitching, pitching: You don’t have to tell the starting catcher how much of a difference it makes to have quality arms. Vázquez has the best view in the house. And having Eduardo Rodriguez while adding Garrett Richards and Nick Pivetta to the rotation is a big change from 2020, when the team was overly- reliant on openers that seldom worked out. Adam Ottavino and Hirokazu Sawamuara have added depth to the bullpen and Darwinzon Hernandez is rounding back into form after dealing with COVID-19 and an injury last year.

The mentality of the staff has also changed, much to the delight of Vázquez. Pitchers are now in attack mode.

“I think we’re throwing a lot of strikes,” Vázquez said. “We’re getting ahead more this year. We’ve got great arms. I think the front office made a great decision this year and got great arms to help this team be in the place we are right now.”

Vázquez and backup Kevin Plawecki did what they could with last year’s depleted stable of arms, but it was not easy. The current situation is far more workable.

“Yeah, it’s easier when you have a good arm on the mound,” Vázquez said. “It’s easier, you’re not afraid to attack the zone. When we have electric arms like we have now, it’s easier to call games. It’s a plus for the team, for me, for everybody. I think that’s the key. Strike one, and after that, [we can] expand, and I think that’s the key for the success we’re having right now.”

Best of Barnes: The first time Vázquez caught current Red Sox closer Matt Barnes was in 2012 at Salem. That was four years after Vázquez was drafted by the club in the eighth round out of high school and the season after the Sox took Barnes as a first-rounder out of UConn. At that point, Barnes was a starter. For the last many years, he has been an invaluable reliever. But Vázquez has never seen Barnes as on top of his game as he is to start this season.

“Yeah, it’s electric. Electric fastball this year. I’ve seen the best Matt Barnes I’ve ever seen in all my years with him,” Vázquez said. “Before, he had the best changeup in the organization. Now he has one of the best curveballs in the organization and in the league. But, yeah, he’s got electric stuff this year.”

Renfroe’s rut

Hunter Renfroe is aiming to have a bounce-back season after being non-tendered by the Rays and quickly scooped up by the Red Sox in January. But so far, things aren’t working out. The righty slugger, who was not in the lineup on Wednesday, is slashing .171/.217/.268 with one homer in 41 at-bats. Manager Alex Cora said that Renfroe spent Wednesday’s pregame working with hitting coaches Tim Hyers and Pete Fatse to help solve some mechanical issues that are leading him to lunge at the ball.

Vaccination update

For the second time in three days, the Red Sox had COVID-19 vaccines available to their players and staff members at Fenway Park. Cora, who got his first shot at Spring Training, received his second dose on Wednesday. As of a few hours before game time, he felt no ill-effects. The Sox are hopeful they will soon get to the 85 percent vaccination rate that will allow them to relax some of their COVID restrictions.

Clubs were informed on March 31 that MLB and the MLBPA have agreed to relax certain health and safety protocols contained in the 2021 Operations Manual for fully vaccinated Tier 1 Individuals and for clubs where 85% of their Tier 1 Individuals are fully vaccinated. As part of that memo, players and staff were again strongly encouraged to receive one of the approved COVID-19 vaccines when eligible.

* WEEI.com

It's feeling like Chris Sale needs to be a factor for the Red Sox

Rob Bradford

Chris Sale is optimistic.

"I believe, and I have no reason not to think, I'm going to be just as good if not better when I get back out there," the pitcher told WEEI.com. "It might not be the first time I pitch. It might not be the first handful of times I pitch. I damn sure going to try. But in the long run I will be better off out there."

His manager is also feeling the positive vibes.

"Really good. Really good," said Alex Cora when asked by OMF about Sale's progression Wednesday. "I had a good conversation with him two days ago and the way he threw the ball his last flat-ground was very good. Very aggressive. He’s going down there to be around the family and keep working on his craft. This guy is going to help us in the long-run. He’s going to help us."

In a perfect world, the Red Sox wouldn't need to be leaning on that sort of optimism when trying to lay out their path to the postseason. Sale has still yet to reach the point from his Tommy John surgery rehab that includes throwing off a mound, with still no timetable for his return on the books.

But, as we were reminded Wednesday night at Fenway Park, a baseball season doesn't lend itself to best laid plans. When you witness uneasy outings like the one Garrett Richards turned in against the Blue Jays, patience becomes at least a smidge more difficult to muster.

None of this is to suggest that the Red Sox must rush Sale, or that they are even desperate for his services. Neither is true.

Despite the struggles of Richards - who sits with a 6.48 ERA, totaling more walks (13) than strikeouts (12) - the Red Sox' rotation has been good enough. It appears to possess two top-of-the-rotation options with Eduardo Rodriguez and Nathan Eovaldi, while the likes of Martin Perez and Nick Pivetta have shown some signs that they might be able to be counted on.

And, for now, the Red Sox also seem to have a proven fail-safe if the decision is made to pull the cord on any of the aforementioned candidates, or for when the inevitable injury bug strikes. Tanner Houck is the kind of luxury also allows Sale to be out-of-mind for the time being.

But the Red Sox are going to need more. Perhaps that will be where the veteran lefty comes in.

It's all well and good to ride through April and May soaking in the good and the bad of pitchers trying to find their way. There is a reason Chaim Bloom was OK in putting his faith in the likes of Perez, Pivetta and Richards despite the back of their baseball cards -- it was an investment in potential.

Remember, through his first eight starts in 2019 Perez totaled a 2.19 ERA.

Up until his uncomfortable 3 2/3-inning outing against the White Sox, Pivetta had been more than the Red Sox could have hoped for, winning each of his four starts with his new team.

And Richards, the pitcher with all of that spin rate and potential, seemed to be closing in on the pre-Tommy John surgery version of himself when closing out last season with a 2.76 ERA.

Still, projecting is a dangerous business, especially when it comes to starting pitching. Remember in 2015, when the Red Sox projected they had five aces -- Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly, Rick Porcello, Clay Buchholz and Wade Miley? That was because they all had shown some signs, much like a chunk of this year's rotation.

How did that work out?

Right now, the Red Sox' starters have an 8-6 record. They also possess a collective ERA of 4.40 and opponents batting average of .253, both residing in second tier of MLB starting staffs.

Perhaps we get into May and the Red Sox are sitting with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to their starting staff, with Houck doing his dominating down in Worcester. That, however, seems like a 50-50 proposition at the moment, at best.

It sure feels like the Red Sox are going to need something more. And for an organization that is trying to build minor-league depth, dealing off from the lower levels in order to trade for a short-term fix doesn't seem to fit the bill this time around.

That's why, fair or not, Sale has come to mind.

Dare to dream ... the Red Sox may be forced to.

On both sides of Atlantic, John Henry keeps igniting PR calamities

Alex Reimer

John Henry is his own worst enemy on both sides of the Atlantic. The enigmatic billionaire owns two storied franchises, and has led them to unprecedented successes. Yet, sizable swaths of Red Sox and Liverpool fans revile him.

His public relations calamities continually overshadow his successes.

Henry just experienced perhaps the most embarrassing stretch of his public life, with his soccer Super League exploding in two days. Liverpool fans greeted the announcement with outrage, participating in a raucous protest Monday night, despite rules prohibiting large gatherings due to COVID-19 safety measures.

On Wednesday, Henry, dressed in a checkered shirt and dark vest, issued an apology to the Liverpool faithful. “I’m sorry, and I alone am responsible for the unnecessary negativity brought forward over the past couple of days,” he said. “It’s something I won’t forget. And shows the power the fans have today and will rightly continue to have.”

Now, do you think he’ll get around to apologizing for trading Mookie Betts?

For those who don’t follow international soccer (including your humble blogger), the Super League story can seem convoluted. Basically, 12 of the biggest teams in European soccer, including Liverpool, announced plans for a breakaway league so they could maximize their revenues — leaving smaller clubs behind.

Henry was reportedly set to be vice-chairman of the league, directly implicating him in the ill-conceived plot.

When Fenway Sports Group purchased Liverpool in 2010, Henry promised to resurrect the historically moribund club. In many respects, he’s done exactly that. Last summer, Liverpool became only the seventh team in history to hold the European Cup, European Super Cup, World Club title and domestic league title simultaneously.

The club is now valued at $4.1 billion — an astronomical figure. But it hasn’t been a smooth ride. Along the way, there’s been plenty of ownership-induced turmoil.

The first big error came in 2012, when the team failed to land Clint Dempsey, one of the most well-known strikers in soccer. Henry wrote a letter affirming his commitment to the club, though he did leave out his childhood love of Stan Musial.

Liverpool fans missed out on some great tales.

Four years later, more than 10,000 supporters marched out of iconic Anfield Stadium in protest of planned ticket price increases. For good measure, they called ownership “greedy bastards.”

Henry quickly changed course and apologized for his planned price gouging. He pledged to “listen carefully” to Liverpool supporters.

Except that time he helped spearhead one of the most unpopular ideas in the history of pro sports.

In between, FSG also tried to trademark “Liverpool,” and furloughed staffers during the early stages of the pandemic.

When reading the reaction to Henry overseas, it’s amazing how many of the gripes mirror the complaints about him over here: distant, tone-deaf, aloof. The Athletic says Henry “shut himself away in Massachusetts and remained silent” as the Super League was “torn to shreds.” He hasn’t attended a Liverpool game since January 2020.

“Is it time for John Henry to emerge from the shadows?,” soccer writer Simon Hughes asked last October.

For somebody so analytical, it’s stunning that Henry doesn’t appear to see the value in transparency and visibility. It took Robert Kraft about one hour to clear up every outstanding question about the Patriots this month. Meanwhile, Henry hasn’t held an actual media availability in over a year.

When it comes to establishing public trust, relationships are more important than winning. Henry is the perfect example. Four World Series championships haven’t earned him goodwill in Boston.

And now one disastrous idea has seemingly unraveled what he’s built across the pond.

* NBC Sports Boston

Sox aren't just beating good teams, but great pitching

John Tomase

It's one thing to beat good teams. It's another to beat their best pitchers, which brings us to the 2021 Red Sox.

They're scything a path through the iron.

Only 18 games into the season, and the Red Sox have already faced five of the top eight contenders for the American League Award, according to various Vegas oddsmakers. Their record in those games: 5-0.

It started with Tampa's Tyler Glasnow, who is absolutely dominating the American League. Glasnow has allowed only two runs all season while posting a 0.73 ERA. One of them came in his no-decision vs. the Red Sox, a game they eventually won 6-5 in 12 innings.

In short order, the Red Sox also defeated Minnesota's vaunted twosome of Kenta Maeda and Jose Berrios before laying the wood to Chicago's Lucas Giolito, who saw his ERA more than double after the Red Sox torched him for eight runs in one-plus innings on Monday.

That just set the stage for Tuesday night, when the Red Sox rode one big inning to a 4-2 victory over the Jays and pinpoint left-hander Hyun Jin Ryu, who owns two straight top-three Cy Young finishes.

"We've been facing good pitching since the first day of spring training," manager Alex Cora said. "We're talking about the Twins, the Braves, the Rays, we played them a lot and they're great. I do believe it's good. This is what it's all about. You're going to run into stretches like this, that you're going to face the best of the best, and you have to grind it out."

The Red Sox are completely flouting the adage about splitting with good teams and beating up on bad ones. The schedule makers gave them a tough early slate, with four of their first five opponents coming off postseason appearances. The Red Sox have either won or split every series, and they've done so largely against the top of each rotation, their lone break missing Cy Young candidate Lance Lynn and no-hit specialist Carlos Rodon during a four-game set with the White Sox.

The Red Sox are 9-3 vs. the Rays, Twins, White Sox, and Blue Jays. They've done so with opportunistic offense, but also by pitching well enough to stay in each game. Glasnow limited them to one run over six innings, but left-hander Martin Perez kept it close and the Red Sox rallied from a 3-1 deficit to tie it in the ninth on Christian Vazquez's home run.

They nearly batted around against Maeda in the second inning of a 3-2 victory, stringing together four hits to score all three of their runs. A day later, Berrios cruised into the fifth with a shutout before the Red Sox erupted for six runs in a 7-1 victory.

They greeted Giolito with six straight hits to open Monday's 11-4 victory, scoring six runs in the first and never looking back. The going was much tougher against Ryu, who lives on the corners, but the Red Sox turned singles from Christian Arroyo and J.D. Martinez and a three-run homer from Xander Bogaerts into all the runs they would need in the fourth.

In four of the five cases, the Red Sox managed to string together rallies vs. some of the best pitchers in the American League, which is no easy task. But it's a credit to their approach at the plate, which relies less on trying to run into homers and more on taking what's there for singles and doubles to keep the line moving.

"Sometimes it's actually easier to buy into the game-planning," Cora said. "Don't try to do too much, go the other way. When it's the ace of the other staff, it seems like guys buy into it constantly. It's a lot easier to get off your plan when it's a No. 5 or a guy that doesn't have plus-plus stuff or plus command."

The sledding doesn't get any easier. The Red Sox begin a four-game set with the AL West-leading Mariners on Thursday, and then a matchup looms with two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom of the Mets, whom Cora calls, "the best pitcher on the planet."

It might not matter, because the Red Sox keep finding a way.

"I think we've done a good job against everybody offensively," Cora said. "We feel like we can score runs against anybody."

Vazquez senses common theme between Red Sox and 2018 WS team

Darren Hartwell

The 2021 Boston Red Sox have been a pleasant surprise to date, winning 12 of their first 19 games with a group that was expected to hover around .500 after a disastrous 2020 campaign.

But Christian Vazquez doesn't seem surprised by Boston's early success.

Prior to Wednesday's game against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Red Sox catcher drew a parallel between these Red Sox and the 2018 team that won 108 games en route to a World Series title.

"I’m going to tell you the truth,” Vazquez said, via MLB.com. "In spring training, everybody was talking about the right language. It’s the same language we talked in 2018 and we won [the World Series] that year.

"I’m not telling you we’re going to win this year, but we’re going to go on the same track. It’s fun to see the [guys] in the dugout and the clubhouse in spring training all together talking about everything, and about getting better every day. I feel like it’s a family here. We’re together and it’s fun to see this."

The COVID pandemic may play a role in Vazquez's observation: Last year's Red Sox were literally separated, with two players occupying each luxury suite at home games instead of everyone being in the clubhouse together. Now that the team can finally share a clubhouse, it makes sense that they feel a strong sense of camaraderie.

"Some days [last year] I didn’t see my teammates that day until we were in the dugout or when they’re coming in from the bullpen, so it’s tough to have fun like that,” Vazquez admitted.

Boston also added a number of fresh faces this offseason, though -- Alex Verdugo, Kike Hernandez, Marwin Gonzalez, Franchy Cordero, Hunter Renfroe, Garrett Richards, Matt Andriese, Adam Ottavino, Garrett Whitlock and Hirokazu Sawamura -- so the fact that they're getting along well this early in the season is an encouraging sign.

There's a good chance the Red Sox flaws catch up to them, and that their shaky pitching depth and inconsistent defense cause them to fall back closer to .500. They're certainly not the juggernaut that was the 2018 Red Sox.

But chemistry goes a long way toward team success, and with Alex Cora back at the manager helm, that appears to be a strength of the 2021 Red Sox.

* BostonSportsJournal.com

Final: Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 3

Sean McAdam

It didn’t begin well, or, for that matter, end well for the Red Sox Wednesday night at Fenway. The Sox fell behind 4-0 by the second inning, and after closing to within a run in the eighth, allowed two more runs in the ninth for a 6-3 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Garrett Richards once again struggled with his control and couldn’t make it through the fifth inning, issuing six walks while also hitting a batter and throwing a wild pitch.

The Red Sox bullpen kept the Jays within reach from the fifth through the eighth before Josh Taylor came unglued in the ninth.

WHO: Red Sox (12-6) vs. Toronto Blue Jays (7-10) WHEN: 7:10 p.m. WHERE: Fenway Park SERIES TO DATE: Red Sox 1-0 STARTING PITCHERS: RHP Garrett Richards (0-1, 6.00) vs. RHP Trent Thornton (0-0 2.35) TV/RADIO: NESN; WEEI-FM

LINEUPS

BLUE JAYS

Biggio 3B Bichette SS Guerrero Jr. 1B Tellez DH Grichuk CF Semien 2B Palacios RF Gurriel LF Jansen C

RED SOX

Hernandez CF Verdugo RF Martinez DH Bogaerts SS Devers 3B Vazquez C Gonzalez 2B Dalbec 1B Cordero LF

IN-GAME OBSERVATION:

B8: Throwing error by Cavan Biggio opens the door for the Red Sox, putting the potential tying run at third and the potential go-ahead run at second with Bobby Dalbec due.

B8: Bogaerts fights off a slider down and in and golfs it into the Monster Seats for his second homer in as many nights.

B5: Bogaerts had a big chance to get the Sox back into the game, but grounds out to short, leaving the bases loaded.

B5: Three hits this inning, the latest a double down the left field line by Kiké Hernández cuts the Toronto lead in half and sends two baserunners into scoring position.

T5: That’s all for Richards, who walks six and hits another in 4.2 IP. The wonder is that he limited the Jays to just four runs. Hirokazu Sawamura on with two outs in the inning.

B4: Two groundouts and Martinez is home with the first run of the night.

B4: Second inning in a row in which the Red Sox put the leadoff man on base as J.D. Martinez doubles to left-center. Let’s see if they can do anything with the opportunity.

T2: Sharp single by Bo Bichette a few feet from second baseman Marwin Gonzalez and the Jays are up 4-0.

T2: This is not going well for Richards, who’s issued three walks to the first nine hitters and has thrown more balls than strikes in his first two innings. He simply can’t command his fastball, and when he misses, it’s not by a little.

T2: Marcus Semien gets a huge jump on Richards and jogs into second base on a steal.

TI: Wildness costs Garrett Richards in the first inning, with a four-pitch walk followed by a hit-batsman (on an 0-and-2 count, no less). Vlad Guerrero Jr. singles home a run, but Richards gets out of further trouble with a 3-6-1 double play.

PRE-GAME STATS: The Red Sox own the best record in the AL at 12-6, .667 and the second best in the majors behind only the Dodgers (14-4, .778)..The Sox are unbeaten in their last four series, having won three and split one….They’re already assured of no worse than a split in this two-game set, having won the opener Tuesday night…The Sox also lead the league in run differential at plus-30…This is the 24th time the Red Sox have won at least 12 of their first 18 games. They most recently did so in 2018 (16-2)….The Sox lead the majors with nine come-from-behind wins; no other team has more than six…The Sox are fourth in the AL in pitching and ninth in MLB with a 3.60 ERA….In the last nine games, they have a collective 2.99 ERA…In the last four games, the Sox have struck out 32 hitters and walked just four….They’ve had a starter go at least five innings in 14 of their 18 games, tying them with Oakland for the most in the American League…The Sox are 12-0 when they holding a lead at at any point in a game…The Sox are 6-6 when the opponent scores first…In Boston’s six losses, they never led at at point…Red Sox relievers are fourth in the AL and fifth in MLB in bullpen ERA at 2.78…Over the last nine games, the relievers have combined to post a 1.27 ERA…Matt Barnes has faced 32 hitters and struck out 16 of them, exactly half. He’s allowed just five batters to reach base (two hits, three walks)….Sox pitchers have allowed just five homers in the last nine games and have the lowest homer/per 9 IP rate at 0.63….The Sox lead the majors in runs scored (100), average (.285), OBP (.345), slugging percentage (.469), OPS (.814) and doubles (43)…The Sox have scored at least 10 runs in a game three games after doing so just twice in all of last season….J.D. Martinez leads the majors in RBI (20) and leads the AL in extra-base hits (13), homers (six), hits (24) and total bases (49)…He’s second in slugging (.766) and OPS (1.194), both behind only Mike Trout...Xander Bogaerts leads the AL in batting (.393) and is hitting .469 over the last 13 games….Bogaerts needs just four more games played to become the 30th player in franchise history to reach 1,000….Marcus Semien is 2-for-13 lifetime against Garrett Richards and Joe Panik is 0-for- 3…Rafael Devers is 3-for-7 with a homer against Tyler Thornton while Bogaerts is 3-for-6 with a homer.

NOTES:

Alex Cora noted that Garrett Richards has not yet mastered his slider this season. “It’s not where we want it to be or where he wants it to be,” said Cora. “I do believe when the slider plays, he’s going to be dominant. He did the job in Baltimore, he threw the ball well in Minnesota but we didn’t make some plays behind him. But we’re very comfortable with him, we’re very happy with the way he keeps getting better and hopefully we could put everything behind him together today and he can get that slider back and gives six or seven innings.”

A number of additional Red Sox players received their first vaccination shots prior to the game; another group had gotten theirs after Monday’s Patriots Day game. Cora was unsure whether the Red Sox would have enough members of their traveling party (85 percent) to qualify for more relaxed health and safety protocols, as determined by MLB. “We’ll know by the end of the week,” Cora said.

Cora said Hunter Renfroe has been “out in front, a little off-balance, kind of lunging” at the plate. “It’s something that we saw last year with the Rays,” Cora said. “He was in such a good place in spring training and we feel we can get him back there again.”

Cora said the improved velocity of the Red Sox bullpen has been a key to the relievers’ success. “I noticed, in ’19, we were behind velocity-wise in spring training,” he said. “Then I noticed we were back in the game in spring training this year. And not only here, but also with the rest of the group (in the minors). We believe we can get people out the way we pitch. But that separation (between a fastball and other pitches) makes a big difference — it’s huge. It gives us a chance. And we’re still missing (Ryan) Brasier, who found his fastball last year and we believe he’s going to be a huge impact. Velocity is important. When the game goes to the bullpen, the game steps up. For however much we love pounding the strikezone and (getting) weak contract, when they don’t put the ball in play and they have swing and misses late in games, it’s a lot better.”

BSJ Game Report: Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 3 – Richards spots Blue Jays big lead

Sean McAdam

All you need to know about the Red Sox’ 6-3 loss to the Blue Jays, complete with BSJ analysis and insight:

HEADLINES

Richards falters early: It wasn’t as bad as his first start of the season, when he couldn’t get an out in the third inning. But for Garrett Richards, his fourth start of the season left a lot to be desired. He spotted the visiting Toronto Blue Jays a 1-0 lead in the first, then saw that grow to 4-0 in the second. There were some hard-hit balls among the first two innings but the biggest issue was his control lapse. He walked one batter in the first and hit another. Things got really bad in the second when two walks to the first four hitters of the inning set the stage for a big inning for Toronto. Manager Alex Cora said the big issue with Richards was his being able to throw his slider effectively, but Richards also struggled to command his fastball at times, leaving him with little with which to attack the Blue Jays lineup. If there was any consolation for Richards, it’s that he figured some things out after the second and didn’t allow another run as he got to 4.2 innings. But that’s obviously not good enough.

Lineup couldn’t find the big hit: As poor as Richards was, and despite the fact the Blue Jays sprinted to a quick 4-0 lead, the Red Sox were never really out of this one. Even in the ninth, they were a baserunner away from bringing the potential tying run to the plate. But too often, just as the Red Sox appeared ready to enjoy a big inning and put themselves back in the game, they couldn’t buy the big base hit. On the night, Boston hitters were just 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position and the stranded nine in the game, including seven of those in scoring position. In the eighth, a base hit from Bobby Dalbec would have put the Red Sox ahead for the first time, but with runners at second and third, he grounded to third. Things finally got away in the ninth inning, but the Sox had plenty of chances before that to put themselves in better position.

TURNING POINT

Though they were trailing 4-0 by the bottom of the second inning, the Red Sox were really never out of this one. In fact, in the fifth inning, having cut the lead to 4-2, the Sox loaded the bases with two outs, but Xander Bogaerts, who had the big hit the night before, couldn’t duplicate the feat. He hit a routine grounder to short for the final out, stranding three and the Sox never threatened again.

TWO UP

Marwin Gonzalez: Starting the night at second base, then switching to left field, Gonzalez cracked two doubles and scored a run.

Phillips Valdez: After three scoreless innings in Sunday’s doubleheader, spread across both games, Valdez gave the Sox another perfect inning in the seventh, fanning two of the three batters he faced.

TWO DOWN

Josh Taylor: The Red Sox had gotten 3.1 innings of scoreless relief and hung close, but Taylor was knocked around for three hits and a walk, leading two huge insurance runs in the ninth.

Alex Verdugo: The outfielder has been one of the team’s hottest hitters, but after a first-inning single, he was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a double-play, leaving runners on base each occasion. He had an off- night in the field, too, bobbling a line single in the ninth, and making an ill-advised throw to home on another occasion, allowing a baserunner to advance 90 feet.

QUOTE OF NOTE

“I didn’t really have a lot going tonight. Obviously, not good.” Garrett Richards on his start.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Xander Bogaerts, who homered for the second straight night, is tied with Trevor Story of Colorado for the most homers by a major league shortstop since the start of 2019. Six of the eight appearances to date from Hirokazu Sawamura have been scoreless. Phillips Valdez has retired the last 12 hitters he’s faced in a row. Marwin Gonzalez has scored 10 runs in the last 13 games. UP NEXT

The Seattle Mariners are here for the first of four, with RHP Nick Pivetta (2-0, 3.68) vs. RHP Justin Dunn (1-0, 3.72) at 7:10 p.m.

Increased expectations mean Garrett Richards will need to figure things out soon

Sean McAdam

Had Garrett Richards struggled as a member of the Red Sox 2020 rotation, he would barely have had to look over his shoulder. The Red Sox were so bereft of major league quality pitching options that, time and again, pitchers were given additional chances. Simply put, there weren’t any better alternatives — and the record reflected that.

It’s a measure of how much Chaim Bloom has improved the overall pitching depth in the organization that that is no longer the case. That, one supposes, is the good news for Bloom.

The bad news? His biggest free-agent acquisition — at least as measured by 2021 salaries — was Richards, whom he signed to a one-year $10 million deal with a club option for 2022. And through four starts, to call Richards a mixed bag so far would be generous. In his first one, Richards was blasted for six runs and couldn’t get an out in the third inning.

His next two were better. He allowed two runs over five innings to a bad Orioles team, then overcame some bad luck and bad defense to limit the Twins to two unearned runs in five innings in last week’s road trip finale.

Thursday night, however, there was no equivocating. Richards was brutally wild and completely ineffective. It’s somehow miraculous, given the amount of traffic he allowed, that he lugged the Red Sox into the fifth inning, still somehow in the game.

Still, there was no getting around the ugly numbers: six walks in 4.2 innings, plus a hit batsman, plus a wild pitch. Before the game, Alex Cora conceded the Red Sox wanted Richards’ slider to be better. It wasn’t, of course, but even more troubling was his inability to command his fastball. His four-seamer was all over the place, though Cora attributed some of that wildness to be a function of the natural run that Richards has to his fastball.

But that seemed a polite assessment. Too often, Richards had no feel for most of his pitches, which was confirmed by the fact that of the 94 pitches he threw, just 48 — a tick over half — were in the strike zone.

“I was just kind of fighting my delivery the whole night,” said Richards. “My release point, the elements… kind of the combination of a lot of stuff. I tried to get some outs. I didn’t really have a whole lot going tonight. Obviously, not good. I’ll just be doing some work in between, before the next start, getting some release point stuff and delivery stuff reassured. (I’ll be) continuing to grind, continuing to try to get better.”

Some allowances have to be made here. This year is the first season in about five years in which he’s begun the year fully healthy. He delayed getting Tommy John surgery by opting for PRP injections, a move that backfired and cost him additional time. It’s understandable Richards would be experiencing some mechanical/delivery issues — he hasn’t been on the mound regularly enough to know or trust his own body.

There’s no denying the stuff — when he can command it. The fastball does have natural run to it, but that’s of little value when he can’t keep it anywhere near the strike zone and hitters can routinely lay off it. There’s also the issue of him throwing both a curve and slider, with Richards conceding that by attempting to throw two breaking balls, he may inadvertently be compromising both.

Richards seems determined that he’ll find a remedy for his mechanical glitches.

“It’s not something that I’m super concerned with,” he said. “Obviously, I want to get better and pitch better. It’s a constant grind — throughout the year, you’re going to have good stretches, bad stretches, times when you need to change things. I just think the delivery was off tonight; I was kind of fighting it the whole night and then obviously, I couldn’t get my release point under control.

“It’s kind of a combination of things, nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Again, Richards is healthy, which shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. And the quality of his stuff, when he can command it better, can’t be denied.

But this isn’t 2020, either. There are expectations this year, an increased sense of urgency. That doesn’t mean the Red Sox are going to cut bait with Richards after four starts — not with $10 million guaranteed to him. Richards together with pitching coach Dave Bush should be able to diagnose the problem and make the necessary adjustments.

But if this goes on much longer, the Red Sox aren’t about to be complacent, either. This season, they have alternatives. There’s Tanner Houck at Worcester, and Matt Andriese and maybe even Garrett Whitlock in the bullpen.

The 2020 season, in which the Sox deployed openers, seemed often uncertain who would start the next game, and often handed the ball to pitchers who frankly weren’t of major league caliber, is history.

That’s a good thing. It’s a measure of how expectations have changed within the organization.

Garrett Richards will get some time to fix things. But he won’t be given the ball forever if he pitches like he did Wednesday night.

This is 2021, and things have changed.

* The Athletic

As Garrett Richards stumbles again, how patient will the Red Sox be with him?

Jen McCaffrey

A walk, a hit batter, a run-scoring single.

That’s how Garrett Richards’ fourth start for the Red Sox began Wednesday night. It ended after just 4 2/3 innings when manager Alex Cora lifted him with two men on. By that point, Richards had allowed four runs on four hits and a whopping six walks. He’d struck out two, hit a batter, threw a wild pitch and committed a throwing error. Of his 92 pitches, 48 were for strikes.

The Red Sox fell 6-3 to the Blue Jays, thanks in no small part to the rough start to the night from Richards. The never-say-die Red Sox offense couldn’t muster a 10th come-from-behind victory to assuage the starter’s mess.

In a year when so much has gone right for the Red Sox, the parts that have gone wrong seem even more egregious. Hunter Renfroe’s bat has been quiet. Josh Taylor has struggled on the mound. The defense has had its lapses. But Cora can work around Renfroe in the lineup or give Taylor low-leverage spots to find a way to build confidence.

Richards’ spot in the rotation can’t be covered up quite as easily.

“I was just kind of fighting my delivery the whole night — release point, the elements, kind of a combination of a lot of stuff,” Richards said. “Just tried to get some outs, didn’t really have a whole lot going tonight. Obviously, not good.”

In four starts this season, Richards has posted a 6.48 ERA with 13 walks and 12 strikeouts. On Wednesday, his fastball command was erratic, and though he threw his slider for strikes, it hasn’t been consistent enough for him this season.

“I don’t know why he had trouble commanding, but that put him in a bad spot,” Cora said. “We’ve got to find a way to throw the slider for strikes. He’s been very inconsistent with it, even in spring training. That’s something we have to work and try to find it.”

For now, Richards’ next start is scheduled to come against the Mets next week in New York. The Red Sox are off Monday, so he’ll have an extra day to work on his release point and delivery with pitching coach Dave Bush. When asked if that would be enough time to make the necessary adjustments, Cora didn’t relent.

“No, he can work on it in between starts; he’s an established big leaguer with a track record,” Cora said. “He’s been working on it, but we have to find it. We have to find that pitch. It’s hard to maneuver a big- league lineup with one pitch, and it seems like it’s been that way during the season. If we can get that pitch back to what it was in the past and use the curveball, too, we’re going to have the guy that we envisioned before the season.”

But how long will they wait?

The Red Sox are surely going to give him more than one month to figure things out. After all, this is his first fully healthy season since 2015, when he made 32 starts. It is also the first time he has pitched for a team not based in Southern California.

“It’s something different, but it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with,” Richards said. “I just got to make adjustments. I’m not making excuses. I just got to — I got to figure out a way to get it done.”

Richards’ struggles have been magnified by the success and potential of Tanner Houck, who’s waiting in the wings at the alternate site in Worcester. There’s also the tantalizing prospect of stretching out Garrett Whitlock, whom Cora has said they’d envision as a future starter.

For so long Richards’ biggest problem was his health, but now that he’s healthy, it’s taking a while to find his rhythm on the mound. There’s a balance between giving a veteran time to work out the kinks and making sure the team is taking advantage of its best chances to win with its best players. At what point do the Red Sox give Houck or Whitlock more of a chance?

Cora has deviated from his own plan at times this year, giving Kiké Hernández significant time in center rather than splitting time at second base. He has used Whitlock in higher-leverage, late-inning spots after first noting he’d use him in long relief. He has given Christian Arroyo more at-bats and playing time than expected. But at the same time, Cora has also been patient with Bobby Dalbec at the plate and stuck with Phillips Valdéz after Valdéz had a lackluster spring.

Which route will he take with Richards? Let him continue to grind through starts until he finds a rhythm, like he did in 16 starts in 2018 when he posted a 3.66 ERA and 10.3 K/9? Or let one of the younger pitchers take the role and try to prove himself?

The fate of Richards’ rotation spot in late April is commentary in itself on where the Red Sox stand this season compared with last.

A baseball Super League? The Yankees, Red Sox and others tried and failed long before soccer

Steve Buckley

Let’s see what we have here: A collection of wealthy, powerful sports team owners gathered together and came up with a plan to reshuffle the deck in such a way that a powerful new league emerges.

And then, very quickly, things began to fall apart.

We are not, however, talking about European soccer’s optimistic-sounding Super League, which seems to have ceased to exist before the new stationery even arrived from the printer. Because of overwhelming protests from, well, everybody, wealthy clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United started tip-toeing away from the table. The Super League is turning out to be a super blunder.

But let’s talk baseball, and about that time a collection of sports teams considered leaving the mother ship to join a new league. It happened a century ago, when the owners of three disgruntled American League clubs threatened to join the eight-team to form what sportswriters around the country were calling the New National.

To put it as simply as possible, the three owners — Harry Frazee of the Boston Red Sox, Charles Comiskey of the Chicago White Sox, and Jacob Ruppert, who co-owned the with Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston — had had it up to here with American League czar Ban Johnson. These three “Insurrectos,” as they were called, were willing to rip the baseball map into little pieces and start over again.

They anticipated that a fourth AL team would step up and join them. If not, they were going to plop an expansion team somewhere like Detroit. Had they gone through with their plan, the 12-team New National would thus include the Yankees, who just happened to have in their employ the game’s greatest star: .

The American League would have been left in shambles, either limping along with four or five teams or whipping up a few expansion teams. The league may well have folded in a few years.

European soccer’s Super League is all about greed. So, too, was baseball’s flirtation with owners leaving to join a new league. But there was something else at play: Power. The American League had been founded in 1901 by former sportswriter Ban Johnson, and, damn it, he ran it as he saw fit. But the beginning of his end came when he tried to prohibit the Red Sox from selling pitcher Carl Mays to the Yankees near the end of the 1919 season. The matter ended up in court and Johnson got slapped down. One year later the baseball world was boiling over with revelations that members of the White Sox had conspired to dump the 1919 World Series to the .

Had it not been for the White Sox and their World Series game-fixing scandal, the New National might have become a reality. But while baseball was a mess because of the scandal, the issue wasn’t so much that the game needed fixing but that it needed someone to fix it. Owners from both leagues, desperate to restore a measure of prestige, formed an outside commission to come up with a solution. The result was a federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who became the game’s first commissioner. The American League and National League remained two eight-team leagues, with their owners answering to the commissioner. Johnson’s power was diminished. As for the New National, it became old news.

“It was mostly talk, but it served their purpose,” said baseball historian Glenn Stout, whose many books include “Yankees Century,” written with Richard Johnson. “No one wanted to see the league torn apart. Their purpose was to get Johnson off their back. They felt they were being treated unfairly.”

Had the Insurrectos gone ahead with their plan, Stout said, “In all likelihood, certainly some American League teams would have gone out of business. Let’s face it, if you would have taken Babe Ruth out of what was left of that league, what do you have?

“He was the biggest draw in baseball — not just for the Yankees, but for every other team in the American League,” said Stout. “When the Yankees came to town, he filled up ballparks. Without him … the remnants of the American League, fans wouldn’t have treated it well. It would have been looked on as a minor league.”

The Nov. 9, 1920, edition of the Brooklyn Citizen carried a story, penned by a Wm. J. Granger, positing that “The proposed twelve-club league world be a tremendous money maker for Ebbets Field, for in the Yankees, White Sox and Red Sox it would bring to the Flatbush ballyard three attractions that would set new attendance records.”

A powerful 12-team National League — the New National — would likely have dissuaded prospective rivals from starting up a new league. The New National surely would have expanded over the years, and teams still would have relocated. Even under these circumstances, the Boston Braves, for instance, probably still would have moved somewhere (as they eventually did when they left for Milwaukee in 1953).

Or maybe not. Maybe it would have been the Red Sox who moved. But we’ll never know, this because in 1920 baseball’s owners sought to clean up the so-called Black Sox scandal, which led to the formation of a National Commission, which led to Landis. And he said he’d only take the job if was given the title of “commissioner” and could run the game as he saw fit.

That was more or less the end of Ban Johnson as a power broker, and the end of the New National.

Just like that.

European soccer fans are hoping the Super League suffers a similar fate.

* Associated Press

Blue Jays shake up lineup, beat Red Sox 6-3 at Fenway

BOSTON (AP) — Looking to spark a scuffling offense, Toronto manager shook up his lineup Wednesday night and the Blue Jays responded in a 6-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox.

After the start was delayed 31 minutes by rain, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit an RBI single in the first inning and the Blue Jays scored three more runs in the second against Garrett Richards (0-2).

Toronto finished with 10 hits, including two apiece for Guerrero, Bo Bichette, Randal Grichuk and Marcus Semien, to split a two-game set with its AL East rivals at Fenway Park.

Trent Thornton started and went two innings in a bullpen game for the Blue Jays. Six relievers followed and held down Boston’s potent offense.

Ryan Borucki (2-1) tossed two scoreless innings for the win.

Xander Bogaerts hit a solo homer in the eighth, cutting the deficit to one, but Toronto added two insurance runs in the ninth.