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The Boston Red Sox Monday, December 7, 2020 * The Boston Globe The Red Sox could bolster their roster with any of these non-tendered free agents Julian McWilliams The Red Sox will attend the Winter Meetings next week, or to put it more accurately, Winter Zoom Meetings. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meetings won’t take place in-person, but over conference calls and in video breakout rooms. Free agency is running at a snail’s pace. Daily transactions, too. But last Wednesday’s non-tender deadline brought some intrigue, and some players who were non-tendered should intrigue the Red Sox. Here is a look at some of them: Eddie Rosario Rosario made his major-league debut in 2015 with the Minnesota Twins and has been a very good player for them in his six seasons. In 2,830 at-bats, the outfielder hit .277/.310/.478 with a .788 OPS to go along with 119 homers. He had a career-low average last season, hitting just .257 but managed to pump out 13 homers in the shortened 60-game season. Rosario, who bats lefthanded, is not a big on-base guy, but his power has been obvious in recent years. After surpassing the 20-homer mark in 2017 and 2018, Rosario went deep a career-high 32 times in 2019. Rosario struggles on defense, posting a career -20.8 defensive WAR, so right field at Fenway might be too tall a task for him. Nevertheless, the majority of his innings have come in left field, which is more manageable. Rosario also has a connection in Boston: Alex Cora. Rosario played for Puerto Rico in the 2017 World Baseball Classic. Cora was the team’s general manager. David Dahl Dahl missed much of the end of last season with the Colorado Rockies due to back soreness and a shoulder strain. When he was in the lineup, Dahl hit just .183 in 99 plate appearances. Yet even with the underwhelming season, he remains one of the most highly coveted players that was non-tendered. Dahl batted .297 over his first three seasons in the majors, posting a .521 slugging percentage and an .867 OPS. He also got on base at a solid clip, with a .346 OBP in that span. His batted-ball profile fits Fenway well, with a fly-ball rate that is geared mainly toward left field. Dahl, who bats lefthanded, can play center field if need be. More importantly, he won’t turn 27 until April of next year and has three more seasons of team control before becoming a free agent after the 2023 season. Adam Duvall The former Atlanta Braves outfielder has some pop in his bat. The Red Sox got a taste of that last September in Boston when Duvall touched them up for three homers in the final game of Atlanta’s three- game sweep at Fenway. Duvall had another three-homer game a week later in a rout of the Miami Marlins. Duvall won’t hit for much average, but the power alone makes him a threat. A career .233 hitter, Duvall had back-to-back seasons of 30-plus homers in 2016 and ’17 with the Cincinnati Reds. Despite hitting just .237 in 2020, Duvall managed to belt 16 homers while slugging .532 and putting up an .833 OPS. Though he has only stolen 13 bases in his career, Duvall has good speed, ranking in the 78th percentile last season at the age of 32. Jose Urena Urena turned 29 in September. The righthander has plus velocity, averaging 95.6 miles per hour on his fastball, but can he ever get the productivity to match it? Over the last two seasons, Urena has a 5.25 ERA in 108 innings of work, mostly as a starter. Yet if the 2020 World Series — better yet, the entire postseason — showed us anything, it’s that velocity matters. Think about the Tampa Bay Rays’ bullpen and core starting group, they all threw hard. The New York Yankees and Dodgers, too. That Boston’s chief baseball officer, Chaim Bloom, is a product of the Tampa system that is built on finding velocity and untapped potential and then developing it, might make Urena a match for the Red Sox. Ryne Stanek Stanek and Bloom have history. The righthander came up with the Rays, making his debut as a 25-year-old rookie in 2017. He found success over the following two seasons with the Rays and Marlins, pitching a combined 143⅓ innings and striking out 170 batters in that span. He also had a 1.200 WHIP. In 2020, he struggled to gain his footing with the Marlins, resulting in a 7.20 ERA in just 10 innings pitched. But again, arms matter, as does flexibility. The Sox may view Stanek as a low-risk, high-reward pitcher who is under team control through 2023. Rhode Island native Chris Iannetta reflects on MLB career, looks forward to what’s next Peter Abraham Chris Iannetta joined the Yankees on a minor league contract for spring training last season, hopeful of continuing what had been a long and successful career. If it didn’t work out, he was comfortable going off into retirement. The best memory Iannetta took from that experience came on March 12 when he lined an RBI double to right field off Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle, a pitcher who had always given him trouble. “That was my last at-bat before they shut the season down,” Iannetta said. “A long double, the opposite way off a tough pitcher. It felt poetic to me. If that was it for me, at least I got a hit.” Iannetta stayed with the Yankees when spring training resumed in July. He made the team and was on the active roster for six games, although he never came off the bench. Iannetta was designated for assignment on Aug. 1 while the Yankees were at Fenway Park. Iannetta cleared waivers three days later and was outrighted to minor league camp. But he decided to retire instead. “That just wasn’t for me,” Iannetta said. “I went home.” Home is Wrentham. Iannetta grew up in Rhode Island and was a star at St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket before going on to play at North Carolina. That led to being a fourth-round pick of the Rockies in 2004 and making his major league debut two years later. Iannetta played parts of 14 years with the Rockies, Angels, Mariners, and Diamondbacks. He is Colorado’s all-time leader for games, runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, and walks by a catcher. Iannetta also played in nine postseason games along the way and earned roughly $40 million. That’s a career far better than most. “I never thought I’d have one day of major league service time,” Iannetta said. “I’m very thankful for the opportunity I had to play as long as I did. It’ll take some time to set in, to realize what actually transpired. But I’ve always vowed to myself that when I was done playing, I’d never make too much of it. “There’s so many people you come in contact with who were .200 hitters when they played and you talk to them and they sound like they were Babe Ruth. That’s never going to be me. I’ll always remember how difficult it was.” At 37, Iannetta is ready for a new chapter. He has two daughters he can now spend more time with and is eager to visit parts of New England during the spring and summer. “I haven’t been to a beach in Rhode Island since I was 16,” Iannetta said. “I was always somewhere playing.” He also plays guitar and owns a winery with former teammate Vernon Wells. There will be no shortage of things to do. Iannetta leaves baseball at what he considers a crucial time for a sport he loves. “It can be a beautiful game out there on the field, but it’s becoming so sterile,” he said. “There are diminishing returns when all you see are home runs, strikeouts, and walks. “The product that’s on the field is losing fans more than MLB realizes.” As a catcher, Iannetta fundamentally understands the importance of analytics in evaluating players and preparing for games. But he feels the reliance on data has changed the game for the worse. “How many times can you celebrate the umpteenth home run?” he said. “The subtle nuances are missing. Guys who pitched their hearts out and went deep into games, that’s a story people wanted. “Now it’s exit velocity and who can hit the ball the hardest, not who’s actually a good hitter. The good baseball players are being marginalized.” Iannetta believes how the game is being presented is part of the problem. The emphasis on home runs and fastball velocity neatly packaged in 30-second clips on social media obscures a bigger picture. “The next generation of fans is absorbing baseball from Twitter and highlights. They’re not watching the entirety of the game,” Iannetta said. “The game isn’t slow. It’s actually very fast-paced if you watch everything that’s going on.” Iannetta broke into the majors at a time when fans appreciated a runner being moved into scoring position or how an infielder could save a run by holding a runner at second base. “Somebody taught you that when you grew up,” he said. “You don’t see that now. There’s a responsibility from the players and media.