The Boston Red Sox Thursday, April 1, 2021 * The Boston Globe With new faces, Red Sox begin quest to start anew, and put 2020 in the distance Alex Speier Opening Day typically offers the promise of renewal. Yet for the Red Sox, the first game of the 2021 season offers something more — the long-awaited opportunity for the franchise to begin officially distancing itself from the wreckage of the 2020 campaign. An active offseason represented a potential start to that undertaking. The team that is introduced prior to Thursday’s 2:10 p.m. contest against the Orioles will be drastically different from the one that last played in front of fans on Sept. 29, 2019 — a game punctuated by Mookie Betts diving across the plate in an extra- innings walkoff victory over Baltimore – and the one that opened last year’s fan-less, ill-fated, last-place slog through a compressed season. Many of the most recognizable faces in recent franchise history are now gone. The last time a home opener had fans in attendance, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Andrew Benintendi, David Price, and Dustin Pedroia all collected their rings. Now, Betts and Price are Dodgers, Benintendi is a Royal, Bradley a Brewer, and Pedroia a retired dad. Still, while much has changed with those departures and the additions of players such as new leadoff hitter Kiké Hernández, outfielder Hunter Renfroe, starter Garrett Richards and late-innings contributor and Northeastern alum Adam Ottavino, there is some sense of reconnection to a time that predates the past 18 tumultuous months. The re-hiring of Alex Cora – back after a one-year parting of ways that sprang from his role in a 2017 Astros cheating scandal – has created a sense of restoration inside the organization. “It’s like he never left. Everyone missed him a lot last year,” said starter Nathan Eovaldi. “You feel like you’re going to get better every day being around him. It’s like he doesn’t miss anything. He takes everything in stride. It’s great having him back.” In other areas of the team, the Red Sox have embraced change – particularly in a rotation that produced a franchise-worst 5.34 ERA last year. For the second straight year, the sidelining of both Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez has resulted in Eovaldi taking the ball in the team’s first game of the season. Yet the options behind Eovaldi look significantly better than at the start of 2020. Last year, Eovaldi was followed in the first turn of the rotation by Martín Pérez, righthander Ryan Weber, lefthander Josh Osich (an opener), and lefthander Matt Hall. Osich is now gone and both Weber and Hall will be in Worcester after being outrighted off the 40-man roster in the offseason. Though Pérez was re-signed, he’s now the team’s fifth starter. Eovaldi will be followed Saturday by promising righty Tanner Houck (an expected fill-in for Rodriguez), with free agent Garrett Richards scheduled to start Sunday, and righthander Nick Pivetta – acquired from the Phillies in a trade last summer – taking the ball in the fourth game. Rodriguez could be back from dead-arm as soon as next week, while Sale may return from Tommy John surgery around midseason. The group won’t be confused with the 1990s Braves, but all of its members have shown the arsenals to avoid the repetitively uncompetitive contests of a year ago. “With us losing Sale and Eddie, it didn’t make anything easier for us. We had to ask a lot of our other guys to pick up the slack,” said Eovaldi. “I’m happy where we are now. You have the doubters out there. You can say what you want. But us having the rotation we have … it’s going to be a fun year for us. I feel like our starters are going to do a lot of great things this year.” The lineup has likewise undergone a drastic overhaul. Of the projected Opening Day starters, only Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, J.D. Martinez, and Christian Vázquez were with the team in the big leagues at the end of 2019. Yet the Sox insist that the group they field – with table-setters Hernández and Alex Verdugo along with powerful bottom-of-the-order options Renfroe (33 homers in 2019) and nine-hole hitter Bobby Dalbec (8 homers in 23 games last year; a major league-leading seven spring training homers this year) -- can put up runs in bunches. The team believes it’s capable of improving on its middle-of-the-pack scoring output (4.87 runs per game, 11th in the majors) from a year ago. “Not only are we deep, but in this era of baseball where a lot of runs are scored through the long ball, one through nine we’re more than capable of doing that. … But I think we’ve got a little bit of everything in the lineup,” said Hernández. “I think we’re really good, a really balanced lineup, and I think we’re going to be pretty good.” “Pretty good” sounds like a relatively modest standard for a Red Sox organization that frequently enters the year with an unabashed championship-or-bust mindset. It is the phraseology of a team whose potential emergence as a contender would have to come in spite of expectations rather than as confirmation of them. Nonetheless, on Opening Day, such standards and hopes serve as an eye-of-the-beholder phenomenon at the beginning of a 162-game exploration in possibility. Reality can now take shape. Red Sox leadoff man Kiké Hernández can hardly wait to get things started Alex Speier Kiké Hernández started anticipating Opening Day at Fenway Park almost as soon as he signed his two-year deal with the Red Sox in January, but he couldn’t wait quite that long to soak in his new home environment. With the Red Sox back in Boston, Hernández stopped at the park early Wednesday. He made a point of taking in the view from the home dugout and experienced something very different from what he encountered as a visitor with the Dodgers in 2018 and 2019. “The view from the first-base dugout is a lot more special in this stadium than the view from the third-base dugout, I can tell you that,” said Hernández. “It felt special. The magic of Fenway, you can actually feel it from the first-base dugout. “Like I’ve said, there’s a lot that I’m looking forward to, a lot that I’m excited about, and nothing that I take for granted.” The 29-year-old’s eagerness for Opening Day only increased once manager Alex Cora approached him about batting leadoff. For weeks, Hernández has been breaking down video of Baltimore Opening Day starter John Means, looking forward to the challenge of setting the tone for the Red Sox season. “I’ve thought about it ever since he sent me that text challenging me to be the leadoff hitter,” said Hernández. Hernández has a recent history of impressive Opening Day performances. He cracked the Opening Day lineup for the first time in 2018, and stayed there the last two seasons. In those three contests, he went 6 for 10 with three homers and three walks, and he’s gone deep in each of the last two season-opening contests. “The last two years have been pretty special on Opening Day, and this one is special regardless just because it’s a new team, new stadium, new city,” said Hernández. “Also my first official game being a dad. So I’m excited about a lot of things.” Light mound work Eduardo Rodriguez, who is working back to full strength after being briefly slowed by a dead arm late in spring training, was one of several Red Sox pitchers who did light mound work at Fenway Park on Wednesday. The Red Sox have yet to make an official decision about whether the lefthander will open the year on the injured list, though Cora hinted strongly at such a possibility before the team left Fort Myers … Catcher Christian Vázquez, who required stitches when a thrown ball hit him in the face during a drill last week, will be on the Opening Day active roster … Xander Bogaerts is slated to make his eighth consecutive Opening Day start at shortstop, tying Everett Scott (1914-21) for the most in franchise history. Minor details With the big league team gone north, Red Sox minor leaguers will convene for two camps. In Worcester, more than two dozen players making up the near-term big league depth (as well as some upper-level prospects) will work out at Polar Park, the new home of the Red Sox’ Triple A affiliate. That group will include three of the team’s most impressive spring performers — Jarren Duran, Jeter Downs, and Michael Chavis — as well as pitchers Connor Seabold, Ryan Weber, Matt Hall, and Daniel Gossett, and catcher Connor Wong. Several of the younger top prospects who were in big league camp, including first baseman Triston Casas, have stayed in Fort Myers, Fla. Other minor leaguers who hadn’t been invited to big league camp started arriving Wednesday in Fort Myers for the start of their spring training. Workouts in minor league camp will begin Friday. Teams are allowed to have 215 players and staff in camp. The Red Sox expect to have approximately 135 following the completion of COVID-19 intake protocols. Timing it out Gates at Fenway Park will open at 12:10 p.m.