The Red Sox presumptive starting shortstop is no longer the Red Sox presumptive starting shortstop. Assumed to take over the most important infield position with Xander Bogaerts off enjoying the sun (and $280 million) in San Diego, Trevor Story will instead spend the next as-yet-unspecified number of months rehabbing after arm surgery. The Red Sox announced yesterday morning that Story had undergone “internal brace” surgery on his throwing arm, a surgery similar though less intense than Tommy John surgery. It’s not known when he will be able to return, but other players have been able to come back from similar surgeries in about a half year.
The injury leaves the Red Sox without any starting middle infielders from their 2022 roster and me with a fist-shapped hole in the drywall in my garage. So yeah. 2023 is off to quite a start. Let’s talk about it.
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So let’s talk about Story first. There were real questions about Story’s arm strength and therefore about his ability to take over at shortstop for the now-enjoying-excellent-Mexican-food Bogaerts. The good news is this procedure does fix that problem! The bad news is it fixes it by removing Story’s ability to use his right arm at all.
Story should come back better and healthier and potentially more able to play shortstop than he would have been without the surgery. That’s a good thing, or at least it could be. This does create a problem however. Now the Red Sox don’t have a shortstop. For real this time.
Let’s quickly talk timeline. There was a report that… well, just look at this.
There’s a lot of dumb stuff on Twitter (why I’m trying to stay off it more and more) and this is more of that. Story didn’t hurt his arm and intentionally withhold that information. The Red Sox didn’t know Story hurt his arm and wait until later in the off-season to have him get surgery. That would be self-defeating and stupid. Story hurt himself ramping up, hoped it would go away, it didn’t, and now he’s having the surgery. That’s the timeline. It’s possible other information could come out, but if it’s not reported by Alex Speier or another extremely reputable source, don’t believe it.
For example, look at this:
See how that makes sense? And no, Bob Nightengale, despite occasionally getting something right, is not a reputable source. Neither is anyone just spouting off on Twitter.
So it seems Story is going to be out for the next six months. But brace for another Speier tweet… INCOMING!
We know the Red Sox need a starting shortstop for the first part of the season but it seems likely Story will miss even more than that. We might not see Story on the field until 2024. Also, I’ve been focusing on shortstop, but Story played second base last season, so the hole in the roster created by Story’s absence is really at second base. There’s still a hole at short too though. You know, in case you forgot.
So okay, what do the Red Sox do? Chaim Bloom has been talking about making a trade for a while, so presumably that route is on the table. Before Story’s injury the Red Sox could kinda pick how they wanted to approach things. Maybe prices were too high on the trade market and they could say no, that’s really not what we’re thinking, or no, we’re not prepared to trade that player. They could pick at the dregs of the free agent market and wait to see how things looked around the trade deadline. Now though, without Story, the presumptive starting middle infield duo is Christian Arroyo at second and Enrique Hernandez at short. FanGraphs has that on their roster page and with Hernandez at short, the team now has no center fielder, so Jarren Duran is listed as the starter. Which, well, I’m gonna tell ya, that ain’t happening.
At least Hernandez has some positional flexibility which in turn gives the Red Sox some flex in how they approach acquiring players. But they do have to acquire players now. Before they could hold the line. Now they just have to get it done.
Old friend Jose Iglesias is still out there. They could sign him and hope Story comes back stronger than ever in June. But frankly this team is built on enough hopes and dreams as it is. They might yet sign Iglesias, but hopefully it would be as a middle infield backup, or at least as part of a platoon of some sort. Beyond that, Bloom better make sure his phone is charged.
Who might they get? My gosh I have no idea. I know that’s kind of the fun part, but it’s so hard to know who is available. So take these with a grain of salt, but here are three names that spring to mind. None of these guys solves both infield positions by themselves, but they’d be a good start. If you think of anyone I forgot, please put it in the comments.
Jake Cronenworth - Cronenworth has been the Padres primary second baseman the past few seasons, but with Xander Bogaerts now in the fold and Fernando Tatis set to return, it looks like Cronenworth could be pushed to first base or the outfield. Both seem like ill fits, so perhaps the Padres would consider moving him. He’s coming off two four win seasons, he’ll take a walk, and he hits for some power, though not a ton (thus the problem with moving him to first or the outfield). He has three more years of team control, so he’d be expensive to acquire, but if Story gets healthy, they could team up for a perfectly acceptable middle infield combo over the next few seasons.
Ha-Seong Kim - Also on the Padres, moving Kim is another potential way San Diego could diffuse their logjam. Can you diffuse a logjam? Anyway. Kim is a far better fielder than Cronenworth and has far fewer letters in his name, so his uniform costs would be substantially less. But Kim isn’t as good a hitter, and is probably a more realistic trade target as moving him off of shortstop makes him far less valuable. He’s on the final two years of a four year, $28 million deal.
Luis Arraez - Carlos Correa’s return to the Twins after ping-ponging around the league this off-season creates a similar issue there as Xander did by signing in San Diego. The Twins now have Correa, Arraez, Jorge Polanco, and Royce Lewis, who will be back mid-season following knee surgery, all for two middle infield spots. Arraez has been mentioned as a trade candidate in the past, so it makes sense the Twins might look to move him. He’s not a great defender but can man second base. His big skill is putting the bat on the ball. He’ll take a walk as well, so while there’s not a lot of power, he does hit for a high average and get on base. He’s entering his first arbitration season.
I failed to mention this above, but it’s worth stating that there really isn’t any middle infield help in Boston’s minor league system that could be ready this season. In the future Marcelo Mayer could be an All Star shortstop, and Nick Yorke could be a good hitting second baseman, and there are a few others with potential, but even in the rosiest of scenarios none will make their major league debut in 2023.
It’ll be interesting to watch how the Red Sox play this. Bloom was hired for his creativity and he does have some pieces to work with and some money available. The aforementioned Duran could be a trade piece. So could Bobby Dalbec. So could Tanner Houck. Not saying those guys could or would be enough to get any specific deal done, just that you might hear their names mentioned in addition to minor leaguers.
There’s no sugarcoating this though. Without Story the Red Sox have nothing in the middle infield worth depending on. They have to fix this. Boston’s hopes in 2023 depend on it. Hope Bloom’s phone is charged.
Thanks for reading.
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