Road Trip to Port Charlotte
Sunday, February 26, 2017 – Charlotte Sports Park, Port Charlotte
Rays 7, Red Sox 3
Today was the first road game for the Red Sox, a short drive north to Port Charlotte to take on the Rays. It was also my last game before heading much further back north. We know going in that for road games in Spring Training, especially this early on, teams are expected to bring just four guys who are projected to be on the major league roster, filling in the rest of the spots with minor leaguers. Today the four were Brock Holt, Andrew Benintendi, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Fernando Abad. Blake Swihart was there too, but he’ll most likely start the year in Pawtucket. The rest of the starting lineup were Triple A guys, and they were all eventually replaced by Double A (or lower) guys.
Not a lot went right for the Red Sox in this game. They got in a 4-0 hole and only got going offensively in the seventh when they finally broke through for three runs.
The subs for both teams included lots of players borrowed from minor league camp. For the Rays, they were the guys without names on their backs. For the Red Sox, they duplicated uniform numbers of guys we knew. I do follow our minor league teams, so many of the names were familiar to me. I felt like I was saying “we saw this guy on the Sea Dogs last year” a lot. One guy I was excited to see was Kyri Washington, who came in to play right field in the bottom of the seventh. I felt like Peter Gammons when I recalled that we had seen him play for the Wareham Gatemen in the Cape Cod League at a game in Hyannis in 2014, and that he had made it as far as Single A Greenville last season. I always keep score when I watch a Cape League game for that very reason, and I’ve been tracking the players I saw on both teams ever since to see who got drafted and how far they went. Today, that research finally paid off!
The game ended as a 7-3 loss, and now tomorrow I have to fly back to Boston. I won’t get to see these guys again until Opening Day on April 3. (I suppose technically I won’t see many of the players from today’s game until July, when I make my annual trip to watch the Sea Dogs.) Until then, I’m going to end with another picture from last Tuesday, when my all-time favorite player put in an appearance:
Posted in: 2017 Games, 2017 Spring Training