It remains to be seen what kind of impact Benintendi will make at the major league level in 2016, but it’s clear that Dombrowski is not afraid to give highly touted prospects a chance to give the team a spark down the stretch.
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But the Sox didn’t mindlessly decide to call up Benintendi on Tuesday. They had considerable discussion over the weekend, weighing pros and cons and seeking input from their top scouts. However, the time between draft day and MLB debut for Benintendi puts him in good company with the Cubs’ Kyle Schwarber and Mets’ Michael Conforto as recent examples of players to make it to the major leagues one year after being drafted. He struck out three of the four batters he faced in a scoreless ninth to earn his first career save.Donn Roach (2-0) earned the win after giving up one run on one hit in two innings.Mariners starter Wade LeBlanc allowed three runs on five hits over six innings and left the game with Seattle trailing 3-0.Boston veteran David Ortiz went 1-for-3 with two RBIs. And that’s important at this time.
Benintendi is not a burner, but he will show solid-average speed and will be able to steal a handful of bases due to his great instincts.
Since then, Benintendi has hit.340 in 120 plate appearances with nine doubles, four triples, five home runs, 24 RBI and only nine strikeouts.
He is his league’s reigning player of the week after hitting two home runs and two doubles in a game Sunday.
Law noted that Benintendi’s “hands are super-quick and very strong, and he’s fast enough to stay in center field for the near term”.
Of course, this is about more than talent.
Benintendi got to this point by playing baseball really, really, really well. Price has been sub-par in all but a handful of starts this season and is feeling the heat from Red Sox Nation. Player personnel chief Allard Baird was there a few weeks earlier.
Let’s see where Benintendi is at the moment. “If he goes through an adjustment period, which could happen, we think he can handle that”.
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But he was moved from center to left field just four games ago, so the Red Sox will keep a close eye on how Andrew Benintendi adapts to the position where they need him most, especially when the team returns to Boston on August 9, when Benintendi will need to learn in a hurry how to play the notorious Green Monster left field wall in Fenway Park – a hard challenge even for the most experienced left fielders. So, obviously, Dombrowski feels Benintendi is ready for major league pitching now.
Benintendi will be the Red Sox’s seventh left fielder this season.
So, in discussing whether Benintendi’s time has come, the Red Sox looked at Conforto and Schwarber.
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Or perhaps more precisely, Boston would like Benintendi to provide what their own Xander Bogaerts gave the Red Sox in 2013, helping propel that year’s edition to a World Series victory after a late-season call-up at age 20. He also started the Futures Game on July 10, alongside Moncada, who was named MVP after crushing a two-run home run into the second deck of San Diego’s Petco Park. He batted.270 with 16 homers and an.842 OPS in 69 big-league games and became a cult hero in Chicago during the postseason.
