Fantasy: Take Boston Red Sox’ faith in Marco Scutaro as a positive sign
Submitted by Imaginary Diamond Blog
After the Boston Red Sox evaluated free agent shortstop Marco Scutaro and deemed him worthy of a two-year, $12.5 million contract, fantasy owners should have taken their cue. Scutaro, who rose suddenly to fantasy “usefulness,” is a quality baseball player and a “glue guy” for fantasy and Major League teams alike.
Scutaro wasn’t particularly flashy in fantasy, hitting .282 with 12 HRs, 60 RBIs, 100 runs and 14 stolen bases in 144 games last season, but he did make an impact, despite dealing with plantar fasciitis in his right heel. Read the words of Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein carefully, and you’ll see a real GM trying to do what fantasy GMs couldn’t last season; make sense of Scutaro’s sudden splash.
“When someone has a career year, a best of his career year at age 33, I think you have to look at it with some scrutiny, and we did at the beginning of this process,’’ Epstein told the Boston Globe
. “You want to see if you can identify factors that contributed to it, how many of those factors are repeatable, and how many are just random or luck.”
Later in the Globe story, Epstein hits on exactly what made the difference for Scutaro last season: opportunity. He had played seven seasons as a part-timer and utility player in New York, Oakland and Toronto before taking over as the Blue Jays’ starting shortstop last season. Certainly, after 650 games and 1,000-plus at-bats worth of experience, a grinder like Scutaro was more than ready to take advantage of an everyday job.
There’s a point to all this, I promise. And that is, Scutaro will at least be in the neighborhood of last season’s production. He can also take another step forward statistically, given his escape from Toronto to the more fantasy-friendly environment in Boston. His lineup is better, and his home ballpark is more condusive to extra-base hits.
Unlike last season, fantasy owners will have to pay for Scutaro’s services at the beginning of the season. But, given the amount of faith the Boston organization put into him, he looks every bit like a sound investment as a rock steady backup shortstop.
