WORCESTER—Baseball’s opening day counts as less than one percent in the final standings but generates a lot more interest than that.
It always has and hopefully always will.
Worcester Red Sox fans are fortunate. They have two Opening Days. Double the fun, right?
The WooSox’s fourth season begins Friday, March 29, at Lehigh Valley. The Boston Red Sox’ 124th season begins Thursday in Seattle. In this fourth year of the Worcester-Boston connection, the affiliation is really starting to bloom.
Seven starters in Boston’s Opening Day lineup may be Worcester Red Sox graduates—in other words, players who made their major league debuts after playing for the WooSox.
That list looks like this: pitcher Brayan Bello, catcher Connor Wong, first baseman Triston Casas, second baseman Enmanuel Valdez, outfielders Jarren Duran, Cedanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu.
Until this season, the only WooSox graduate to play on opening day for Boston was Casas in 2023.
Include former PawSox third baseman Rafael Devers on the list and that makes eight farm-system graduates possibly starting for Boston on Opening Day. Ex-PawSox and WooSox batter Bobby Dalbec is a possibility, too.
The last days of spring training are usually pretty fluid, so the final opening day lineups are approximations at this point. However, the best case scenario would have this year’s major league lineup in game 1 being one of the most homegrown in years, or even decades.
Since Pawtucket took over as Boston’s Triple-A affiliate in 1973, the Red Sox record is nine opening day starters who were Triple-A graduates. That happened in 1988 and 1989.
In ’88 the graduates were WooSox batting coach Rich Gedman, Dwight Evans, Marty Barrett, Wade Boggs, Jim Rice, Brady Anderson, Mike Greenwell, Roger Clemens and Sam Horn. The only outsider was shortstop Spike Owen. Evans was promoted from Louisville before the PawSox took over the affiliation.
The next year, first baseman Nick Esasky was the exception. Homegrown Jody Reed replaced Owen at shortstop and Ellis Burks replaced Anderson in center field.
As an added bonus, the ’89 Red Sox were managed by Joe Morgan who had previously managed the Pawtucket Red Sox.
Having a homegrown roster on opening day has not always translated into a good season, but it often has. The major exception—and it is a really major exception—is 2004. The only farm system product who started on opening day that year was catcher Jason Varitek.
That is the fewest since 1973.
That season opened inauspiciously with a dreary 7-2 loss in Baltimore. Burks did not start that game but did appear as a pinch hitter. He, Kevin Youkilis, Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon all played — all Triple-A graduates —for Boston at some point that year.
Boston’s three other World Champions since 2004 include the 2007 club with three graduates, 2013 with six and 2018 with six.
Bello has already been named this year’s Opening Day starter. He is Boston’s first Triple-A grad to get that nod since Clay Buchholz in 2015. Assuming that Wong is the catcher, it will be the Red Sox’s first homegrown battery on Opening Day since 1989 when Gedman caught Roger Clemens.
There is one wrinkle in that timeline.
Varitek caught Curt Schilling in 2006 and 2007. Schilling was drafted and signed by Boston but never played a Triple-A game for the Sox. He was traded out of Double-A in 1988 as part of the deal for Mike Boddicker and did not return to Boston for 16 years, or until 2004.
The Boston Red Sox are counting on their farm system to be the backbone of the major league roster this year, and for several more seasons, much as it historically has been.
Opening Day 2024 looks like it could be the start of that process.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
