The Red Sox are trying to figure out what they have in Chad Tracy, and this week produced a small but meaningful update on where the organization stands. The short version: they are not ready to move on, but the leash is not what it was earlier in the summer.
Tracy was one of the feel-good stories of Boston’s first half. The Red Sox rode a 15-game winning streak that ended in July, and Tracy was in the middle of that stretch as a lineup regular. He hit for average. He played solid defense. He was one of the reasons the fanbase started to believe this team was for real.
Then July ended and August started, and the version of Tracy that showed up looked nothing like the one from June. The average dropped. The at-bats got tentative. The clutch moments turned into strikeouts. It happens to young hitters. It always happens to young hitters. Knowing that does not make it easier to sit through when your team is chasing a wild card.
The update from the front office was measured. They still believe in him. He is still going to get regular at-bats. But there are shifts in the roster philosophy that suggest the organization is preparing contingency plans if the slump extends deeper into September.
What the Red Sox are dealing with is the classic tension between long-term development and short-term contention. Tracy is exactly the kind of player you want to keep in the lineup so he learns how to hit through a slump at the big league level. That is how you get the next version of a legit everyday player.
But the Red Sox are not in a spot where they can afford to run a struggling bat out there for the sake of development. They are three games out of a wild card with 30 to play. Every game matters. Every at-bat matters. Alex Cora knows it, the front office knows it, and Tracy knows it.
The Adley Rutschman acquisition at the deadline changed some of the calculus. Boston is deeper than they were a month ago. There are more veteran options to plug into the lineup when a young hitter needs a breather. That is a resource the team did not have during the June winning streak.
Tracy is not being demoted. He is not being traded. Neither of those things is on the table. What is on the table is a smaller role if the swing does not come back in the next two weeks, and both sides are aware of it.
The kid has plenty of career ahead of him. September will tell us how much of it happens in a Red Sox uniform.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
