NEW YORK — A potential MVP award isn’t something to walk away from lightly. Neither is a 30-30 season, nor is a chance to win a World Series.
MORE - Bullpen? Dombrowski says Sox had 'other priorities'
For the second time this year, Mookie Betts has a sore left side. The injury landed him on the disabled list once before, but it's not as severe this time.
So, with 11 games to go and the division virtually sealed, the Red Sox and Betts have a choice to make on a near daily basis: is it worth playing?
The reasons he would play are twofold. One is simple and playoff-centric. Playing would help him keep his confidence at the plate. He’s a self-described feel hitter, and the Sox want to be mindful of his timing.
“He needs his at-bats,” manager Alex Cora said Tuesday. “And he’s the first one that will tell you that.”
The second potential reason is more difficult because it involves the individual. There's a chance for Betts to be known as the best player in the majors in 2019, to win the American League MVP award in a neck-and-neck race with Mike Trout and to go 30-30. Securing those spots in baseball history would add to both a growing legacy — hey, maybe he wants to go to the Hall of Fame someday — and the size of his eventual payday.
Boston Red Sox
Individual accomplishments can be worth fighting for, despite the prevalent sacrifice-yourself mentality of pro sports. Just consider how Betts may feel: he's so close to the top in one respect. Bow out now? Not if he doesn't have to.
Betts said Tuesday he was not inclined to power through this situation for the sake of numbers.
“Not really, just because I need to be fully healthy for the postseason to win a World Series,” Betts said. “I’ve had a good year so far. We’re close to the end and those things are pretty cool, but the most important thing is to win a World Series and be here for the team.”
Betts probably means that. Betts probably is also smart enough to know, too, that if he were to say he wants to finish off an MVP campaign — if that's how he feels — he’d get ripped for allegedly not being a team-first guy.
Let's make one assumption: if Betts were in highly elevated danger of being hurt by playing, he wouldn’t force the issue, and neither would the Sox.
More likely, the matter falls into a grey area where a couple extra days off won’t heal him fully anyway.
“Any little thing can make it happen,” Betts said Tuesday of the nature of his injury. “That’s happened in many cases. Anything can happen. You manage it by resting. I don’t think there’s any method you can do to get back healthy quicker."
So, if I’m the Red Sox, I don’t want Betts playing much at all, even if the risk is low. And if I’m Betts, I want to be out there, as long as the risk is in fact low. And this may be a rare situation where there’s no middle ground to stand on. Either you play or you don't, you put it on the line or you don't.
That’s not a suggestion of contentiousness. It's just tricky.
“One thing for sure, with him, and I know he's close to doing a few things that are very special in this game, but like I've been saying, he's a small guy,” Cora said. “Not as big as other ones and we need him to be close to 100 percent when we go to October."
Betts said that his injury is in the same spot as it was in June, when he went to the disabled list with a left abdominal strain. The severity is different. But the nature of those types of injuries, and how long they can take to heal if they get worse, should give all parties great pause, and likely have.
Cora on Sunday said Betts may be the designated hitter on Tuesday. Tuesday arrived, and Betts was going to start in center field at Yankee Stadium. Then heavy rain arrived and the slick field pushed Betts out of the lineup entirely.
The latest: after the Sox fell, 3-2, Cora said that if Betts can now play, Wednesday it would be as the designated hitter.
“He’ll come back tomorrow, most likely,” Cora said. “I know I said that on Sunday, but, he should DH tomorrow.”
That progression feels like shaky territory. Rainy weather is not worth the risk, but otherwise, Betts is OK to go in the outfield? No, now he's likely to DH again.
Betts is one home run and two steals away from a 30-30 season. He would be the second player this year to reach 30-30, along with another MVP candidate, Jose Ramirez. Before Ramirez, no one had gone 30-30 since 2012, when Trout and Ryan Braun pulled it off.
Entering Tuesday, Betts was tied with Trout in wins above replacement as measured by FanGraphs for the best player in the majors, at 9.1. Betts finished runner-up to Trout two years ago in the MVP race, and too many down days as the Sox finish up their season might tip the scales to Trout again.
There will be plenty of other factors considered by the voters — rightly or wrongly — including the fact that Betts is on a playoff team. He may win the major league batting title, leading the world to begin Tuesday at .337.
To at least some extent, it seems Chris Sale became comfortable with the idea of potentially missing out on the Cy Young award. He was diagnosed with left shoulder bursitis, a condition that required considerably more rest than what Betts is presently dealing with. The diagnosis also came well before the middle of the final month of the season.
Nonetheless, if all that mattered to the Sox and Betts were the postseason, Betts is probably not playing for at least a few more days. Nothing is safer than resting.
But all-time great players want to achieve all-time great things, and that's not just in the postseason.
There's no real compromise. You take the risk or you don't. But it is that, a risk. And maybe, when it comes to a health and October, a justifiable risk. Or at the least, an understandable one.