The Red Sox may be staring at a familiar kind of sting right now: two players with New England roots are thriving in pinstripes, and both of them could have been part of Boston’s future.
Cam Schlittler, who played his college ball at Northeastern, has emerged as one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball. Ben Rice, meanwhile, has been one of the better offensive players in the sport over the past six months. Both are Yankees now, and both would have looked awfully good in a Red Sox uniform.
That’s the backdrop for the latest round of frustration around Boston’s draft misses. According to the Boston Globe, Ray Fagnant - the scout who covers New England for the Red Sox - recommended both players, but the team passed.
Craig Breslow addressed the topic Monday morning and didn’t try to dodge it.
"I can't speak specifically about Schlittler or Rice. I wasn't here during their drafts. I think there are probably 28 other teams who are saying the exact same thing and what is most important is that we're taking steps to understand how do players like slip through the draft, slip past us, and make sure that when the next player with that ability, is in our backyard, we're taking every opportunity to make sure that they end up in a Red Sox uniform,” Breslow said.
That’s the heart of it for Boston: not just the pain of watching two local products shine for the Yankees, but the larger question of how players like that get away in the first place.
Still, the misses need context. Neither Schlittler nor Rice entered the process as can’t-miss stars, elite high school recruits, or finished products who dominated every stop along the way. They weren’t Buster Posey, Stephen Strasburg, or Bryce Harper types sitting right there in the Red Sox backyard.
So yes, the what-if is real. But it’s also the kind of what-if every team in baseball can point to if it wants to do enough digging. The Yankees may be the ones benefiting now, but they’ve had their share of scouting mistakes too.
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