Boston » Steve Selsky

The 2017 Roster Recap Compendium

Brett Cowett — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:00:33 +0000

During the offseason, we here at BP Boston run a series called Roster Recaps, in which we detail the year that was for every player that graced the major league roster in 2017. Some you might vividly remember (Chris Sale!), while others you’ll struggle to recall what they did (Ben Taylor… ?). For the players in the latter category, we’ve got you covered. If you feel like looking back on some good times, we’ll accommodate you too.

Presenting the full list 2017 Roster Recaps, listed with the authors that wrote them. An asterisk denotes a player who has, as of March 13th, dearly departed the Red Sox. We’ll miss them all terribly.

Catchers

Sandy Leon (Cam Ellis)
Blake Swihart (Jake Devereaux)
Christian Vazquez (Brett Cowett)

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

Roster Recap: Steve Selsky Was Here

Cam Ellis — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 14:14:56 +0000

Look, Steve Selsky had nine plate appearances for the Red Sox last year. He had one hit, which was a double, and struck out five times. He did not draw a walk, because Steve Selsky does not have time for such nonsense. There are doubles to be had. You see that header photo? That’s him, hitting that double! Good ol’ Steve.

Frankly, there’s not really much to say about Steve. He wasn’t really on the 25-man roster last year, he won’t be on the 25-man this year, and that’s that. His wife/girlfriend/significant other once retweeted one of my stories about him, and I thought that merited a mention, but I looked her up and her Twitter account is suspended, so I’m just going to leave that be. Anyway, here’s a look at every Steve Selsky video that I could find that relates to his time with the Red Sox. Turn down the lights, pour yourself a robust glass of red and immerse yourself in everything Selsky:

That’s about how long Selsky was here. You didn’t even finish your glass.

Photo by Rick Osentoski — USA TODAY Sports

Roster Recap: A Short Season For Marco Hernandez

Brett Cowett — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 14:00:23 +0000

A pleasant surprise off the bench in 2016, Marco Hernandez was expected to do a lot of the same in 2017 – hit a little, play around the infield, and be a solid major leaguer who could really shore up the Red Sox’s infield depth. He could’ve probably overtaken Brock Holt as the first man off the bench, had his season not ended on May 12th.

The Red Sox were forced to go through a lot of infielders in 2017, and Hernandez going down was one of the reasons why.

What Went Right

Not a lot, really. It’s hard to have good times when your season ended 60 plate appearances in, and you weren’t even on the Opening Day roster to begin with. But he did have one cool moment, way back at the tail-end of April, which started with Hernandez beating old friend Koji Uehara to first base to get himself an infield single:

And that culminated with Hernandez scoring the go-ahead run later that inning:

See, that’s pretty neat. Silver linings and all that.

What Went Wrong

Everything else.

He wasn’t on the 25-man roster for Opening Day because the Red Sox thought they needed Steve Selsky more than him, despite a good Grapefruit League showing by Hernandez. Then he was finally added to the roster when Xander Bogaerts went on the bereavement list.

A month later, Hernandez would have to be taken out of a game after hurting himself:

Seems innocuous, right? Just a little pinch in the shoulder? It wasn’t. He was put on the disabled list the next day with a left shoulder subluxation, and eight days after that, it was announced that he would need season-ending surgery on said shoulder. Poor Marco.

What To Expect

It’s hard to analyze Hernandez’s hitting in the majors with just 116 plate appearances total, but he can hit a bit with a little power mixed in there. His last stint in the minors came with a .309/.343/.444 slash line, so it’ll be a waste to have him stay there for much longer. He’ll probably pan out and be a solid major league contributor when all is said and done, provided he recovers well from surgery and he doesn’t get bounced off the roster for a worse player.

However, with Dustin Pedroia needing several months to recover from knee surgery, Hernandez is, as of today, the leading candidate to start in his place. The Red Sox have soured a little on Brock Holt, as they might’ve (finally!) realized that he can’t be a day-to-day starter. The other options at second base are Deven Marrero – a player who I’ve said the phrase “if he could only hit” about far too much – and Tzu-Wei Lin, who did well during his time in the majors in 2017, but will probably need more plate appearances in Pawtucket more than anything. With Eduardo Nunez coming back not a sure thing, Hernandez currently tops the depth chart at the keystone.

Had Pedroia been healthy, Hernandez might’ve faced the same outcome as he did in 2017: as the 26th man for a 25-man roster. With some playing time opening up, we’ll see more of him than we have in the past two seasons combined, and he’ll hopefully come out of it looking like a player with a little upside that won’t hurt you when he plays. He’s got the skills. Now he just needs the time to show them off.

Photo by Winslow Townson – USA TODAY Sports

Steve Selsky, Man of Mystery

Cam Ellis — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 12:00:50 +0000

It’s March 20th, so we’re going to talk about Steve Selsky.

A little exposition: he’s a 27-year-old career minor leaguer who’s been getting some at-bats with the Red Sox this spring. He hits and throws righty and plays in the outfield, for now. The difference between Selsky and 95 percent of the other players who don’t get to have their last names on the back of their #87 jersey is that in Selsky, the team seems to think they’ve legitimately found a useful major league contributor.

Nice! I’m soldsky. What does he do well?

To get a sense of what Selsky brings to the team, you have to take a look at his minor league numbers, as he’s only had 54 plate appearances at the major league level. As you can probably guess, that will get touched upon later, so let’s just look at his minor league numbers and make some questionable jumps in logic!

Selsky has shown flashes of being able to hit in the minors. He slashed .348/.420/.618 in 69 games (nice) for the Reds’ Single-A team in 2012 and then followed that up by hitting .297/.388/.497 over 97 games the following year. He also flexed some power, hitting 28 home runs over that two-year span. He’s had up and down years since then, but is coming off a 2016 season where he hit .280/.363/.459 over 85 games for the Reds’ Triple-A team. So, the ability’s there. Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal wrote about Selsky’s path to the team that touched on how the team views Selsky’s potential role.

Obviously, it’s telling that the team is giving him reps at third. There’s hardly any point in showing that level of commitment to a player of Selsky’s caliber unless the team sees something in him. As the Red Sox roster stands, there’s no real position that Selsky could make a realistic run at, even as a backup. The depth is intriguing though, and the team seems to think they have a versatile bench bat.

This is wonderful news! What a convenient story. What’s the catch?

Where to begin?

– He’s had 54 major league plate appearances since getting drafted six years ago. Fifty-four. If he was a sure bet to even reach his relatively low ceiling, you’d think he’d be closer to reaching it by now.

– Sure, he’s had some good years. But he also hit .181/.281/.205 over 32 games at Double-A in 2013 and .240/.259/.339 over 55 games in Triple-A in 2014. He’s had some clunkers.

– He strikes out a LOT. Like, a lotttttttttt. His career K% hovers around 20 percent, and over 54 games with the Reds, that number shot up to 40 percent. I don’t care about your small sample size caveats; that’s so many strikeouts. You might even say it’s a lot with extra Ts.

– For being someone who supposedly brings some power potential, he doesn’t have that much power. After hitting 15 homers in 2012 and 13 in 2013, Selsky hasn’t reached double-digit home run totals since. In fact, outside of 2016, when he had nine homers (which is actually good news for Red Sox fans but we’re already past the good news part of this article), he hasn’t had more than two in a season since 2013.

– Even his major league numbers are misleading. .314/.340/.471 over 24 games is just enough time to be optimistically intrigued, but those numbers were never going to last. Over that time period, besides striking out 40 percent of the time, he also has an absurd .519 BABIP. He also only posted a 3.7 percent BB%. To recap: he was striking out half the time, never walking, and was abnormally lucky.

There’s probably not a lot there. He’s blocked by Chris Young, Brock Holt, Marco Hernandez apparently(!?), and Josh Rutledge on the bench. The end of the bench (coughjosh’sspotcough) could conceivably be a place where a strong spring could land him but, it doesn’t seem likely.

And that’s Steve Selsky. They can’t all be about Mookie Betts.

Photo by Reinhold Matay – USA TODAY Sports