Just under 100 games remain in this Red Sox season, so it’s still too soon to make any declarative proclamations about the successes and failures of specific players – other than the dismissed Hanley Ramirez, I suppose.
The epilogue and eulogy on his three-plus years here: He was occasionally excellent, usually wasn’t, and is now stranded in baseball purgatory while assorted other teams sort out whether they want him to become their enigma. We’ll hear from him again, but who knows if it will matter. Roll credits.
Now that it’s popped into my head, there is at least one other player – one actually still with the Red Sox and batting in the heart of the order just about every day – whose status as a success or failure in 2018 is already obvious and irrefutable.