Get ready to be bored.
But don’t take our word for it. This is coming straight from new White Sox left fielder Andrew Benintendi, who’s issuing warnings not in regard to the way he plays but to the manner in which he presents himself publicly, like he did in the first sit-down interview to which he acquiesced early in spring training in Glendale, Arizona.
“Sorry,” he says practically by way of introduction, “but I like to think of myself as just a very boring dude.”
So we’ve got that going for us, which might not always be a barrel of fun.
“I hate talking about myself,” he continues, as if elaborating somehow is making it even better.
Has that always been the case? It seems so.
“We laugh about it,” says his dad, Chris, “but he is a man of few words. He can be a tough interview. He’s pretty close to the vest.”
It might come from Chris, though he is pleasantly affable in a late-February phone call. Chris grew up in a family with six children, and his own dad used to say, “Sometimes boring is good.”
As Chris once told a few Boston reporters when Benintendi was debuting with the Red Sox in Seattle in 2016, “You’re going to learn that you could tell Andrew he won a million dollars or that his house is on fire, and he’s going to respond the same way.”
But none of that really matters, does it? As punishing as last season was to the spirits of Sox fans, they’ll surely go all-in on the 2022 All-Star if he provides the left-handed bat the team has sorely needed, and they’ll rally around the 2021 Gold Glover if he raises the bar defensively with expert work in left. From the jump, Benintendi, 28, should make the Sox better.
“He’s a guy who’s obviously not just left-handed but gives you a tough at-bat, can grind it out, put up solid on-base numbers toward the top of the lineup, as well as improve ourselves from an outfield-defense standpoint,” general manager Rick Hahn said upon bringing Benintendi into the fold.
Rookie manager Pedro Grifol was the bench coach in Kansas City when Benintendi played there in 2021 and 2022 and calls him “exactly what we were looking for this offseason.”
Still, Sox fans understandably are underwhelmed by the additions Hahn and the front office have made to the roster the last couple of years. Bored, even. It’s no knock on Benintendi — a fine player — but it sticks out like a sore thumb in this era of $300 million-plus contracts that his five-year, $75 million free-agent pact is the largest guaranteed deal in franchise history, narrowly eclipsing catcher Yasmani Grandal’s $73 million for four years heading into 2020.
You probably could’ve guessed that this isn’t Benintendi’s favorite subject.
“Yeah, as far as the contract, I’d rather keep it kind of how I live my life anyway, [which is] under the radar,” he says. “If no one notices me, it’s great.
“I don’t want to seem like I’m downplaying it, but [the money] always has been a second thing to me. I want to win. I want to get another ring. I’m just battling. I’m trying to avoid this question. I know I’m going to be asked about this all the time, but nobody wants to hear an athlete talk about that. Nothing else changes in my eyes. I’m not going to treat people differently, not going to do anything different. It’s just a byproduct of all the hard work I’ve done through the years and all the help I’ve had.”
Benintendi, who won it all with the Red Sox in 2018, is no superstar, but his excellence at all stops must be noted. As a high school senior in Medeira, Ohio, he put up cartoon numbers — a .564 average, 12 home runs, 57 RBI, 38 steals — and won national player of the year recognition. At Arkansas, he had one of college baseball’s greatest offensive seasons of recent vintage as a junior, swatting a nation-leading 20 homers and earning a bushel of national awards, and became a first-round draft pick, selected seventh overall by the Red Sox. And in his first full year in Boston, in 2017, he finished second to the Yankees’ Aaron Judge in American League Rookie of the Year voting.
That rookie race was kind of like a badger going against a grizzly bear.
Have we mentioned that Benintendi stands a mere 5-9 and weighs all of 180 pounds?
The day he showed up at Sox camp, he quietly made his way to his locker and had his back to a gaggle of reporters. Then he turned around.
“Whoa,” one of the reporters said. “I thought he was a clubbie.”
As in clubhouse attendant, not a ballplayer.
Benintendi is a little guy. Believe it or not, he has jokes about it, too.
“I’m still waiting to grow,” he says. “I’m still waiting for my growth spurt.”
Oh, the hilarity.
Midway through high school, he was still only 5-7 and 140. But he starred on the basketball court, too, eventually averaging 25.5 points as a senior.
“Basketball was my favorite sport,” he says. “Had I been taller, I probably would have pursued basketball. But I’m pretty sure 5-9 doesn’t cut it in basketball nowadays.”
But seriously, folks.
The little-guy thing might be the thing that brings out the personality in Benintendi. Asked if being small has led a lot of people to kind of not see him coming through the years — if he has tended to take people by surprise — he at first shuts that line of narrative down. But then he ruminates upon it some more and somewhat opens up.
“If you’d have asked me that three years ago, four years ago,” he says, “I might have given you a little something.”
The topic sets him off just a bit.
“I love it,” he says. “I don’t think size, especially in baseball, means anything. Look at Jose Altuve. He’s one of the best players in the league, and he’s, like, 5-6.”
And the very idea of being compared with a megastar such as the 6-7, 282-pound Judge — who doubled up Benintendi in rookie voting — elicits a legit reaction.
“Maybe I can’t hit a ball 500 feet, which I don’t care,” he says. “My job isn’t to go out there and hit homers. I’m trying to get on base for guys that hit homers, and I think some things I’ve learned about and gotten a little better at is putting the ball in play, taking my walks, hitting for maybe a better average, getting on base, sacrificing a little bit of power.
“But I still have enough juice where if I clip one, it’s going to go.”
Benintendi’s contract might suggest he should be dropped into the Sox mix and instantly be the straw that stirs the drink, but that’s not really realistic. His pure talent never has been described in the same sort of terms that Tim Anderson’s, Eloy Jimenez’s, Luis Robert Jr.’s and Yoan Moncada’s have. If Benintendi is the Sox’ best player in 2023, it might be a real problem. If the rest of the Sox’ core doesn’t coalesce into something special, it’s not as though he’ll be able to make up for it.
This is why the superlativeness of his contract makes him uncomfortable, according to his dad.
“They’ve had many, many better players, even that are on the team right now,” Chris says. “Andrew knows that. He’s not looking at that clubhouse and thinking, ‘I’m the man here.’ He knows who’s in there.”
And Benintendi knows firsthand what a quality clubhouse environment can do for a team. When he first was called up to the Red Sox in 2016, one of the first teammates to embrace him was David Ortiz. Star Dustin Pedroia even insisted Benintendi come live with him. Just turned 22, Benintendi crashed at the palatial pad of a fellow 5-9, 180-pounder.
“I don’t think anybody would ever want to question Pedroia’s size,” he says, “because he’d tear you apart.”
Benintendi has a toughness to him, too.
“My dad and my mom raised me to be so mentally strong,” he says. “Usually, now, if somebody dismisses me because of my size, I don’t care. Or I care, but I can’t control it. I’m not trying to prove anything to them. I just want to play well because I’ve put in the work, and that’s why.”
Is that really all there is to it?
“Maybe not,” he says, “but I’m not going to go out there and flaunt anything or show it. Well . . .”
Well?
“White Sox fans might see a bat flip every once in a while.”
Now we’re talking.
