It took six outfielders going on the disabled list for Scott Posednik to get the call back to the majors for the Boston Red Sox, but in the 14 games he has been back in the bigs, he has shown that he is far more than a desperation hire, even if that’s how the gig started in the first place.
Now 14 games does not make a season, but compared to Posednik’s recent experiences it certainly qualifies as a pleasant interlude. In 2004, Posednik led the American League in stolen bases with 70. In 2011, he couldn’t get out of the minors. All signs on the graph chart of his career pointed downward. In his mid-30s, baseball was trying to tell Posednik, “Well, it’s been fun, but…”
The odds of Posednik and the Red Sox being a match were far less likely than some of the boys and girls meeting up on match.com. Boston began the 2012 season thinking pennant. Posednik began the 2012 season thinking somewhere over the rainbow some Major League team might want to see him model their duds.
Let’s see if I can figure this out…but at one time or another since spring training, the Red Sox watched Carl Crawford, Jacoby Ellsbury, Ryan Sweeney, Cody Ross, Jason Repko (Who’s he?), Ted Williams, Jackie Jensen, and Fred Lynn go on the disabled list. More or less. Anyone who owned an outfielder’s glove was in danger patrolling the green pastures at Fenway Park.
The shaky status of the outfield gang provoked the Red Sox to dig out Posednik’s phone number and ask him to report to Pawtucket, the club’s AAA franchise. Posednik did so, but was barely unpacked before a late-breaking Sox injury won him a promotion back to the big leagues for the first time since September of 2010.
At the moment Posednik is batting .405 for Boston. Pretty good recovery and pretty nice acquisition for the Red Sox.
He may have been scuffling lately, but it’s not as if Posednik was a scrub his entire career. In 2005, Posednik batted .290 with 59 stolen bases for the World Series champion Chicago White Sox. He made the All-Star team. Later that season, in October Posednik hit one of the most famous home runs in White Sox history. It came in game two of the World Series against the Houston Astros.
Posednik came to bat with one out in the ninth inning of a game tied 6-6 thinking he just wanted to get on base to give the big bats in the lineup a chance to drive him home. Instead, Posednik, a quintessential leadoff man, and who had zero home runs during the regular season, ripped a game-winning homer off Brad Lidge.
A native of a tiny place in Texas named West Texas, Posednik after the major White Sox celebrations in Chicago, he went home. Everyone turned out to fete the favorite son with welcoming speeches and awards. People he had known his whole life asked for autographs. During the same off-season, Posednik got married, too, so that was a pretty special time in his life.
The Red Sox are Posednik’s third big-league team since he departed the White Sox in 2009 and he is now 36, perhaps not the pure speed demon he was on the bases in the early part of the decade. But he is playing as if he is much younger, filling a critical need for a team right now. And after being mired in the minors for a whole year, this role for the Red Sox is a whole lot sweeter. It may be Scott Posednik’s last hurrah, but if so, he is going out in style.
