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NEW YORK -- Weekend visitor David Dombrowski spent a portion of his day here Saturday afternoon meeting with interim manager Torey Lovullo and his coaches about the best way to align the Boston Red Sox outfield in 2016. It’s likely to be an ongoing conversation, and prepare to see some different looks in the last five weeks of the season. As a refresher, this is how the Sox outfield lined up on Opening Day, 2015: LF--Hanley Ramirez CF--Mookie Betts RF--Shane Victorino Ramirez has a new first baseman’s glove. Victorino is a backup for the Los Angeles Angels. Betts will have a spot, but he may not be the man in the middle come next spring.  The Sox have bought into Jackie Bradley Jr. and Rusney Castillo as keepers, based on how they’ve performed once given the chance to play regularly. Bradley is the best defender of the group; one major league scout, not prone to hyperbole, said Saturday that Bradley is at least as good as Andruw Jones, who won 10 Gold Gloves playing center field for the Atlanta Braves. But all three can field, run and throw.
If you proceed from the premise that your best outfielder plays center, then Bradley should return to the position he occupied in 2014, when his weak bat cost him the job by the end of the year. But it may not be that simple. Right field in Fenway Park is a significant piece of real estate that is best patrolled by an outfielder with a center fielder’s range, as both Victorino, and before him, J.D. Drew, have demonstrated. Betts has played center field almost exclusively since making the conversion from second base to the outfield. Castillo, who by Lovullo’s own admission remains a “very raw” player, has at times projected uncertainty and insecurity in right field; given the challenges of learning the Green Monster in left field, which devoured Ramirez, how willing are the Sox to give him that responsibility? "We believe in those three kids,'' Lovullo said. "We know they're going to be really good players.'' The Sox already have had Castillo take some fly balls in left at Fenway, and when the club returns home on Monday, there is a good chance that he will get some more tutoring there from Sox outfield coach Arnie Beyeler. Whether Betts also enrolls in that class remains to be seen. Bradley already has played there and shown he is more than capable, though his powerful arm would be wasted in such a truncated space. Dombrowski almost certainly will want to see Bradley in center field, although chances are pretty good he saw Bradley’s spectacular back-to-the-plate, basket catch in center field in Comerica Park on Aug. 9 and really has no compelling need to see first-hand what anyone who has watched Bradley the past two years could tell him. If the Sox don’t want Betts to make another adjustment, they could leave him in center and have Bradley play right, where his arm would be even more of a weapon than it would be in center. But putting Bradley in center and then deciding on the corners would appear to be the most obvious choice. "We do not have an agreement,’’ Lovullo said. "We have that discussion very often. There are several of us who feel like right field -- outside of center field -- has the biggest space. We've all seen Shane Victorino man that position very, very well. "There are those of us that think the left fielder has a tremendous responsibility because the biggest area in Fenway Park is right field and right-center field. So to shade two guys over in that area, covering that big a space, now leaves a big vacancy in left field. So now, the left fielder has responsibilities from side to side, to cover a lot of ground. "So we're throwing a lot of different thoughts at one another and we just have to see how it works out and what player performs in those areas. We haven't defined what's the toughest position. Several of us think right field and several of us think left field.'' Lovullo said the preference is to decide on an alignment and stick to it. Arm strength may not be a determining factor. "We might just rank range and running down the ball,'' Lovullo said. "But we're looking at every ingredient possible.''
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