Andrew Benintendi gets his old number back

If you bought an Andrew Benintendi jersey this year, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Benintendi. 40. That sounds like a cool jersey. The guy is pretty much booked as the next Carl Yastrzemski. Left fielder. Young. The hair. Solid bat. Small guy. Yup. Sounds like Yaz. But yeah, about those jerseys. They’ll be out of style.

Why? Because Benintendi is changing his number back to what he wanted it to be all along.

That’s right, he’s No. 16 from here on out. It’s been his number his entire life it seems. Not sure what’s significant about it other than the fact that he wears it. For some reason it’s his favorite number. Why that is, we may never know.

In recent years, we have seen a few Red Sox players make number switches. The most recent/obvious one to think of would be Xander Bogaerts going from 72 to 2 in honor of his boyhood idol, Derek Jeter. In case you haven’t noticed, when guys get called up, they usually just get handed some random offensive lineman number, and then when they prove themselves then can pick a good number. But then again, some guys will keep their high numbers — like Mookie Betts wearing 50.

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what number he wears. Maybe being a little happier might help him, but either way Benny can play baseball. There’s a reason he’s considered the top prospect in all of baseball right now. The guy is just a pure hitter. Nearly .300 batting average in his limited big league time and an .835 OPS.

The Red Sox have finally have their successor to Manny Ramirez. Just can’t believe it took them that long to find someone. You have Carl Crawford to thank for that though — among many others (like Hanley Ramirez — and several other castoffs).

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