It was then Razorbacks coach Dave Van Horn made a decision that put Benintendi on an express route to playing left field for the Red Sox.

He was a complementary player, an above-average defensive center fielder who didn’t hit for much power but led the team in stolen bases. Scouts liked Benintendi’s athletic ability but hoped to see more.

Andrew Benintendi had a perfectly good freshman year at the University of Arkansas in 2014, playing every day for a team that went 40-25 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

Because Benintendi strained a quadriceps late in the season, Van Horn told him to skip playing over the summer, heal up, and take the time to improve his strength.


“I sent him home and said, ‘Go see you how strong you can get,’ ” Van Horn said. “He listened.”

Because of the leg injury and a subsequent injection of platelet-rich plasma to speed the healing process, Benintendi couldn’t run or do any lower-body weightlifting. For him, every day was a chest, back, and arms day.

“They told me to stay off my feet,” Benintendi said. “But I could still lift.”

By the time he returned to Arkansas, the 165-pound freshman slap hitter was a 180-pound sophomore driving the ball over the fence at Baum Stadium.

“I noticed right away during fall ball that I had more power,” Benintendi said. “Being stronger really helped my game.”

As scouts watched the fall workouts and games, word spread quickly through the industry. Amiel Sawdaye, who oversees amateur and international scouting for the Red Sox, soon learned that the little guy playing center field at Arkansas had bulked up and was becoming a star.

“Our area scout, Chris Mears, identified him and got very excited about his potential while seeing him in the fall,” Sawdaye said.


Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, then running the Detroit Tigers, got the same messages from his scouts.

“He sort of exploded onto the scene,” Dombrowski said. “A lot of people were talking about him.”

Once the season started in the spring, Benintendi hit .376 with an eye-popping 1.205 OPS. His slugging percentage more than doubled as he collected 35 extra-base hits in 65 games and drove in 57 runs.

He went from one home run as a freshman to 20 as a sophomore. Every award that a college player could win, he carried back to his home in Madeira, Ohio. The Southeastern Conference even named Benintendi its Male Athlete of the Year.

Van Horn, who has coached Arkansas for 14 seasons, had never seen anything like it.

“Andrew was amazing,” said Van Horn. “He was on a mission. I had him in the three-hole from the first day and he pretty much dominated. He hit 20 home runs, and 15 of them were crushed. None were scraping the top of the fence. They were 400-plus.”

The Red Sox, picking seventh in the 2015 draft, selected Benintendi at that spot and quickly signed him to a $3.59 million bonus.

When Dombrowski joined the Red Sox last Aug. 18, Benintendi had played six weeks of minor league games. But Dombrowski knew he had a valuable asset to help him reconstruct a last-place team.

“This is not a typical player,” Dombrowski said. “When I saw him in spring training, I liked him very much.”


Dombrowski, who believes in pushing talented players, promoted Benintendi to the majors out of Double A Portland after only 151 minor league games. He is 5 for 13 in five games with the Red Sox, and on Sunday in Dodger Stadium drove in his first two runs.

Manager John Farrell said Benintendi will start every game against the Yankees in a three-game series that starts Tuesday.

Benintendi has been to Fenway Park only once, and that visit was brief.

“Never been on the field,” he said. “This will be a first. But it’s been fun playing in these big ballparks.”

When the Red Sox play host to the Yankees on Tuesday, it will be Andrew Benintendi’s first time stepping foot on the Fenway Park turf. Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

Benintendi, 22, only occasionally smiled when discussing his quick journey to the majors. His accomplishments are for others to celebrate. For him, media attention is an unwanted cost of doing business as a professional athlete.

“You could say, ‘Andrew, your house is burning down,’ or ‘You won a million bucks,’ and he reacts the same way,” Chris Benintendi said of his son. “That’s good for this game. He’s able to handle success as well as failure.”

The low-key approach has long been his style. Benintendi grew up a few minutes from Archbishop Moeller High, a private school powerhouse in Cincinnati that produced Hall of Famers Barry Larkin and Ken Griffey Jr. Moeller wanted Benintendi for its baseball team but he elected to attend Madeira High, the local public school.

“I wanted to play with my friends,” he said. “That really was it. I thought about Moeller for a while, but my friends were more important.”


Benintendi did join the Midland Redskins, a nationally prominent amateur program that has helped send 75 players to the majors since 1966.

“I always knew I could make it in baseball,” he said. “Playing for Midland, that helped me get to Arkansas. It was really all I ever wanted to do.”

Because his son was never very big, even compared with other athletes his age, Chris Benintendi preached caution. He had played college baseball before becoming a lawyer and knew the difficulty of advancing beyond that level.

But midway through that record-setting sophomore season at Arkansas, it all changed.

“It surprised a lot of us,” Chris Benintendi said. “I’m thrilled for Andrew. He accomplished a goal. But it’s no different than our daughters accomplishing a goal that they had in mind.

“You try and keep everything in perspective.”

The Red Sox, while very much in contention, have been stagnant since the All-Star break. Benintendi could help change that.

“He’s handled the environment probably as good as you could in terms of feeling comfortable and not coming out of his game,” said Farrell. “He has a beautiful swing.

“For the early start of his big league career, it’s been impressive.”

David Ortiz, as is his way, was a bit more effusive in his assessment.

“He’s going to be superstar,” Ortiz said. “He will. He has all the tools. Trust me. I like what I see from that kid.”

Peter Abraham can be reached at peter.abraham@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @peteabe.