This story was excerpted from Ian Browne¡¯s Red Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

BOSTON -- For eight months, Netflix trailed the Red Sox around -- from the clubhouse to the field to nearby restaurants and even to certain player¡¯s homes.

But after a 2024 season that ended as the pure definition of mediocrity, Red Sox manager Alex Cora half-jokingly asked Greg Whiteley, the Emmy-winning director of the upcoming eight-part docuseries, a question.

¡°At the end of season, I'm like, ¡®Bro, how are you gonna make this look good? We played .500 baseball,¡¯¡± Cora said. ¡°Greg said, ¡®Don¡¯t worry, we will.¡±¡¯

Judging by the 30 minutes of sneak peeks that were shown to a live audience at the team¡¯s Fenway Fest event on Saturday, viewers will be gripped by ¡°The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox.¡±

Don¡¯t mistake this docuseries -- which will be available to stream on Netflix at some point in the spring -- for a season highlight recap. Instead, it is a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of what it takes to be a Major League baseball player through the grind of a long season.

At times, the footage will make you feel like you¡¯re actually in the Red Sox's dugout at Fenway Park.

In fact, in the rough-cut opening of Episode 1 that was shown on Saturday, it starts in the dugout, with Cora telling Tyler O¡¯Neill that Wilyer Abreu is going to pinch-hit for him at a crucial moment of a July 26 home game against the Yankees.

Cora rarely pinch-hit for O¡¯Neill, who led the club with 31 homers. But he liked the matchup for Abreu against Yankees righty Clay Holmes. And it is compelling not just for baseball reasons. Cora can be heard telling someone else in the dugout that Abreu¡¯s grandmother is on the verge of dying.

Abreu, filled with emotion, came up with a game-tying two-run double, and the scene sparkles from the Netflix footage, capturing Fenway Park going wild during the climax of a Friday night rivalry game. At the time, none of the spectators knew what Abreu was going through off the field.

It is the personal moments that have a chance to set the film apart from any previous baseball documentaries. The 2024 Red Sox were the first MLB team to allow cameras to have unimpeded access for a full season.

With that access, viewers will get to see Kutter Crawford and Triston Casas at breakfast on Opening Day in Seattle, during which Crawford mentions O¡¯Neill¡¯s streak of homering on Opening Day four straight years. It is foreshadowing for when O¡¯Neill goes deep again that night, setting a Major League record for consecutive Opening Days with a homer.

There are also some raw moments, including Casas going off on himself in a profanity-laced tirade after a bad at-bat during a slump.

¡°Get a grip,¡± Casas shouts at himself.

¡°There's a lot of stuff that goes on during a season that's very raw and not pleasing,¡± said Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story. ¡°It's competition at the highest level. So with that comes intensity, comes bad language, comes a lot of stuff that you don't necessarily want people to see. But I thought it was a cool opportunity to where we can kind of tell our story.

¡°People don't really realize that grind that goes into it. You show up at 1 p.m. for a seven o'clock game. It's 162-plus games. That's our goal. For the opportunity to be able to do that and show the player side, the behind the scenes of it, the grinding, all the meetings, all the work, all the work in the cage, everything. That's what I was excited to share with the fans. And I think you guys will appreciate how much we care about it.¡±

There will be inside baseball scenes that will be particularly interesting, such as a clip shown from Opening Day, when pitching coach Andrew Bailey is going through the batter-by-batter game plan with starting pitcher Brayan Bello, and his words from the meeting are sequenced with highlights of Bello executing the plan once the game starts.

Many Red Sox players and staff members seemed to enjoy getting to show different sides of themselves.

¡°I just tried to remain authentic throughout it all,¡± said Casas. ¡°Greg made it easy for me to just gravitate towards him and the project and just get behind it as much as I can. I just wanted to provide as much perspective about my background, my life and what it's like to be a player at this level.¡±