Spare us the rushes to judgment on the Red Sox, in both directions
Haven't these Red Sox proven to be exactly the team they appeared to be before the season started?
COMMENTARY
Frankly, I’m amazed you’re here.
I’m grateful for every read, every day, but this morning? Fat-fingered or not, I’m in awe. Sunday night’s Bruins ouster is one of those losses that drains the blood from the very idea of fandom. A real “I’m never drinking again” moment.
We will return, of course. Same as we did after all the others so burned in your subconscious, you were thinking about them before even Florida’s last-minute equalizer. Never mind what came later.
We needn’t list them. We certainly aren’t going to rank them. The world has enough evil.
Three epic regular seasons: The 2007 Patriots, the 2021 Revolution — yes, there are five major US sports at this address — and the 2023 Bruins. All the best in their league’s history, all title-less because of the vagaries of small samples (Giannis got that right, at least) and the ratcheting pressure of postseason.
I guess knowing the 2001 Seattle Mariners and 2015-16 Golden State Warriors didn’t win either beats the alternative. As does that unprecedented two decades of success amid the disappointments. Remember that? Everyone outside New England does, and they think we’re being real drama queens about this.
Nuts to them. Celtics-Sixers starts tonight. No greater time to get hurt again than the present, right?
This is all a long way of your narrator getting it out of his system, but also to remind Sunday’s sports-TV smorgasbord began (with apologies to that great Liverpool-Tottenham match) with an uplifting Chris Sale performance at Fenway Park.
“There’s going to be good ones, there’s going to be tough ones,” manager Alex Cora told reporters after one of the former — three hits, one run, and zero walks, Sale pitching into the seventh for the first time since his Tommy John surgery.
“But as long as he’s healthy we’re going to get him at one point.”
Hope can drive a man insane — as can the past week watching Charlie McAvoy, and I promise I’ll stop now. Cora doesn’t feel wrong, though. Consistency, not ceiling, was always going to be these Red Sox’ downfall.
The 5-8 start has given way to 10 wins in 16 games after taking two of three from Cleveland. Alex Verdugo’s hitting .308, an All-Star caliber first month. Masataka Yoshida is on a .410/.455/.718 tear during a 10-game hitting streak. Jarren Duran’s hitting accident doubles every day.
Even the starting pitchers are in danger of getting the staff ERA out of “baseball’s worst other than the Athletics” range. (Sale dropped it to 6.05.)
The Red Sox are a game better than .500 for the first time since last Aug. 2. (The trade deadline, coincidentally.) Which, in Rob Manfred’s Major League Baseball, of course means they’re in playoff position.
Now, understand I view today as a sort of spring Festivus in New England. In that vein, can we please stop treating every series as a referendum on the Red Sox offseason teambuilding?
This is in no way exclusive to Tom Caron, who is by all accounts a wonderful man, a college hockey guy, and who I want on the scene any time a cat is running amok. But he is among those who’ve been taking victory laps over the people who declared the season over at 2-4 or 5-8, and who will do so at least six more times before Gloucester starts greasing up its St. Peter’s Fiesta pole.
Those people should be sequestered in a room with their circles of papers and the door closed.
Right next to the room containing anyone who has typed the phrase “Chaim haters” in a social media app sometime during these first 29 games.
Am I taking crazy pills, or have these Red Sox proven to be exactly the team they appeared to be? They’re on an 84-win pace, in the heart of the wild-card discussion despite pitching like its, well, April weather in Boston.
Most days they’ve hit, but some they haven’t. Some days they’ve pitched, but most they haven’t. The bullpen’s cleaned up a lot of messes, some of them not made by the departed Kaleb Ort and the here-forever Ryan Brasier, but cracked on Saturday before Verdugo bailed them out.
Triston Casas has started slow, getting both Saturday and Sunday off to “see the game from a different angle” in Cora’s words, which can be necessary when you’re 50 games into the majors. Duran, while he’s not going to hit .396, shows the danger in premature declarations.
We know seasons are long stories that turn on countless short moments. Good grief, do we know that today.
Cleveland, as we pointed out Friday, was sub-.500 in July and playing baseball in October. Philadelphia lost 13 of 20 to finish last season, then made the World Series. Washington was 19-31 in 2019 and won a championship. Stop pretending we need to make these days and nights as anything more than data points in a very long line.
And if I may air another grievance . . .
You want to know why there are teams out there who perhaps don’t spend with the freedom they once did? Who reset their luxury taxes and preach thriftiness rather than go all out? Because that’s the baseball structure Bud Selig and Manfred built. The structure on which American sports sit.
Embrace the mediocre. Convince everyone that everyone has a shot. You’ll sell more suites and ponchos and nacho helmets.
The Bruins, for their unchallenged dominance across six months, had a 23-percent shot to win the Stanley Cup according to The Athletic’s predictions.
Easily the best in hockey. Two times more than all but the Avalanche, who had their own crummy Sunday night. And still worse than one in four, owing to needing four wins in four best-of-sevens.
At least one of Mets owner Steve Cohen and Padres owner Peter Seidler are going to look at all that money they spent this year and not even have a National League pennant to dab their tears with. It’s a cruel business. It’s a heck of a thing to give possession of your heart.
Enjoy the journey when you can. Heck knows it can end ugly when you least expect it.
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