Wednesday 12/4/24
The Red Sox signed Aroldis Chapman to a one-year deal. I don't like this at all. I don't like the kind of guy Chapman is and what that he represents as a person. This is such a Red Sox move, though. He was probably cheap. He's up there in years. He was last good in 2021, when he was kind of good, and really it's more like 2019. He walks a lot of batters. I want nothing to do with a relief pitcher who walks people. Basically, you either walk or strike out against him.
The Red Sox will say he's not going to be their closer, but I'm not so sure. This isn't someone you want on your team as a player or a pitcher, and of course it was the Red Sox' first move to sign him. The Red Sox and the Patriots are now hapless franchises. The Patriots more so, I suppose, because they won't be going anywhere for longer and their braintrust is largely brainless, whereas with the Sox it's more a matter of cheaping out and being beholden to analytics fads in a half-hearted, robotic attempt to overcome the cheaping out.
Rob Manfred, commissioner of baseball, has floated the idea of a Golden At-Bat, in which a team, once a game, could elect to use their best hitter, or the hitter they most wish to use, in any situation, in an attempt to make baseball less like baseball and more like a TikTok video so that it will appeal to people who don't like baseball in our constantly devolving society. So, Shohei Ohtani could get a single, then he could hit again, with someone pinch-running for Ohtani on first, pretending, briefly, to be Ohtani. Likewise, a player could hit back-to-back home runs with himself.
Can we stop? Do we have to be clowns and idiots?
Here is baseball's real problem: There is not enough action because the pitchers throw so hard and the hitters try to run into one, so it's a lot of strikeouts and walks and home runs. There are plays--what I just mentioned are players--but there isn't flow and action. Hockey is up and down, up and down. Football has a certain rhythm, regardless of the rule changes. Basketball is up and down, up and down, even if the reliance on the three-pointer stagnates some of that action by reducing movement and flow--like cutting, for instance. Watch a vintage baseball game somewhere sometime. There's a lot more action. Guys are being athletes, just not throwers and swingers.
The pitch clock had to happen because of the lengths of the game, which was a matter of players distorting the game into a game it never was by trying to break up its natural rhythm in order to try and help themselves best succeed. It wasn't cheating, but that's tantamount, in spirit, to what it was. "If I play the game this way, as it is played, I won't be as successful, so I'm going to do this other thing so I don't have to play it that way." Pitchers took as long as they wished between pitches so that their arms would "come back" that much more so they'd have more velocity, and hitters held a private meeting with themselves after each pitch to regather, think, decide what to do. Baseball requires you to think at a certain rate, and they were trying to think and go at their own speed, to dictate rather than react and think within the context of that faster flow.
So fine. Pitch clock. There was no need for the extra inning rules with the ghost runner on second. Most extra innings games were completed in manageable enough time as it was. And then changing the size of the bases? Stop it.
To be honest, I don't know what you do. The pitchers throw so hard. They're not going to throw less hard. 98 mph used to make you this intimidating flamethrower. Hell, 95 mph. You'd think, "Wow, he's a stud." Roger Clemens was throwing 98 in 1986 and I bet you Rich Gossage was around 95 in the late 1970s, and these guys had legendary fastballs. 95 is chump change now, if you know what I'm saying.
The Red Sox and Patriots are both hapless, but it's the Patriots who are moribund. They now sport a 32-48 record since Tom Brady left. Jerod Mayo, as I've said, is no answer. He's clueless. He doesn't know offense--that goes without saying--but it's not like he's some defensive master. Do you really see him coming up with schemes and game plans to thwart offenses? It's very simple: Robert Kraft is a buffoon. He likes to have his ass kissed. Jerod Mayo, knowing this, kissed Robert Kraft's ass. Robert Kraft like that and gave Mayo, who had no business getting the job, the job as head coach.
I heard Mayo remark after the last game, when the Patriots elected not to use a timeout, that he remembered them doing this before, and it won them a Super Bowl. He was referring, of course to the final moments of the Super Bowl against the Seahawks. And I thought, "Are you really this stupid or vain or both?"
First of all, this Patriots team it has nothing to do with those years. It might as well be a different franchise, and by the way, your franchise was largely one guy. He made all else possible. He made Bill Belichick possible as this coach who could use the strengths he did have to best use, which would not have happened anywhere else with anyone else. Not as a head coach. As a coordinator, yes, obviously.
Secondly, Jerod Mayo never won a Super Bowl. He's not an NFL champion. He played on the Patriots for all of those years, and he was never on the field after a Super Bowl win. He was not a big-time playmaker, or some heady player. He was a cog in stopping the run. That's it. You never noticed him, he made no big plays. He had a bunch of tackles. And he was not dressed for that game against the Seahawks, and here he is talking like he was, and, more than that, he was a part of what play call?
He has no feel for how to talk to people, meaning, in this case, the media, and, through the media, the slob at home. I don't think he has a clue. He comes across as immature to me, unseasoned, and I don't think experience will fix what's wrong, that is, give him what he doesn't have, which is a football mind. I just don't think it's there. I could be wrong. Could be the bumps and tribulations and growth pains of doing something before you're ready, but he's essentially a nepotism hire, because if you kiss Robert Kraft's ass enough, he'll call you a son and give you things.
It's embarrassing to watch Kraft and Belichick scramble for credit with their passive aggressive comments and behavior in interviews and the like. You'd think they were two middle school girls, not two adults whose combined age puts them over 150-years-old.
Seeing the Patriots mathematically eliminated for the playoffs--which they were never going to make, but still--on December 1 says a lot. People are dead wrong when they say the Patriots were this nothing franchise with no history before Brady got there. They actually had a pretty cool history. A colorful history, some great players, some really good teams, fun players.
But they had these low point periods where they weren't just bad, but boring. This period now is the longest yet already in this regard, and it is going to stretch and stretch is my prediction. You will have to move on from Mayo. Drake Maye is going to have to survive this period/this organization. You have very few assets if you're this franchise, but he looks like a legit one. Or he could be. It's still early, but you see certain things--the arm, he looks like he cares, he looks like he can lead some. The playmaking ability.
They haven't won a Super Bowl in a while, but you have to be so impressed with the Steelers as a franchise. They find a way to win more games than they lose every year. Sometimes they're Super Bowl contenders, sometimes they're conference champion contenders, sometimes they're contenders for a one-seed, and it's like they're always playoff contenders and that is their baseline.
Do they have all of these fantastic playoff successes this century? No, not really. They have some. But every year they put a winning team on the field. It's admirable. They don't bottom out, they don't lose themselves in the miasma of mediocrity. They're in it, to some degree. They give their fans a reason to be invested in the on-field product, which is different than checking a record to see what a team's draft position is.
Comments