What do you know: It's the same old Boston Red Sox through sixteen games. Who could have seen that coming?

Sunday 4/13/25

Alex Cora is the perfect manager for a team that could win 100 games without him.

The Red Sox lost again yesterday to the White Sox, who are 2-10 against other teams, but 2-0 versus Boston.

The Red Sox strike out ten times a game. That's what they average. They cannot field the baseball. They have little to no situational hitting skills. They don't do things that matter: move runs over by hitting to the right side of the infield, make contact with less than two outs and a man on third.

They do steal some bases, though, so there's that.

I seem to remember--it wasn't that long ago--everyone picking the Red Sox to be a playoff team, with some predicting that they'd win the World Series, and all of one person saying they were not going to be good.

I wonder who that was. It's almost like he knows what he's talking about.

Would you like a fun stat? People bashed Dave Kingman over and over again--he was a punchline and target for much derision--because he struck out so much. Jarren Duran struck out 160 times last season. You know who never struck out that much in a season in his career?

That would be Dave Kingman.

Bring back strikeout shame. It's not just out--you struck out, which is often--but not always--the worst kind of out.

The worst kind of out is hitting into a double play. We will not count triple plays because they hardly ever happen and they're fluky and usually not the fault of the batter anyway (many triple plays involve a hard-hit liner).

Teams are in spring training for what feels like forever. Players do a lot of golfing. It doesn't occur to anyone that maybe some bunting practice wouldn't just be in order, but is all the more worth it now because of the extra inning rules?

Let's say you're the home team and you stop the opponent from scoring in the top of the tenth. Normally, whatever side goes first has the goal of scoring at least two runs, because it should be easy--though there is a caveat--for the other team to score that man who starts on second base. You don't need a hit. All you have to do is hit the ball to the right side of the infield twice. A hit will do it. Deep flies advance the run. You just can't do two things: pop up and strike out.

But what if you strike out a lot? What about bunting? If you can bunt, you can get the runner to third, and you can bring him in. If the runner is on third and there are less than two outs, any kind of bunt that is not up in the air and goes straight back to the pitcher with some juice on it, or lies dead in front of the catcher, will score that man.

The Red Sox cannot do this. Won't? Okay, maybe it's won't. But they will fail to score quite a few times in that situation, and they'll lose because they can't push that single run across the plate.

Baseball games often turn on double plays. The double play--not hitting into them, and getting them defensively--is, as I have said, like the turnover in football.

The Red Sox are bad at turning double plays. You won't see this show up in the box score, because they'll get the man at second, but there'll be a bad feed, or a throw that's offline to first, and the batter will reach successfully.

Double plays are a huge part of the game. They are why Bill Mazerowski is in the Hall of Fame and should be in the Hall of Fame.

The Red Sox have a very lackadaisical air about them. They are nonchalant in the field. They also seem to think--Kristian Campbell does--that they're defensive masters who can hot dog it/flash it up a bit, Ozzie Smith-style.

The manager could have instilled a different attitude and mindset, but he didn't--he never has when it comes to this sort of thing. He likes to blame the weather, though, as if his team is playing in a set of meteorological conditions that the other team is not on the same day at the same time on the the same field.

You cannot have a closer who walks people. If you do, you will have to survive that closer. In comes Chapman yesterday for the bottom of the ninth in a 2-2, and he walks the first man.

What are the chances now that the team in the field will be walked off in this situation? They're pretty high, right? Thirty-five percent? Forty?

Jim Rice is not a good studio analyst. He doesn't add much, but he's having a moment right now. During spring training, a Red Sox player asked Rice for hitting advice. Rice told him to hit line drives. Spray the ball over the field.

A Red Sox analytics person interceded and told Rice to clear off. Hall of Famer Jim Rice. Because the Sox don't want their hitters hitting line drives. They want them putting the ball in the air.

Geniuses: This produces a longer swing. What do longer swings lead to? Strikeouts. What happens when you can't put the ball in play? You lose. Sure, you'll have some games where you get a three-run homer and a a couple solo shots, but you'll have more where you don't.

Also: You play in Boston. It can be cold in April. And in May, somewhat. What's it harder to do when it's cold at the ballpark? That's right--hit home runs. The weather has a say.

But you can always hit line drives.

Trevor Story is not a winning ballplayer. He's a mistake-only hitter. If he beats you with the bat, you made a mistake as the pitcher, because if you pitch him smartly and go to your spots, he's not going to do anything.

He is also a defensive weakness, and I don't want to hear the nonsense about what a top fielder he is, because if you say that, you either are being dishonest or you don't know what you're talking about--not with this guy anyway.

He's someone who doesn't make plays that he should, but which don't get scored as errors because of the nature of that play--like when an out at second is gotten but not the out at first on what should be a double play ball--or the official score keeper's generosity, which I'm seeing a lot of this year, as though scorekeepers love infielders and have a vendetta against pitchers.

Heard an interview with Garrett Crochet yesterday. He's a lunkhead. Kept talking about now that he has his big contract, he doesn't have to worry about results.

Oh. That's super.

He said he can just focus on wins, which implies that he didn't care about them before, because wins in this moronic world don't get you paid, like the pitcher has no say in the winning of the game, can't pitch to situations, context, score, but WHIP and ERA+, and strikeouts are where it's at, financially. He sounded dumb. Now, someone might say that Roger Clemens sounded dumb, but he didn't really, and he didn't sound at all when he talked about pitching.

Crochet goes today against his former team. You cannot be swept by the Chicago White Sox.