All she wrote

Friday 5/15/26

For the Red Sox to win, they basically need, or have needed, two things to happen: strong starting pitching (or the facsimile thereof, as when Bello enters in the second) through six innings, and they have to score first.

The Red Sox have failed to score a run for a starter thirteen times this season with nine of those thirteen times happening at Fenway. Quite the stat.

The pitching has actually been good enough for them to be a good team. In May its been especially strong. This team is bad because of its line-up. Even the defense has had its moments. If the offense was producing like it had last year, you're likely looking at a team that's eight or nine games over .500.

They fell behind last night 1-0 to the Phillies, which feels like 5-0 with this team. Then, Trevor Story does what Trevor Story does and gagged on a grounder late-ish in the game and the Phillies tacked on a couple more. The Sox did manage a run, and they had chances with runners in scoring position, but those extra two Philadelphia runs felt insurmountable. It doesn't take much to push this Sox squad into "Well, that's all she wrote" territory.

The ignominy was compounded by a late-game at-bat from Story in which he wasn't even close to the ball on any of his swings as he struck out. You knew it was coming. Same with Duran for the final out of the game on a strikeout. These two players don't just miss--they'll miss by a couple of feet. Story looks done to me. Career-wise. Or career-wise as a starter. I suppose he could be a bench player who fills in at short and second.

This is a boring, mostly unlikable team. Nondescript, unenthusiastic. Punchless at the plate, but also just punchless in terms of pizzazz. They have a tendency to look like they've already lost when it's still early in games.

I'm sure it's no fun and is hard showing up to the park when you're hitting .178 and pressing and the season is wearing on and it's not the second week anymore. Probably produces anxiety. Am I going to have this obscenely low average for the season and be mocked? Will I go down in the bad kind of history?

The interim manager Chad Tracy strikes me as just a guy. He isn't making any kind of mark on the team. He seems pretty nondescript himself. I'm unsure what you can do. Without the pitching they've gotten, they'd have less than ten wins. Now they go on the road to face a strong Atlanta Braves team. Perhaps they'll rally, but what would that mean, realistically? Dropping two out of three rather than being swept?

I don't have the records in front of me and I don't feel like checking, but I'd imagine this is the worst start a Red Sox team has gotten off to at Fenway in decades and maybe ever. Ironically, that pitching has been good without much of anything good from Garrett Crochet.

This Red Sox ownership group only acts like it's somewhat serious when things become embarrassing. Then they'll make a save-face kind of move, which isn't a move in good faith, that is, done for the right reasons. We're getting there and dropping five out of the next six or whatever could do it, but what can you even do mid-season? They already fired the manager and most of the coaching staff to minimal effect. They're kind of stuck with what they got. Chapman will likely be moved at some point, but you're not going to get much return on a closer who's his age.

I don't think Mayer and Anthony are ever going to be much of anything. That's me. I could definitely be wrong. I just don't think either has it. The talent, the drive, the professionalism. This team doesn't have any players among its staring position players. Any difference makers. Rafaela and Abreu can be decent, lower-down-the-list type of players on a really good team, but if they're your main/best guys, that's going to be rough sledding for you.

Willson Contreras is a former catcher and it's because he was a catcher that he made the All-Star teams he did. You're taking that thirty-something catcher production and now it's first base production and he's done okay but it's not good first baseman production. The value is lower. Plus, he's sort of nuts. And he's thirty-four. That's a lesser piece/one or two year rental, not someone you build with and on. And along with Rafaela and Abreu, he's basically a member of their "Big Three."

The team simply doesn't have the players. What I believe Red Sox fans are eventually going to learn is that they don't have the blue chip prospects, the players of the future, weren't the future at all. The team's system/pipeline doesn't have much in it. They just really hyped these guys up.

It was a raw and rainy last night. Earlier it had looked like the game would be rained out, but the storm moved north. There weren't a ton of people at the park. You probably could have gone done there for cheap if you waited and then looked for a ticket last minute. A chant of "Sell the team!" did break out late in the affair, but I think generally speaking it isn't really true that Boston is this hard place to play, or where the fans make it tough on ownership and demand a good product on the field.

It used to be that way. That was a different world, though. Expectations were more of a thing, as was accountability. Speaking one's mind. Being able to think. Now, reflex dominates. Expectations as to accountability are lower. The ballpark is a place to go, a place to see, a stop to make. Football is king.

A true Red Sox fan is definitely a type of person, as a person, that's rarer in the world by the day. They have what one would perhaps now call an old soul. They have piss and vinegar in their veins. They aren't all...slouchy...if you follow me...as a person. They stand up and kick a chair over. Metaphorically speaking.

It's not necessarily that cynical guy in Vermont who's actually wiser than the bark that is his expressed cynicism perhaps lets on, but a person-based variation on that theme regardless of age. The corpse of the Red Sox organization can bump along for a while yet, and in this metaphor I guess you could say that Fenway Park is the hearse.

Doesn't it feel, too, like 2018 is a lot further back than eight years ago as pertains the Red Sox?