Cuddly Casas and the anthropomorphization of athletes, Jared Carrabis and your Uber driver, why people think Alex Cora is a good manager when he's actually anything but

Wednesday 5/7/25

The Red Sox lost again last night, being drubbed 6-1 by the Texas Rangers. The Sox struck out another 12 times. 3 each for Duran and Story. They are now 18-19. I feel like I saw this team clearly for what they were and would be before the season started when everyone else was saying they had greatly improved, with most saying they were a playoff team and some people--like Jared Carrabis who has the baseball expertise of your Uber driver and the personality of your cousin who you have to stand next to for ten minutes at the cookout put-in-an-appearance style as he tells you about things he knows nothing about before you can get away but makes millions of dollars because he is as mediocre and basic and achievable as can be as a result--saying they'd win the World Series.

What's worse is that the Sox have mostly played teams with .500 records and worse. They've had the easiest schedule in baseball through nearly forty games and are below .500 themselves.

(And remember the hoopla about the Bregman signing? Do you recall how I said it wasn't a big deal when everyone else was saying that made the Red Sox contenders? It wasn't a big deal because they weren't going anywhere this year anyway because of the roster, the approach, the manager, in order of importance. They are hidebound to their analytics approach. And with this roster, that means they strike out a ton. Bregman was either going to be mediocre-ish or slightly better, or, if he was great, it wasn't going to help you this year because the Sox wouldn't be good enough anyway, and then he'd opt out and leave, which is what he will do if he keeps this up. He's been excellent at the plate--though not so good in the field. That move, as I said, was really a case of fool's gold. Baseball pyrite. It was cosmetic. It fooled the people who wanted to be fooled and probably can't be anything but fooled. Bregman is much likelier to end up a Red Sox one-off in a forgettable season--like Nick Esasky in 1989--than a franchise fixture or player who helps you to some postseason glory.)

How can you think they're going to all of a sudden become good and keep it up? Why would you think that? Not with this roster and this manager. And this approach.

Alex Cora got the job as the Red Sox' manager during a time in which people were losing the ability to be able to tell what anything is, which has worsened and worsened in the years since. There's no assessment because people can't tell anything. It's like not being able to know whether it's raining outside or what color something is.

It's all lost on us now. Even the very basic ability to recognize something as anything. Let alone assess, parse, think through. You could give someone the best thing of one thing and the worst thing of that thing and they wouldn't know which is which.

The Sox won Cora's first year, he was young, he looked the part, and this reputation was as good as molded to him as what a top manager--and a real baseman man!--is.

He's bad. As I wrote on here, Alex Cora is the perfect manager for a team that can win 100 games without him. His teams start slow, and are wretched fundamentally and situationally. He doesn't make moves that put his team in a better position to win. And I wouldn't say he's that committed.

The other day, the Sox were playing the rubber match of a three-game series against a not-very good Minnesota Twins team. Their ace--Garrett Crochet--was on the mound. This is what you got this pitcher for--to win these games. So that you take two out of three from the Twins at Fenway rather than the other way around.

Crochet and the Sox were up 3-1, Cora pulls him after five and only 89 pitches, and the bullpen gives it up, Sox lose.

How is that not on the manager? And the bullpen too, obviously, and the offense, because once the offense builds up a lead, they leave it there, rather than add on. If the lead holds up, Sox win; if it doesn't, they lose. It's as if they don't keep playing the game.

You acquired this pitcher and paid him all of this money to go five innings and throw 89 pitches in a rubber match at Fenway?

Are you serious? That's the stud? That's the ace? And that's what you think he should be doing and giving you? That's enough for the day, huh?

Christy Mathewson here, man. "Thanks for the five innings, Christy, now give me the ball, you did your job, big ace."

And spare me anything about how a ball glanced off the tip of Crochett's nose--from the side, so it wasn't a straight-on smash--the inning before or whatever. It's his nose, not his arm. Wasn't a big deal.

I'll give you an example of how people can't tell anything anymore. They are incapable of knowing what anything. This is different than knowing things about that thing. They can't even recognize the owl for the owl never mind know where the owl lives, what it eats, whether it's healthy or not, how old it, etc. The owl might as well be a pumpkin pie.

Triston Casas blew out his knee. Season over. You never want anyone to get hurt, but maybe this is best for Casas, because he was going to be bad all year. He's a negative presence on the team. His teammates don't like him. He's full of himself. He never shuts up. He gave those interviews in spring training saying who should play where, who should stay in the minors.

He's not going to pan out in Boston. He's also not that good. He talks about himself like he averages 40 homers and 125 RBI a year. He's a poor defensive first baseman. With this injury, at least he doesn't have to have a season in which he battles to get to .225, has that mess up his head, and he gets a clean start next year, either with the Sox or--better for him and the team--somewhere else. That might be unlikely, given his contract and that he now has no trade value.

Here's how his 2025 season was going: He had a WAR of -.9. He was hitting .182. He had 3 home runs and 11 RBI. 11 walks and 27 strikeouts. His OPS was .580. His OPS+ was 64. That means that Triston Casas was thirty-six percent worse than the average hitter in the American League. Thirty-percent worse than average.

Do you understand how bad that is? How hard it is to do, even, at that level, where there's less separation? This isn't like the gap between kids in fifth grade. This is the big leagues.

Triston Casas, thus far this season, was the worst first baseman in baseball.

I go online, and I read the comments. Everyone is sad because he's so great having such a great year. He is a super hitter, the comments say. An amazing fielder.

I'm not exaggerating. That's actually what people say. What they think. Because they never think.

There are several reasons why this happens. People are stupid. People are lazy. People are narcissists.

What does narcissism have to do with this? Someone goes to a game. They see Casas get a hit when they're not looking at their phone that one time. They were there, they saw him get a hit, he's great.

It's like when I'm in the Monument going up and down, up and down. Someone new comes in and they see me get to the top twice during their time in the Monument. What do they almost always do? They almost always conclude I've only done it twice--"This is his second lap!"-- because it starts and ends with them. When they got there. Nothing else could have happened prior. If they didn't see it, it didn't happen. Because it's them and they're like god. But they're idiots. Narcissistic idiots. And "idiot" is too high an honor, really. This is beyond idiocy.

That's how self-obsessed people are. It makes them blind. The stats I just pulled up? Hardly anyone else is going to do that. See how easy that was? See how irrefutable? People won't even look into it that far, which isn't far at all--it's looking into it at all.

So those are two reasons. Then there's the breakdown of society and humanness. And you want to say, "Wait, Colin, that's over dramatic!" It isn't. People's lives are empty. They are alone. They don't think, they can't think. They are starved for attention. They would pimp out their very soul to get attention. Which ultimately does nothing for them. They would sell their soul--see ya, soul--for attention. They can't tell what anything is. They have no reason/thought process, no curiosity. No effort.

These athletes become like stuffed animals. Their friends. Their pretend friends. Whose names are used to give off a certain breezy quality on social media as the wine is guzzled and the tears are fought back.

You know that tone. If you've ever been on social media, you should recognize it instantly. The breezy tone. The not-a-care-in-the-world tone. How breezy do you think those people really are? Do you think their emotions as they post what they're posting are tantamount to some temperate day, nary a cloud in the sky, or do you think it's one storm center superimposed on top of another and they're barely hanging on to their tree so that they don't blow away?

Exactly.

Ah, but the tone.

Because they don't have friends because like most people they are not capable of being a friend. They don't have love. They don't love themselves. Sure, they're with someone, they have kids, they're out with the girls, but it's all a sham. Usually. There's only emptiness and not being able to tell what anything is, because they stopped using their brain. They lost the ability to cogitate in the process. And, in the next phase of the devolution, the ability to tell. To recognize anything, no matter how simple it is, for what it is.

Put the best version of that thing in front of someone, and the worst version of that thing, and they don't know. If anything, they're apt to say the worst thing is better, because it's closer to what they could do. If it's writing, and it resembles sixth grade writing, they are apt to pick that one, because they didn't progress beyond sixth grade mentally, intellectually, verbally, and readerly. A great film or a stupid film. Which do you think people are more likely to "get"? The stupid film. I'll expand more on this in a bit, but we're talking sports right now.

There's no mental involvement with anything. A player like Triston Casas--any player--is anthropomorphized like people do with animals in videos. You know, they give the animals human personalities, they imagine the animals to be thinking human thoughts. They do "voices" for the animal--that is, they write dialogue into their social media posts for the animal.

Athletes are humans, but it's the same principle. Cuddly Casas! People see these athletes every night--or frequently--and it becomes this fantasy-projection you're my cuddly wuddly- friend-stuffed animal-who-is-a-real-boy thing. It's why people use athletes' first names in their social media posts (women do this a lot more than men). Like they're besties.

It's because they have nothing. They have no one. They have no friends. They are incapable of being a friend because there is nothing inside of them at this point. They're not going to do anything about that. They likely can't if they wanted to, because their strength gone is, their will is gone, their courage is gone, their very self is gone. That's why they need attention. Validation that is not validating. They are husks. With no way out or forward. They'll keep going thusly, then die, and become soil. The end. And because everyone else is exactly like them, there aren't people to be friends with even if they weren't this way. That's how we've made our society and our world. Social media was a big part of it, and AI will be the biggest part yet. What snuffs out any last vestige of the human individual. But hooray, technology. Cost of doing the business of progress!

Us.

And if you don't like Trump, I hope you like the idea of things that are even worse. By a lot. Because we're just getting started here.

But let's stick to baseball for now.

You think that unthinking, broken, empty, lazy person is aware of Casas's batting average, never mind his advanced metrics? Do you think they would ever look up any of that? Do you think they could even understand such things? Simple as they are? It'll still be too much for most. But Casas paints his fingernails! He's so cool! Wheeeeee! We need him! He's a great hitter!

That's what happens. That's how it works. That's not so much as how people think--because they don't think--as how people are.

The bigger problem now than people not thinking is that we've moved into a portion of your devolution where many people can't think if they wanted to. If they had to. Think of it like tools. You own the tools, but you don't use the tools. They're in a case in the garage. You could go out and get them.

No longer. The tools aren't out there. The person doesn't have the tools. They can't do the job if they wanted to.

And now, in a society where no one knows anything, you can be this way and you're on ESPN, you can have sports podcast with millions of followers, and you're no different, which is why you have a social media following of hundreds of thousands or millions because those followers are just like you, they could be you, you don't know more than they do, they like that you're on their level and if they had chose to go down a different career path or didn't have to worry about the kid's college right now, they could jump off their road and choose yours and be a talk show host, or a successful podcaster, or, hell, a GM.

There is no one who has ever looked at the likes of Jared Carrabis, to use his example again, and thought he knew more about baseball, was more interesting, funnier, beyond them, better than them, or that they couldn't do exactly what he does and probably do it better.

Right? Do you think that person is out there? Of course you don't, if you've ever seen what Carrabis does. It's just your Uber driver talking about the game as he takes you to the airport, or your barber as he gives you your cut. He's no more qualified or compelling. The appeal, such as there is any appeal, is in being able to say, "I could do that."

There are no experts, there are no people who know. There are just variations on what I've described, but it's all within a kind of overarching range.

And me.