Feel bad for the manager

Friday 6/5/26

This once would have been an odd remark, but the Red Sox are fortunate to be leaving Fenway Park to face two good teams in the Yankees and Rays on the road. The Old Towne Team dropped another home game yesterday and at the same time their series with the Orioles. I didn't realize this was a day game until after it was over. Brayan Bello got the start. Why, I don't know. He has a curious version of the yips in that he can't pitch the first inning. He'll only get hammered.

They had been going with an "opener," a concept I deplore, and then bringing Bello into the game in the second inning, with him then usually being fine. Embarrassing for him I'm sure. Well, to some degree. Some people are just so full of themselves that who they are and who they think they are two entirely different things. Bello got rocked in the first yesterday, surrendering 6 runs. The game was as good as over in ten minutes in terms of establishing the winner and loser.

Imagine taking your kid to the ballgame. You know this team, you know they can't come back from 3 runs down, let alone six, and in ten meager minutes, the outcome is established. You're still there, a day at the ballpark beats a day doing many other things, and you get to see big league players play, but still, rather dispiriting.

I feel a little bad for interim manager Chad Tracy. He's getting something of a shot, and he doesn't have much of a chance to make good with it. He's never managed or coached in the big leagues and he never played in the big leagues. He's here because of circumstance, but you can turn that into a new life for yourself. I'd love a chance/opportunity. I've always wanted one.

There isn't anything to suggest he'd be up for the job with a better team and a team with a better mindset. He's probably just some guy, rather than a stellar managerial mind or a manager who knows how to get the best out of his team.

Still, he must be frustrated. There's only so much he can do right now anyway. I'd expect he's limited in the say he has as well and isn't the fiery type to take over and put his stamp on everything. In other words, there's likely an element of just being glad to be here and a hope that it works out and he can stick at this level.

I did see his comments when asked about Bello after the game. He didn't sell the player down the river, but you could tell that he was at a loss personally and that something had to give because this wasn't tenable anymore. This is a bad team that should be trying to take any positives it can get/manufacture.

With that being the case, I don't know why they just didn't continue doing the opener thing with Bello. Yes, it's not perfect, but if he comes in an gives up 2 runs in six innings and there you are in the seventh in a game you can maybe win, isn't that, like I said, something anyway?

Bright spots--or any positives, really--are hard to come by with this team. We have come to the point where it's over. It just is. You know now what the fate of the 2026 Red Sox will be. No turnaround is coming or could come. It's a non-year. A non-competitive, last place year, which may be two years because I'm not sanguine there will be baseball in 2027 (it seems to me like this potentiality should be making much bigger noise/waves right now, but so it goes).

It's sad, isn't it? If you love baseball and if you love the Red Sox.

I mean really love them. Not pretend love them so you can post pre and postgame in the Red Sox subreddit and feel heard/like you have a group and voice. I mean love them like that guy in Vermont who listens to every game on the radio and remembers sweating out the 1972 pennant race. Intact seasons and, better yet, honest, competitive seasons are important to people like that in New England. You only have so many of them in your lifetime. They're to be treasured, and it's never wise to waste things that are to be treasured.

Even if the team isn't going anywhere, you want to feel like that year's team gave it what they could the best way that they could. Whereas, this feels slapped together and illogical. The on-the-field product of a broken operation/franchise. A franchise that has everything backwards as to what a baseball player is and needs to go back to the baseball drawing board.

That's my biggest takeaway. It isn't cheaping out so much as it's I don't think the Red Sox as an organization understand what a baseball should be, how baseball should be played, how baseball games are really won, and how rosters should be assembled to give a team the best chance of winning.

I don't think they think about the human side of it. It's just going off printouts by people who don't know the game. Intangibles are irrelevant to them. Look at the dearth of leaders on these Red Sox clubs, for instance. The absence of able-minded veteran stability. Little things matter. Professionalism matters. Plays that don't show up in the box score matter.

Bello was asked about a possible demotion to Triple A following the game and bristled at the idea, saying through his interpreter that he was a big league pitcher and any issues he has he'll work out up here at this level.

That sounded to me like a guy out of touch with what's what. But it's also kind of a non-story. He's but one hole in needing of plugging on a sinking ship and there are too many of those holes to plug to keep this season afloat. In other words, it doesn't much matter whether he goes down or not. I'd have kept bringing him out in the second inning or tried a bullpen role.

The news came later on that Bello had indeed been sent to the Triple A team in Worcester. If I had to guess I'd say he doesn't come back in any positive way with the Red Sox and will require a fresh start somewhere else.

He's a headcase. Not a mentally strong athlete. I don't think he'll forgive them, if you will, and that's going to effect how he pitches because he can't keep things separate. He needs things to be "just so." I've seen him unravel so many times on the mound when stuff isn't going his way.