Flooring display, crushed Habs, Red Sox bright spots, early Patriots prediction

Sunday 5/17/26

Anthony Edwards going over to the Spurs players to congratulate them on eliminating his team with eight minutes left in the game is flooring to me, and I don't mean in the creating-that-surface-under-your-feet sense. Speaks to where the world is. All these details do. The devil of these declining times inhabits each of them.

The Montreal Canadiens had the Buffalo Sabres right where they wanted them: up 3-2 in the series, Game 6 in Montreal, the place amped and ready to explode. You get that lively first period, with the Canadiens up 3-2 at the end of it, then the surrender six straight goals and are blitzed out of their own building by a score of 8-3.

I labeled Pistons-Cavaliers a kind of least-believe-in off, so, of course, the Cavs dropped Game 6 at home when they could have closed it out and I wouldn't be surprised if the Pistons drop Game 7 tonight. I think they'll win--I mean, I guess?--but it'd be fitting if they didn't.

Trevor Story was mercifully put on the IL. He could be out for a couple months. I wonder if you'll see him back at all this year or in a Red Sox uniform again. This could be the end for him in Boston.

I'm going to defend the Red Sox' front office right now. Well, not defend, exactly, because I don't think they were operating in good faith and this just worked out for them instead. I'll see Red Sox fans criticize the team even now for letting Rafael Devers. The offense is terrible and they could really use Devers.

That's not true, though. Devers has been prett bad this year. In that regard he'd fit right in with these 2026 Red Sox. He has a bat speed problem. Once you have a bat speed problem, you tend to always have a bat speed problem. Devers' lack of fitness and professionalism caught up with him.

Doesn't take long. If you're just a show up and play, count on your natural ability guy, you won't be elite for long. There are also all these other guys with great natural ability working as hard as they can and whose off-seasons are all about work, too.

Devers has turned it around some from where he was a few weeks back, but be glad you aren't saddled with him and that contract. Devers has 240 career homers. He's in his age twenty-nine season. Would you take the over or under on him getting to 300?

Probably the over. But that this is still a worthy question says a lot, don't you think? Once, people would have laughed at it. I never would have, because I know how it goes for players with that body type who aren't committed professionals. They get in worse and worse shape, they lose the quickness and speed they need. In this case, bat speed.

When Devers first came up, her turned on an Aroldis Chapman 100 mph+ fastball. Remember, that was lefty against lefty. It's hard to imagine Devers doing this now.

It's also unfair to blame the Sox' front office as people do every day for not trading Jarren Duran after his 2024 campaign. They would have looked nuts to do so. He'd had an awesome year, and the reasonable expectation/belief was that he'd figured things out, and though he may never be that good again, he could be close, and close to that would still be awfully good.

You couldn't have forecasted this kind of regression. Okay, I guess you could have forecasted a mental implosion, given who the player is, but I don't think anyone would have made that move after 2024 or should have. If Duran gave you what he did last year that'd be a really useful player, even if most of last year's positive appearance was the result of a very strong lone month.

I could see Duran being out of the league in a few years. A player whose career is done at thirty-two or thirty-three. Not say I expect it, but I could see it tracking.

The Red Sox did win last night basically the only way they can--by holding the other team to only a couple runs and scoring one more. The Sox can't get more than three runs in a game. That seems to be their normal ceiling. Abreu homered late to put the Sox in the lead. They don't string hits together, so that's what it takes. A well-timed bomb in a low-scoring game with the lead within reach.

But hey, just because it's been a dire season so far and it's looking like it'll continue to be doesn't mean there aren't some brights spots and one of them is Payton Tolle. Loved how he pitched last night, which was to contact. He only struck out three, but he only threw 85 pitches--with just twenty-five balls--in eight innings. I wish they let him complete the thing, but Chapman came in and did his job.

Tolle's ERA is 2.05 on the season now. He has enthusiasm, likeability, and he's no dummy. I like Connelly Early as well. These two guys could be pitchers of a much more fruitful future for you.

I could see this being a long year for Mike Vrabel. Schedule came out the other day. Patrios have seven of their first eleven games on the road. They may be all done by after that. They were going to regress, there's all the Vrabel drama swirling around, the schedule is harder, the breaks and bounces they got are due to go the other way--they always do--and my suspicion is that the quarterback is a bit mirage-y and not upper echelon.

It isn't hard to foresee a scenario come August training camp when the members of the Boston sports and Patriots un-intelligentsia like Tom E. Curran, etc., saying that with the Super Bowl hangover, the Vrabel situation, the schedule, that 2026 was never going to result in success, after having said the opposite the August before.

Here we are on May 17, 2026, and I think the Patriots 2026 season has "lost year" written all over it...but let's say in the underpainting because you need to see it play out.

I wonder how Drake Maye really feels about Vrabel if Drake Maye is actually who Drake Maye appears to be in terms of his public-facing persona. I'd have a very hard time listening to Vrabel preach to me. He's a meathead, so there's that, but leaving aside the meathead thing, he's a hypocrite and bad person who preaches accountability while embodying the opposite of it in his real life.