Jarren Duran's poor defense, possible Red Sox All-Stars, Bruins boners, punting Celtics

Friday 7/4/25

Red Sox left fielder Jarren Duran has six errors thus far this season (one came while playing center field) and a fielding percentage of .962. Do you know how bad that is? For the 1977 season, which was his age thirty-seven season, Carl Yastrzemski had zero errors in the outfield and a fielding percentage of 1.000. Same home ballpark.

People who romanticize baseball players as being cuddly-wuddly and as though they were their snuggle friends because their games are on every night (and thus in their homes with them in a world stuffed to the gills with lonely, disconnected people) and they call them by their first name on social media will say that Duran is a leader (and also because he's been on the team a while). He is not. Duran has his own issues and players with their own issues are not leaders of teams, which may sound cruel, but it's true. That is, players whose issues preclude them from setting those issues aside as if they don't exist. I'd say the Red Sox have no leaders, and that's counting their manager.

Watching Duran this year I became more curious how he had the year he did last year. Granted, it was a classic career year. I think that's plain now. Guys have them, especially in baseball. Tom Paciorek in 1981. We can name thousands of such players. You probably have your own favorite examples. They were never that player before or after. But Duran's 2024 season was essentially the result of the summer. He was very good in June, July, and August, and not very good in April, May, and September. You're really looking at a baseball player that Red Sox fans think is this asset because of three good months.

Also worth noting about Duran: This is a big man, and that's before the weight training, which made him into a super-jacked man and yet he his home run power is now negligible. Why? It's not because he's focused on putting the ball in play and using his great speed to make things happen on the basepaths--which is when Duran is at his best--because he strikes out a ton.

Which Red Sox will make the All-Star team? Two deserve to: Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman. The former has been a mound maestro, a delight to watch work. You find yourself making a note of when he starts next so you can tune in. Chapman has pitched better than I expected him to be. (He has issued 10 walks in 35 innings. This isn't great, but you can live with it. His WHIP is under .771--which is damn good-- because he issues so few hits.) Chapman and Duran could make very nice deadline acquisitions for a contender. Somehow, the Red Sox are only six games out of first place in the AL East. They are three back for that second Wild Card spot, and I don't know why that feels more discouraging to me than the division number. I guess because you think of that second Wild Card spot requiring so little of a team, and being a division leader feels...loftier. Carlos Narvaez could be an All-Star. He's been pretty solid. But there are all of these games where he's hitting clean-up, and I feel like that says a lot and it ain't good.

The difference between a starter and a reliever in baseball now is a starter faces a batter twice and a reliever faces a batter once.

Looks like there may never be another 300 game winner again. Verlander was likely the last best shot. That is unless the approach to the game changes, which is possible. I have no reason to believe that pitchers get hurt less now than they did previously with how they're used. And isn't health the basis/rationale for why pitchers are used like they are? Or starters, anyway. You get the sense that front offices don't care as much about the health of relief pitchers. A relief pitcher is a second-class citizen, which is ironic, given how much of the game now comes down to bullpens, given that throwing 175 innings is now some notable single-season mark for a starter. 200 innings and it's like you have Hercules out there on the hill.

The Bruins signed a fourth line player in Tanner Jeannot who tallied 7 goals in each of the past two seasons to a five-year contract which is such a (dumb) Bruins thing to do. The Bruins' front office loves players like this maybe even as much as they love players from New England and New England colleges, which has never made any sense to me. I think it could be as simple as the people most in charge, if you will, go to some of the local college games and decide, "We should sign him," and also because--and this is crazy--they think that fans of the team care or that the team will get some local publicity boost. No other team in the league does what the Bruins do with their love fest of all things local. It's another reason why I thought the Bruins would definitely take James Hagens if he were available, much to my chagrin.

You also have to wonder if Neely believes that Bruins need to be big and bad like this was still 1985 or, hell, 1974. Could he actually think this? Neely was that way as a player, but Neely was also a unique player. There never has been anyone like him. There have been power forwards--which isn't a thing anymore--but Neely was still distinct. You'd think he'd be able to separate the personal from the professional and that he wouldn't be projecting based on his own career and times. He doesn't strike me as that kind of person. But at the same time, the Bruins have this penchant for adding and overpaying...well, stiffs. A.k.a., tough guys.

The Bruins also like their royal fraternal order of past Bruins (I'm thinking of that lodge Fred and Barney go to on The Flintstones), so to speak, which is why I expected them to hire Marco Sturm as their coach and partially why I didn't want them to. (Additionally: He sounds like a conservative, neo-trap-loving coach who prefers to have his team sit back rather than go on the attack, and that doesn't work in today's NHL. It's a speed game. The key physical aspect pertains the forecheck, which can itself be enhanced by speed.) Break this pattern of recycling the members of the old gang and the local stuff. Wash out that culture entirely. Get the right people and the right players because of talent and because they're your best options from from a competitive standpoint.

You can already tell it's going to be a long season next year for the Celtics. The plan is obviously not to compete, go for it, try to win as much as possible, however you want to put it. The club has committed to an attitude of defeatism.

It's a mindset, yes, but this also comes down to money. The truth is, if teams want to win, they can win, so long as they're willing to pay. Run your team in order to win, you'll win. Run your team with a "business first" approach, and you won't win as much. All four major Boston sports teams are examples of the latter at the moment. That's why they're mediocre or worse. And sure, people want to say that the Celtics are better than that, but I'm not willing to go there after watching them crash and burn in round two of the playoffs this past season against the Knicks. That's close to mediocre in my view. Okay, it's not league average. But it's very C-minus-y, if you follow me.

But hearing "the 2026-27 season" bandied about as this term is depressing in July 2025, and already I'm hearing "the 2027-28 season" being talked about in the sense of, "Tatum will have a full year under his belt post-injury by then," like there are excuses built for the next two years! Two years is a long time. It can be. It certainly is in sports and the career of a professional athlete. The East is wide open. Scratch that: basketball is wide open. There is, in my estimation, no reason to be sitting back and not going for it. Don't underestimate the power--both to the good and bad--of mentality and, in this case, organizational mindset. Don't over-complicate things. The setting of the right tone and approach can be huge.

I think this new ownership will be a bad thing for the Celtics that makes people unhappy for years to come. They'll retain a couple stars, be in the upper middle of the NBA, make the playoffs, win a round or two but no more, and that's while Tatum--who is not "the guy" in the classic NBA "the guy" sense anyway--is here, and he may try to bolt. What you really saw in last year's playoffs was a window closing.