LeBron James/Mike Trout/Jaylen Brown + Red Sox considerations/things to keep an eye on/predictions

Saturday 7/25/26

LeBron James will be playing for the Philadelphia 76ers next season. Somewhat of a surprise. Looked like the Sixers were a distant-enough fourth in terms of likelihood of landing spots, after Cleveland, Miami, and Golden State. Interestingly for Celtics fans, it was the team adding Jaylen Brown that swayed James.

The former has had a once-in-a-lifetime off-season. He goes from sixth in MVP voting with Boston, to being moved by Boston, and now he's on a championship contender if not frontrunner, where he may well be the...fourth option. You have some things to figure out when you have that many good players. Doesn't mean you will, either, though I think James helps with that. He really has made an effort to play on star-packed teams ever since leaving Cleveland the first time.

James is the opposite of Mike Trout, who just doesn't care and will end up with, in my view, something closer to the legacy that he deserves: that of an unmemorable ballplayer. James has no prior relationship with Philadelphia, and yet it was where he chose to go for his final season. Trout is from Philadelphia (and goes to a lot of Eagles games during the NFL season), and has vetoed being dealt there because he prefers to play meaningless games for a perennial basement dweller of a franchise.

The Patriots open training camp today. The Red Sox win streak at least shifted some of the focus away from football. You get wall to wall football now. Football through the spring, football when baseball is the only one of the four major sports going. Americans are drunk on lowest common denominator-ism, and football has its own table at that party. Americans take a seat--something they excel at--and pound their utensils for more giant cuts of meat, shouting, "More, more, more" as they stuff themselves and their heart valves are pushed to the limit.

The Jaylen Brown trade also tilted that spotlight some. It was nice to see the city have a bit more juice to it though on account of and behalf of the Red Sox. Football rules everywhere because it's perceived sans any nuance without, so far as those doing the perceiving are concerned, diminished effect. It's like the sport version of staring at a screen, whereas baseball is more akin to thinking or reading.

Not a pretty win for the Red Sox Friday night against the Blue Jays, but one I thought they needed. Didn't want to drop two in a row after that big streak. Hey, this stuff happens fast. Time and tide wait for no man, the same as the baseball schedule. Don't immediately follow up a season-saving winning streak with a losing streak, however brief, if brief it was even to be.

Baseball isn't really about big streaks--it's about consistency, winning series, reliably chopping that wood and trusting that you'll end up with a nice pile. The team didn't get demoralized or panic after blowing a 4-0 lead late yesterday and took care of what they had to. Good sign. Regrouped, rallied, closed it out. Can win the series now today with another available crack on Sunday. Win series and you will go far. This is a sport where the difference between a great hitter and an average one is about a hit week. Taking two out of three and then splitting a four gamer might not seem fancy, but it'll more than see you through if you aren't deep in a hole. If you are, you'll need torridity to reach the postseason.

Something to keep an eye on: Aroldis Chapman has been a little shaky his last three times out. He's getting the saves, but they haven't been slam-the-door-hard affairs.

Shall we do some Red Sox predictions? They aren't very thrilling but nonetheless let's have at them:

Craig Breslow will be back with the team next year.

So will Chad Tracy.

As I said recently, I believe, Garrett Crochet won't pitch again in 2026.

Roman Anthony won't play again in 2026.

Willson Contreras will finish in the top ten in the American League in home runs, RBI, and batting average, and place in the top ten in the AL MVP voting. This won't take into account the attitude and fire he's brought to the team because the MVP is mostly about WAR and people aren't intelligent enough to understand and apply the concept of "most valuable"--they don't know what the word "valuable" means in any context beyond dollars and cents--but his numbers will be there.

[Sidebar: My go-to example, as I've said before, is Willie Stargell with the 1979 Pirates, and this is something that warrants coming back to. People on baseball history forums still bemoan the fact that he won for that season. Co-won with Keith Hernandez. And other people who say the word "literally" 300 times a day and write "LOL" and "lives rent free in his head," etc. etc. etc., look back on that victory, see the WAR and say something idiotic like, "Oh, back when they gave out the MVP for vibes." It doesn't necessarily mean best player. It means most valuable. Words have meaning. Yeah, I know. Who understands the meaning of any words in this world? Who thinks about them? Who takes the time to go, "Okay, this means this, so let me think about this thing then..." The truth is that Stargell was one of most plainly deserving MVPs in the sport's history. I'm saying like top ten most valuable seasons in the history of baseball. Not best. Most valuable. No player meant more to their team that year, or in most years the game has been played, than Stargell did to Pittsburgh in 1979. Then he goes on and wins the MVP of the NLCS and the World Series. The guy was the definition of most valuable that year. Here's one that would cause people to blow a mental gasket: you can be the most valuable player on your team for a given year, and not be the best player or the player with the best statistical season. Maybe you do great things that allow five other people to do really good things they wouldn't have otherwise been able to do. Or: someone on your team puts up better numbers, but you put up really good numbers yourself, and you were that player all season who delivered the big hit when the big hit had to be gotten. You were uncanny in this regard, and the team fed off of, achieved "believability" in large part because of you, and without you doing what you did, the team would have lost those games and finished four games out. Willie Stargell had better statistical years than he did in 1979. Years where he was a monster. But he was never more valuable to his team than he was that year.]

Sonny Gray, arguably the most egregious All-Star slights in baseball history, and certainly on the short list of them, will win the Cy Young.

I'm ninety-percent certain about the first three, eighty-five percent certain about the fourth, convinced about Contreras if he stays healthy and doesn't get suspended--which I trust him that he won't--and think Gray is apt to be slighted for the Cy Young even if he keeps going more or less as he has been because people now are so clueless about everything, even things like sports, that they associate wins for a starting pitcher with something negative. I'm serious. Baseball fans, baseball writers--I really don't like using the term "writers" there, but you follow me--would rather see someone go 7-9 with good rate stats than go 19-6 also with good rate stats but not exclusively just rate stats. Wins for pitchers are treated as bad things. I make this last prediction out of protest.

When Marcello Mayer is ready to return, I'd send him down to Worcester, or, better yet, deal him. I'd deal Anthony as well if you can get a good return on him. Mayer is never going to be a player and Anthony is not going to be an especially good player. I don't like anything about Mayer.

I'm concerned about the Red Sox' pitching. What, you say? It's been so good. It has. Ranger Suarez's season is adding up to one of those paucity deals. If you're not regularly out there, if you aren't, yes, stacking wins, you're only helping so much, or not at all. I have the sense that he has a lingering thing, and lingering things don't resolve themselves in the season, but I hope not.

Payton Tolle has been more up and down than Red Sox fans think, because many of them are blinded by their creepy parasocial relationships ("He likes to eat steaks and potatoes like me! He's so full of life and roly-poly! He's my 1980s-mustached down-to-earth pitcher friend!") and now with usage, given the absurd degrees to which these guys are babied as they come along (and then when they get here), you may be seeing a greater degree than before of the down you were getting.

They need Connolly Early to return. You could see the Sox fail to make the postseason because, ironically, of their pitching. We may be in late September and Brayan Bello is staring games for you and you're counting on him. He's been fantastic when he doesn't start. You don't want to lose whatever that strange thing is. Or it could be fine. My point is that with this offense, you need good pitching. That win streak had a recipe to it: strong starts from the pitchers, scoring early, maybe tacking on a bit.

The usage thing is a potential factor with Jake Bennett, too. He's been awesome. I like everything I've seen from this guy. His make-up, mound presence, command. Doesn't walk people. It's amazing how far not walking people can help take you. Doesn't mean you can groove meatballs down the middle of the plate, but man, not issuing those free passes makes a pitcher's life, and his ball club's chances, all the better. They'd be lost without him, same as if Caleb Durbin hadn't rebounded as he has to date.

Another problem is that you've had players playing over their heads. Borderline big leagues, given an opportunity, can run with that opportunity. For a time. But there's a reason they're not reliable big leaguers. The league catches on and up to you. Adjustments are made. You're figured out. Then, if you're not a reliable big leaguer, you have issues. Your run comes to an end. You're a hole in the line-up. Sometimes that player isn't much heard from again. Sometimes they stick around for a few years, spending most of their time in the minors, but being called up here and there.

Same idea goes with utility level players who are pressed into being starters. You can get an energy jolt. A punch in the arm for the team. You win scrappy. But you can only scrap so far, you know? The day in, day out nature of baseball is the great leveler. Spurts are checked. Quashed. It becomes about who does more or less the same thing on a weekly basis. That goes for players and teams. It's chopping that wood. Meteoric isn't really a baseball thing. And when it is, what matters is what you do post-meteoric.

This American League is sufficiently woeful that .500 may get you into the postseason. Hang that bunting, baby. (Is this a thing anymore? October baseball and bunting draped at a ball park; that should always be a thing). Going 82-80 for the Red Sox, getting knocked out in that first round, and having the front office be able to kick back and say, "See? We made the playoffs" and being satisfied, even well pleased, could work out worse moving forward than cratering.

I really think, too, that people are whistling past the graveyard as pertains the 2027 season. You know how baseball people love to say that you need to play for two in extra innings as the away team (which is dead wrong, by the way; the much smarter way is to play for the single run; prioritize that, and get that run however you need to get it)? Well, you could very well be playing this season for two seasons, in effect.

These are just things that I note as considerations. Things to keep an eye on. Doesn't mean they're going to happen. If you plan on having a nice picnic, you want to be aware of the weather that day. Keep an eye out for potential storm clouds. When you know about something, you know what needs to be in place and to happen for that thing to come off well or the best that it can. Here we're talking about knowing baseball.