Looks like the Red Sox are going to give other teams a run for their mediocrity and why Chad Tracy shouldn't have already been named the team's permanent manager

Thursday 8/13/26

With last night's loss to the Blue Jays, the Red Sox have now dropped five in a row. It seems like the Red Sox are going to do what they can to piss away the lead the built up with their six-week spurt and not make the playoffs. The team currently in the last Wild Card position in the American League is the Texas Rangers, who are a game below .500. It's hard not to feel here in the earliest hours of August 13 that the Red Sox aren't going to give the teams currently out of the Wild Card but close enough to get there a run for their money, or should I say run for their mediocrity?

There are only two teams in the American League who are out of it. The Twins, Tigers, Guardians, Jays, Orioles, and Mariners could each move into a Wild Card spot with a strong week. Hell, half a week for some of them. The Tigers are the only team with a positive run differential. The Rangers are -34. The Jays are -54. The Tigers, at +87, have a higher run differential than the Red Sox at +79. Why do I mention this? Because throughout the long history of baseball, run differential is usually significant and portends as to the final standings.

But damn is that disappointing to see with the Red Sox. The pissing away. The feeling that if they do make the postseason it'll be by hanging on, rather than commanding and increasing separation.

(Small bright spots from last night's game: Ranger Suarez was a bit better than he has been and Willson Contreras homered, though he also had a horrible error. They need his bat and his engagement; his "good crazy" and his spark. Durbin put his previous bad game behind him and did well.)

This also speaks to what happens when you get yourself in the hole that the Red Sox did. It's why teams that get in a big hole--and it doesn't matter if it's early--don't make the postseason. By hole, I mean games under .500, not so much games back.

If you're .500 and trail someone by a lot early, you can overcome that by playing really good baseball. Being 14 games under .500, though, means you expend huge amounts of effort and energy just getting to ground level, and that can be all you had in your tank, and now that you're back, you pay a price for having expended as much as you did.

The Red Sox rose to 13 games over .500 after being 14 under. Now they're at 8 games over .500. They're going in the opposite direction as part of the natural fall back of having expended all that energy.

The high-water mark of the season was the sweep of the Dodgers out in LA, coupled--yes, we'll do a joint high-water thing--with that wild win over the White Sox at Fenway when the Red Sox trailed five times in the game and never led until they walked it off in the thirteenth. If you want to be crude about it, you could say that's where the load was shot.

Many Red Sox fans were clamoring for Chad Tracy to have the interim tag removed from his title and be made the official manager now and moving forward.

I thought, "Why?" What purpose would that serve? There's no need. You played well for a month and a half. Now you're playing poorly again. This guy isn't on anyone else's radar. You do nothing for yourself giving him that job right now. And it's not like he can be offended. You're not doing him some wrong. You don't reward people for six weeks. It's six weeks. Especially when you don't have to make that decision and it has no benefit for you and your operation to make that decision.

People love when other people are rewarded before they should or deserve to be, because no one wants to have to earn anything or prove anything. It's projection. They don't want to have to earn or prove anything in their lives.

The Red Sox have a very bad recent history of giving things to people before they should. Like Kristian Campbell. Why would you make the same mistake here? I can't think of a single positive of having named him the manager already. I can't think of a single reason to have done that. Beyond, what, "feelz"?

Tracy hasn't looked so hot lately, has he? I mean, if know the game. No urgency. Plenty of complacency, going by his postgame comments. These games look like they're being managed as scheduled losses. To be fair, they look like they're being played that way as well, and how you play is much more important than how you manage.

Do you know when Joe Morgan was named the permanent manager of the Red Sox after having taken over as the interim manager during the summer of the 1988 season?

After the season. After the team made the postseason.

Joe Morgan was a damn good manager. Shrewd.

Tracy is kind of a cutout manager. Cookie cutter. Sports have become a long line of robots. There aren't thinkers here. You can get a robot if it's a robot you want. Now, some robots mesh better with a given clubhouse. And then I guess, well, there's your more successful robot. But he's still got the same basic programming as all the others.

Let's pretend that the Red Sox don't make the playoffs. They continue to sputter, it goes down to the last week, and the Rangers finish in that second spot and the Orioles take the third spot.

Would you bring Chad Tracy back then? Maybe...but that's a very if-y maybe, right? That's a borderline, "probably not."

So if you made him the manager now, that means he's coming back next year no matter what, almost certainly. In this scenario, you'd likely be regretting having him return next year.

It has to play out. This is a tough part of the season for them. As I said, they burned through all that energy here in this miserable summer of heat and humidity. Now they're in a stretch of 16 games in 16 days. That's rough. You are seeing the effects.