Sports nuts, how games back can be misleading, some trivia

Tuesday 7/7/26

There's a kind of nuts in sports which can be very good that is different than nuts in life which is usually not so good. The position where one is most apt to be nuts in this good manner is as a goalie in hockey. This typically gives the skilled goalie an extra edge.

Ken Dryden could be nuts--the intellectual version. Billy Smith was nuts. Battlin' Billy. Grant Fuhr was nuts in that he could give up 0 or 6 goals and it was the same to him. Which meant that when he could give up no more goals, and his team had to have six awesome saves in a row, he was in a highly confident state and able to make them. Tim Thomas was nuts as evinced by the Bruins' Stanley Cup run in which he laid out that Canucks player. If Thomas hadn't been nuts, the Bruins wouldn't have won that year. See? Good nuts.

In football, Tom Brady was nuts with how competitive he was. Michael Jordan in basketball. In football, on the defensive side, you don't really have guys who are nuts so much as you have sociopaths. These used to be more prevalent. Bill Romanowski. Sociopath. Ronnie Lott was pretty sociopathic. Lots of Raiders and Steelers guys in the 1970s. More closers used to be nuts in baseball. Al Hrabosky. His nickname was "The Mad Hungarian."

The Red Sox' Willson Contreras is nuts and it's good for team. He's been their offensive MVP. He's also been much more productive than I expected him to be. He's having the best year of his career. It's a shame he's going to be out for seven games as a result of his suspension for kicking off a brawl--unless his appeal produces a reduction--which I think is four games too many. I don't blame him for doing what he did. I wouldn't have blamed him if he didn't do it either.

Despite being crazy in the sports sense, he seems like a decent guy to me. He talks about change, and then he does things differently. Sure, maybe it's just small stuff--he's not doing the in-your-face bat flip thing with his recent homers--but he strikes me as a guy who wants to be accountable and hold himself accountable. And hell, you need some piss and vinegar. I was disappointed for him when he wasn't selected for the All-Star team, because I think he's earned it, and was then happy for him when he was subsequently added.

Payton Tolle is on the hill for the Sox tonight in Chicago. He was roughed up last time out. I'm expecting him to bounce back. The pitching sets up well for the Sox in the lead up to the All-Star break. I can't believe I'm saying this, but they're four game out of the Wild Card. If they can play well and string some more wins together, and, let's say, they're two games back at the break...

But you have to be smart. Four games back isn't always four games back. What I mean by that is if there's a bunch of teams ahead of you, those four games are harder to make up. Why? Because someone's always winning. More or less. Whereas if it's just the one team, you're that much closer. They're all that matter. Not the other squads. Allowing that no one comes up from behind. The ladder-climbing is more of a direct proposition.

What you don't want to have happen is for the Red Sox to bungle next year. Allowing that there is a next year. That could mean holding on to guys who aren't part of your future because you've conflated a mirage for something tangible, or it could mean move guys, getting little back, and effectively canceling this season and not helping yourself moving forward.

They have to be smart. They have to know what they have. They need to be realistic. They're eight games under .500. That's a lot. Let's say you need to be ten games over to make the postseason. That's a big swing. I don't think this team could do it.

The starting pitching has been really good. Without Crochet. I don't think you're getting Roman Anthony back this year, and I don't think it'd matter if he was perfectly healthy, because I have no reason to think he's going to be any good or not a bust. I didn't think well of him last year. That other people did...well, I don't think they think they. I think they do the parasocial thing. I saw a guy--when he was supposedly "great"--who struck out a ton and had no power. I also think he as the compete level of an empty pillow case.

I could be wrong. Could be your franchise cornerstone. Even if that's what he ends up being, this year just feels like a total write off to me. For him and Crochet. I guess I could see Crochet coming back if they were actually in some kind of legit contention for a postseason berth. And no, I don't think four games out for the third Wild Card qualifies when you're eight games under .500 and there are all of these teams in front of you who also are out of that last Wild Card spot.

But win five more in a row here, cut it to one or two games, jump over a few teams, then...I don't want to even think like this. I just don't think that's them. I'd like it if it were. I'm glad they're playing better. I don't like having much more confidence about them on the road than I do at Fenway. It's hard for them to be offensively consistent with that line-up.

Will the pitching regress? Can you expect the starters to keep this up? Sonny Gray has had one of the best first halves for a Red Sox starter in team history. I can't believe how quiet people are about it. I have a theory as to why, which I'll get into in another entry, as it's this big radical idea about how we--not me, but everyone else--regards starting pitchers now as a result of group-think and the rub-off effect of one's environment (be it digital, temporal, social, intellectual or lack thereof, etc.).

I posted a little trivia question elsewhere asking who was the only player in baseball history to win batting titles in three different decades.

One charmer replied with this:

These "records" based on calendar dates are silly and meaningless. Yes, three batting titles is remarkable. Arranging them at the end of a first decade and the very first year of the third decade is just coincidence. Not "three decades" of batting titles. Just say Brett put together three remarkable seasons over two decades plus and was consistently elite.

To which I said

It's not that serious. Trivia is by definition trivial. What is serious is being as joyless and pedantically aggressive as you are. You sound like someone consistently angry. Work on that. You'll be happier.

Let's look at what a moron this angry person is. Is three batting titles remarkable? Wouldn't that make you a remarkable hitter? Bill Madlock won four batting titles. Is he remarkable? "Three decades" of batting titles would be thirty straight batting titles, by the way. Comically stupid.

You see how dumb people are? This guy is too dense to even know what he's saying. No one said anything about a record. Nor did I arrange anything. You can't post-facto arrange fixed dates. An amazing thing to have to point out for someone. As for "Just say that Brett put together three remarkable seasons over two decades..." In addition to the arrogance and condescension, which never works here, what that means is that Brett only had three remarkable seasons in twenty plus years. Why would I say that unless I, too, was an idiot and someone who didn't know baseball and its history? Additionally, it presupposes that winning a batting title automatically makes for a remarkable season, which is also stupid. Nor is it true that Brett was consistently elite. Hank Aaron was. But we weren't talking about him.

It's not meaningless what Brett did. Those first and last batting titles are, by definition of this exercise, going to have to be spaced rather far apart. That's not the same as winning them in a bunch. I'm not saying it's better for them to be spaced apart or makes you better. Wade Boggs won more and they were closely bunched, and he was a better hitter for average than Brett. And yes, timing plays a part. Say that you were going to play in four decades. You'd have to be like Carlton Fisk, and start late in one decade and end early in your last. You could do it if you started in 1969, but your chances go way, way down if you started in 1965. Same kind of idea here.

You rarely see guys with huge gaps between things like MVPs and Cy Youngs and home run, RBI, and batting titles. It says something about George Brett that he did this. Other things say more. But it's definitely not "meaningless" and it's idiotic to say it's coincidence. You have to be capable of leading the league in this category at different stages of your career, including what is normally a player's decline phase. Maybe you're still good enough to do it when you're considerably less than what you once were. That's impressive. Also, rare. It suggests good career value. Whereas, an Andrew Jones had almost all of his career value, as such, concentrated in the decade of his twenties. Dale Murphy as well.

This is how most people are. Dumb (even dumber in most cases, to be fair to this ignorant blowhard), arrogant, angry, aggressive, insecure, preemptively defensive to the point of hostile, and envious/hateful of someone they know to be smarter.