Talking post-Fourth of July weekend baseball: What the next few games will tell us about the Red Sox, Ceddanne Rafaela, teams and players to keep an eye on, losing it fast, an inspiring comeback

Monday 7/7/25

The Red Sox swept a bad Washington Nationals team over the weekend to move one game over .500. If they're going to be anything this season, you'll see it now by how they put some distance between that .500 mark and themselves. If they hover around it--dip below, get back to, rise ever-so-slightly above--then that's just what they are. We're in July now. The calendar moves fast even as we approach the dog days of the baseball season. The Sox open a series with the Rockies, who are a lot worse than the Nationals. Has to be a sweep.

As I surmised, the Red Sox had two pitchers--Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman--named to the All-Star team. Alex Bregman was also selected, which, frankly, I find ridiculous. He's injured. He's not illegible to be there. Shouldn't you actually have to be, you know, active? Why ceremonially give a spot to someone when you can select another player to be in uniform?

(NB: How was Kirk Gibson never an All-Star?)

For the second start in a row, Crochet wasn't at his best, and yet he got the win all the same. Good for him. He's had some starts this year where he was excellent with nothing to show for it. And it's not like he was bad in either of these past two outings, but he was living on the edge yesterday: 5 IP, 9 hits, 2 BB--that's a lot of traffic on the base paths--but he limited the damage to 2 ER. Technically, not a quality start. Threw 98 pitches in those five innings, so he labored. Record stands at 9-4. If he keeps this up, you're looking at a 16-8, 2.65 type of season. He could also be in a brief slump--by the standards he's set so far this year--and could also better those projected numbers.

Ceddanne Rafaela has, let us say, an enthusiastic playing style. That's fine. And he's been pretty good lately for the Sox. But he made two outs on the base paths yesterday--a caught stealing and he was picked off. He has to learn to play under control better. Sometimes, too, he charges balls in the outfield like a maniac. There are certain things in baseball you can't rush, no matter how fast you feel like going.

Toronto keeps winning--their streak is up to eight games in a row--but I'm not sure how much I believe in that team. Their run differential on the season is only +12. Run differential will usually tell you a lot.

Rafael Devers hasn't done much since the trade.

It's odd to me picking DHs for the All-Star game. I liked when one league had the DH and the other didn't. Distinct identities are usually a good thing. Homogenization, less so. And while both leagues played the same game and there wasn't that much difference, there was some and it was both refreshing and something you had to be aware of. The two leagues had different personalities, and so, too, did the divisions, to some degree. The four divisions in the NHL used to have very markedly different personalities/play styles. Everyone plays everything the same way now, near about, especially with sports becoming less of a human enterprise and more of a machine-informed one. Eventually the games won't even be played the way we are going. You'll just get a computer-generated result. People will only care about the printouts, so to speak, of the result. Many will bet on them.

An AL DH in the single-league DH era might have been selected to the All-Star team and if the game was in a National League park you had to figure out what to do with him.

Some post-Fourth of July thoughts: The Tigers look like a dangerous team to me. The Mariners seem like they might be sticking around. The Pete Alonso signing is paying off for the Mets. He's done better than many projected he would with his play-style and age. Kyle Schwarber just does what he does. The Dodgers seem like they are costing and not taking the regular season very seriously and yet they are playing above .600 ball (.615 to be precise, and that's with the three-game losing streak they're on) and will easily take their division--which is a good one--and waltz into the playoffs favored to repeat. At +126, the Cubs have the best run differential in the game. Everyone thinks Judge is the run-away AL MVP. I don't know. Most people just go by WAR. That's really how simple and unthinking they are. Yesterday I was viewing this discussion as to who baseball's all-time most underrated player is (I'll do an entry on this topic later) and another on who the most deserving non-HOF player is, and all anyone did was cite the players with the highest WAR totals. We're this dumb and incapable of thought. If the Mariners keep it up and their catcher hits 55 home runs, then yeah, Cal Raleigh could easily win the MVP.

It was jarring to see Matt Barnes playing for the Savannah Bananas. He was an All-Star in 2021. You lose it fast in professional sports. Especially in baseball. The fastest in baseball, I'd say. Keith Foulke is also on the team. Will there be any awareness moving forward of the run he had in 2004? If any other closer in the history of baseball had been the closer on that Red Sox team during that period, for those playoffs, in those situations, the 2004 Red Sox would not have won the World Series.

Drew Pomeranz returning to baseball after being out of the big leagues for three years in what is his age thirty-six season is something I did not see coming, and he's pitching well. That's a great story about not giving up. He was really good for the Red Sox in 2017, then a disaster in 2018. The last image you kind of had of him was when he was warming up in the bullpen during the Nate Eovaldi extended-relief game that went to like three in the morning in the 2018 World Series. I remember watching that and it was unthinkable that Pomeranz--who'd been MIA for so long--was going to come in and pitch on that stage with those stakes.

I really dig stories like this. Baseball has more of them than the other sports. Something about the sport, you could say. To me, it's the hardest out of them all. It takes the most mental strength. That's one of the reasons why it's always been my favorite sport.