The ghost of 1992 Tom Brunansky, the problems with analytics ball, Roman "Bust in the Making" Anthony, undeserving McDavid, a mind-blowing stat about catchers in 2026

Wednesday 5/13/26

Was correct about the Avalanche winning the other night. If one goes through this record, one will find that most of these predictions are correct. Had I stood to gain by them being so--that is, were I were a bettor--I'd lose, but someone else could go by what I write down that I think will happen and make a profit. You know, if you wanted to use my predictions like a gambling service.

Minnesota doesn't have the horses to be taking consecutive games against that Colorado squad, barring weirdness. Quinn Hughes played over thirty-four minutes. That's a Ray Bourque-like number. I bet that's fun if you're good enough to be relied on/out there that much.

I would've lost you money on the Pistons-Cavs game, though. I don't believe in playoff teams with James Harden, but I maybe I shouldn't put too much belief in the Pistons either. It's like a non-belief off instead of a prose off.

If people ever watched video of old baseball games, they'd be astounded, I think, by how different the sport was. There's far more excitement. Obviously guys still strike out and pitchers can rack up the Ks, but the ball is in play so much more.

Put simply, there's a lot of fielding. Shortstops charging the ball and barely nipping the run at first, outfielders running down flies, second basemen unable to turn to because a hit-and-run was on--but taking that split second to think about it--before throwing to first. It looks much more athletic. A game of rhythm and quickness and timing, and not just timing for the batters.

What I see now is like beer league softball but with 100 mph heaters. Guys walk to the plate, then walk back to the dugout, the fielders stand around. I can't stand it, save that it's still technically baseball, and baseball is my favorite sport, the Red Sox my favorite team, and I am alone and have no life so that also means I'm around for more of it. Where else am I going to be and with whom?

I don't think they will--the Spurs will beat them at least once, and probably twice--but the Thunder running the table in the playoffs is a real possibility. I've thought this essentially since the postseason started, and they're halfway there now after completing the sweep of the Lakers Monday night. The Spurs have the best chance of beating them. That'll be the de facto championship series in my view.

Kind of remarkable that Wemby didn't get suspended for that elbow to the throat. A throat elbow seems to warrant a suspension to me. This is the league protecting a golden boy star. I think they've made up their minds that he's the next face of the league.

Macklin Celebrini wasn't a finalist for the Hart trophy as NHL MVP which bothers me for multiple reasons, the biggest being that people don't know what basic words mean. Most Valuable Player. As in, most valuable to his team. The player who meant the most to his team. Do we really not know what the word "valuable" means? Because Celebrini was clearly the most valuable player to his team--he meant more to his team--than any other play and it's not close.

There are no other stars--as of yet--on that Sharks team. He had double the production of the next closest guy. He almost got that team into the playoffs. He was like eighty percent of the reason or whatever. He should have been close to a unanimous winner. And he's not even one of the three nominations?

But we're doing Connor McDavid again? McDavid has a guy on his team that is as good or better than he is 45% of the time. Or 40% is. You get the idea. He is such an overrated player. And now it's just automatic when he contends for the Art Ross--and sure, he won it again--that he's going to be an MVP finalist. They love to give this guy MVPs. His team loses, he gets MVP for the tournament his team just lost. Can we apply some critical thinking, perhaps? Can we not just be automatic?

The Red Sox lost again last night, this time to the Phillies, 2-1. They can't score. Obviously. It's the worst Red Sox offense since 1992, when they were led by late career Tom Brunansky on the power front. Boggs hit .259 that season. It was his version of Ted Wililams' 1959. Bello came in in the second inning again. That's great. You have a starting pitcher with such a mental hurdle when it comes to, you know, actually starting, that you have to start him going in the second inning.

He didn't play, but I'll just say it now: I think Roman Anthony will be a bust. No, I'm not guaranteeing it. He's definitely tracking to be a bust, though. This is how it'd go if you were a bust. He'd have to reverse course not to be. I think he's soft, not that committed, doesn't have a position, and, worse than that, has no pop in his bat.

You know how bad those 1992 Red Sox were offensively? So, not only did Brunansky lead the team in homers with 15 and RBI with 74, the next closest guy in RBI was Mo Vaughn with 57. The team hit 84 home runs. Brunansky was the only player whose OPS+ wasn't under 100. Final record: 73-89. I could see the 2026 Red Sox being around there.

Most of these other teams are similarly bad, though. It's a bad American League. You have too many guys who don't know how to play baseball. Launch angle adherents rather than baseball players. This is the result of analytics ball. Analytics ball isn't baseball. And it isn't conducive to winning. But you have standings and you have teams, so teams slot in the standings. It's de facto. But a playoff team now can be a poor team, whereas, say, in 1983, a playoff team usually needed to be a good team.

I liked Brunansky when he was on the Twins. He hit twenty homers a bunch of years in a row, and that was a stat you heard often. As to his streak of seasons with twenty plus homers. Dwight Evans had one as well going concurrently.

Let's conclude this entry with a mind-blowing stat about American League catchers here on this date of May 13, 2026, which says so much, too, about the current state of baseball. Among players with enough at-bats to qualify for the batting title, Athletics catcher Shea Langeliers leads all American League hitters with a .340 average. Do you know which catcher is second in batting average among American League catchers?

That would be Detroit's Dillon Dingler at .234. Then we have Kansas City's Carter Jensen at .221. After that is Seattle's Cal Raleigh at .166.