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The Go Go Red Sox

Friday 6/21/24

I'm happy for Jarren Duran. He's been the Red Sox' best player this season. He's not a young young player, if you know what I mean--it's taken him some time to get going. He seems to have his demons which don't have to do with his physical abilities, but that were holding him back on the field, and it looks like he's in a better place right now. Had a homer and two more stolen bases the other night when the Sox completed their sweep of the Blue Jays.


The team itself had a total of five steals on the night. They had nine--nine!--the other day. It's so strange to see the Red Sox stealing bases. Tom Caron jokingly referred to them as the Go Go Red Sox the other night during the studio show, a reference probably only understood by me and some people in their seventies and up, but I appreciated the comparison. Granted, the 1959 White Sox had some outstanding defense--and these Red Sox aren't about the defensive wizardry--but it's a similar idea of manufacturing runs with athleticism. The Red Sox can hit home runs, but they need to make use of that athletic ability.


The preponderance of percentages with sports is comical. You get a team's chances of losing or winning at this point of the game, but it can switch dramatically--percentage-wise--in a second, so what is this worth? Baseball-reference gives you a team's odds to make the postseason and odds to win the World Series. The Red Sox are up to 2% regarding the latter. I only notice this in passing while looking up other things, but I think that's the highest I've seen it this year. It's for the gamblers and because an attempt is being made--given that everything just gets worse--to take the sports out of sports, the human factor, and make it this math equation.


Rafael Devers is a disappointing ballplayer and he really gets away with it in Boston. Part of that is because there isn't a lot of interest in the Red Sox. It's up to you, I guess, if you want to add, "right now" or "anymore." He's on track for like 81 RBI. This is supposed to be a bonafide star. He doesn't make a big enough impact. He has time. He can get hot, he could finish with 35 homers and 113 RBI and a nice OPS+. But he's not giving you the bang for the buck to date. I had said that he's a minor star, but it's almost like he's a spotty star.


The 1988 Red Sox were a favorite team of mine. That's partially because of where I was in life and where we were, physically, as a family, that being on Cape Cod for vacation when the Sox brought in Joe Morgan and got hot. The whole season, really, or what you remember about it when you think of it as special, was that hot streak. And it's not like it carried the Sox to 103 wins. They ended up with 89. That won the division, and, of course, got them in the playoffs. There were only two teams who made it back then.


The Sox had to face the mighty Oakland Athletics. They were swept, but they were right there in the first two games, and they had the lead in third. I was looking at the box scores last night. When a team is swept, you think it was never close, but the Red Sox easily could have thought, at the time, that they blew a chance to be up 2-1 in the series heading into Game 4 out in Oakland (the series started in Boston, despite the A's having a much better record).


These 2024 Red Sox could win 89 games and miss the playoffs, despite so many now making the postseason. I don't think they'll win 89 games. Seems a little ambitious to me, but I'd like to be wrong. But let's say they win 89 and they don't make the postseason. They won't be remembered at all. This wouldn't have been a special season for anyone looking on and following the team.


But 1988 was, and it still is for people. And what would really be different? One team made the playoffs and got swept and the other didn't. Both would have won zero postseason games. It's like the semantics of both the moment and memory. That winning streak by the 1988 team--coming as it did basically out of nowhere--with the hometown baseball lifer having taken over the manager job, and the power of alliteration. With Joe Morgan you got Morgan Magic, and maybe it wouldn't have been the same thing if he was Joe Peterson (cousin of Norm, let's say).



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