The Red Sox batter on pace for one of the worst seasons in MLB history, Garrett Crochet's lost season in the making, why I usually pick the Bruins to be eliminated on home ice

Thursday 4/30/26

I haven't written anything here yet about Alex Cora being fired as manager of the Boston Red Sox. I don't like Cora, I think he's a bad person, and a poor manager and haven't found the energy or motivation to do a synoptic entry on him and this development, which I guess is more in the order of an event, Boston Red Sox baseball history-wise.

My thoughts regarding this man and the job he did can be found in this record going back to 2018. Actually, Cora's start with the Red Sox predates the first entry in this journal. But when there are millions of words and people aren't inclined to read anything anyway, no matter what it is, you get in this mindset of "I should do a stand-alone one," whether I'm right or wrong about what I just said, or if I am or can be the exception to the rule. I'm just speaking to where I'm at and why I feel like I should do such an entry and why I haven't. As of yet, anyway.

Writing about Cora also involves getting into societal forces, disturbingly parasocial Red Sox fans and Jason Varitek, emblematically entitled people like Trevor Story and Garrett Whitlock (who typify much that is wrong with the world), and nasty, bad people like Jarren Duran. I have to write about many bad people who impact me directly as it is, without expending that energy on bad people who don't impact me directly.

But we can talk about Duran's on-field performance. He's hitting .170 with an OPS of .481 and an OPS+ of 37. I do wish this upon him, because I think he's a toxic, nasty specimen as a human being. Leaving aside that he plays for the team I root for, I'm not bothered that his OPS is lower than Ted Williams' career OBP. Long ways to go, but he's currently authoring one of the worst seasons in the history of the game. That OPS+ is in Jackie Bradley range--when Bradley was at his worst. You can't be much worse than Bradley was then.

We could look at this another way. What's the best that Duran's numbers can be come the end of the year after starting like this? A .240 batting average?

Brayan Bello was wretched again yesterday. His ERA is 9.00. And he's earned every last bit of that ERA. Consistently wretched. He hasn't had a so-so start, I don't think. He gets bombed, he looks like he doesn't give a shit. Who has worse mound presence than Bello? Someone, I'm sure, but not a lot of pitchers.

It'd be nice to say that the Sox should just release him and Trevor Story, but they don't have the players. As in, the bodies. The talent on this team is so thin. You go from worse-than-average and notably-worse-than-average MLB players, to guys who aren't anything special in the minors just like that with this team and organization.

Your options are really limited. You'd be releasing a guy to release him, to make the statement, I guess. On the whole, this team can only improve so much, and that will be primarily a case of "Well, no one can be this bad for six months," and instead just being the regular version of bad. So the Sox will get that bump, presumably. The bump of Duran being a .220 hitter rather than a .170 hitter, for example.

Yesterday, the Sox put Garrett Crochet on the 15-day IL with a shoulder issue. Red Sox fans are like, "I'd rather have him healthy for the stretch run."

There isn't going to be a stretch run. What there's going to be is a lost season from Garrett Crochet. It's already a done deal statistically. People can't project numbers, they don't have a sense for where the stats are going. When you're ERA balloons, and you're on a bad team, and you can get brought down being on a bad team in your individual performance, and then you get sidelined, you're always chasing this thing you don't catch up with.

You end up going 5-11 with a 4.98 ERA. That might actually be too many decisions, though, given that you wouldn't get enough starts to even tally that many, with you being shut down because it didn't matter. You were ineffectual and couldn't find it, weren't going to find it, had your injuries, and the team wasn't going anywhere.

Then you look at the future. A guy like that may never be good again. Will there be baseball next year anyway? But I don't know. Maybe it's not a big deal, and he comes back and is dominant. Wouldn't bet on it, though. I have a very good feel for these things. I recognize the changes in the weather that presage the rain. You're looking at a lost year from Garrett Crochet. This is how that goes.

The Bruins did win in Buffalo the other night, which keeps my prediction intact. I had them losing in six, which meant getting eliminated on home ice. Why did I pick the Sabres in six? Because is it really spring in Boston if the Bruins aren't getting eliminated at home? If they are tomorrow night, that will have meant that they went 2-1 on the road, and 0-3 at home and what's more Bruins than that?

As I said, you always want this team on the road if they're the team you root for. You don't want them starting playoff series at home, because they won't win the first two games, whereas they'll split if they open away from home. They can't handle pressure. That's just a Bruins DNA thing. Over the years, the teams, the generations.

It's uncanny, but I've seen what I've seen for a long time. You think, okay, different people on the ice, different people in charge, but teams do have ways, philosophies, types of players they look for, and those stick around even when the people implementing that stuff are long gone. It gets passed on, whether intentionally or not.

Jeremy Swayman was good in net. A Maine professor pal of mine told me that Swayman is a stand up guy and that's why he likes him, but I disagree strongly. I think Swayman is a performative stand up guy, which is a very different thing. Not a fake tough guy, exactly, but a fake hockey version of a Woke guy kind of thing. Which is why I don't think he commands much respect from his peers, simpleton shit bags themselves though most of the are.

But what does having Jeremy Swayman really do for you? How much of an advantage is it? The Sabres have used two goalies. They don't even have a main guy; that is, someone who separates himself as the guy. And their goaltending hasn't been an issue. That game the other night came down to one play--the Pastrnak breakaway. He scored, which is rare for him on breakaways. I think he was helped, actually, by the somewhat partial nature of the breakaway. When he's in clean, that seldomly goes well (or is all that competitive, frankly).

Swayman was good, though. Won't take that away from him. He looked like it was going to take a deflection or something out of his control to beat him. Look, he has talent. What I'd say he doesn't have, or have enough of, is edge, discipline, focus, that good kind of psycho competitiveness that the best goalies have. Ken Dryden was no psycho but rather a gentleman, but he still had this edge. And though he was no Ken Dryden, Tim Thomas had it.

The best guys have it in different ways. But they have it. Swayman doesn't. On a given night, though, when the focus is there, and he's on his game, he can be quite good for you. What I'd suggest, though, is that that's many NHL goaltenders now, and goalies don't make a ton of difference, unless you have a bad one, the type of guy who'll give up six or 7 some nights and you're not that surprised when you look at the box score the morning after. The Oilers have goalies like that. But even those Oilers goalies will have runs or are seen as playoff starters in the NHL.

I hope to be incorrect in my Bruins prediction, for the record. It isn't like I have money riding on this. The Bruins, too, have never been a team that comes back from 3-1 series deficits. Have they ever done it? Let me think...they definitely haven't done it over the last six decades. They'll let you come back on them when they're up 3-1. The 65-win team did just that against the Panthers a few years ago.

Their current roster doesn't have that kind of juice in my view. You can pull one out, sure, and that's what they did on Tuesday night. But pulling out three in a row and getting out of the hole? The teams that do that usually play a tailored, winning style of playoff hockey, which isn't a regular season style. As always, though, we'll see.