The Red Sox look like a team in trouble

Monday 8/17/26

Wasn't that long ago that the Red Sox seemed like they couldn't lose a game. Now it seems like they can't win one unless they get a dominant start from one of their clear-cut best two pitchers.

They lost again to the Pirates yesterday for their third straight series loss in a row, all against sub-.500 teams, and concluded their road trip with a 2-5 record. They're 3-7 in their last 10 games.

They can't score. They look an awful lot like the team they were before their five-week spurt that, if anything, seems more and more miraculous. As in, how the hell did that happen?

It also looks like they're in hang-on mode for a playoff position. Mid-August is far too early to be in hang-on mode. You never want to be in hang-on mode, but maybe time will save you if it's the last week in the season. Time is doing you no such favors with a month-and-a-half to go.

The Sox' line-up is thin and getting thinner, but Adley Rutschman is hitting too high in the batting order. I'm unenthusiastic about this player. Sometimes the devil you know is the less bad way to go. Especially at a position where you hardly ever get offense now anyway. At least he didn't strike out his last time at bat yesterday.

There was a two-and-half hour rain delay in yesterday's ballgame, with the Sox trailing 7-3 when it started. You are a true-blue baseball fan if you stuck around for that entire time. There was no one behind home plate when the game resumed. Looked like a COVID-era contest.

I bet Chad Tracy would've preferred to just take the loss, rather than wait to officially take the loss that you were realistically going to take all along given that the offense can't score and that you had to travel after the game to get back to Boston for another game today. Sixteen games in sixteen days isn't what these Sox need.

That's enough baseball, after expending all the energy they did to turn things around record-wise, that a day off, when you get it--which will be Thursday--is scarcely a blip of respite. Add in this summer's weather, and you really have the dog days of the baseball season.

There's a hang-on quality to those dog days even for good teams, but I can see the hole they put themselves in being the reason why the Sox can't make the playoffs as even the third Wild Card team. A hole like that is rarely over and done with as this thing behind you; its influence extends the rest of the way.

Ceddanne Rafaela is baseball's version of an energy player. Gives you a jolt sometimes. But a player like this can never be a great player. They can be a decent-ish player, a plus player. They'll be inconsistent and unreliable, though, and never a force, never even a true presence. They'll be fleeting. Jolt here, jolt there.

Don't be fooled by his WAR. As a general rule, don't be fooled by WAR at all. His WAR is composited from a bit of this, a bit of that, and the basis of that WAR is his athleticism. But baseball isn't really about his kind of athleticism. He's not a good enough hitter to swing as freely as he does.

This would be less of a problem if you weren't counting on him to be that offensive presence for you. Contreras has faded. He hasn't been "all there" of late, if you know what I mean. You don't notice him much. Kind of like a hockey player whose name the play-by-play guy doesn't seem to mention all night and then you look at the on-ice totals afterwards and are dumbstruck how he was out there for 15:56.

As for those two-best starting pitchers...Sonny Gray, one of the few pitchers now who pitches rather than throws, notched his 15th win the other night. He has an outside chance at 20 wins. I care more about your win total than your WAR total. Sorry.

And I don't believe for a second--and the evidence of 150 years of baseball certainly doesn't support it--that pitchers don't have much control over their win totals. Great pitchers have almost always found ways to have high win totals come the end of the season, no matter if they play on bad teams. Why does seemingly no one else know this?

I didn't think Payton Tolle--who also has something of that "pitches rather than throws" make-up to him--looked sharp early on the other day against the Blue Jays. He was falling behind hitters and walking some guys. But then he got on a roll. Pitched to contact. Lots of fly balls and pop-ups. The most I've seen in a while. It's like every out took the form of a can of corn.

He was at, I believe, 92 pitches after eight, and he didn't get to go out there and try and finish off a shutout. I just..I don't like this. I wouldn't like that as a pitcher. I don't like it as a fan. I know what people would say--he's pitched more innings this year than he ever has before, or will by the end. But it wouldn't have mattered. He'd be taken out anyway in today's game. Which is part of the problem with today's game.

Starting pitchers pitching to contact and using wiles and brains to go deep into games is one of the most beautiful things in baseball, if not the most beautiful. This requires brains. You know what would be radical? A pitcher who was able to realize that they'd be far more valuable to a team if they were able to get more outs with fewer strike outs, thus staying in games longer, and could put this into active practice.

A five-inning starter has such limited value. They're not pitchers, either. They're just rarin' back and throwing with all their insides, but not so much their brains (even the space that is a pitching mound isn't immune to the forces of stupidity in our society; everything gets dumber, there is less and less thinking, and there isn't anything that doesn't get worse).

The longer you stay in games, the better your chances are of picking up a win. If you're good. Because your team has more opportunities to score while you're in there, and you're supposed to be better than someone replacing you, meaning more of the game goes on without the other team putting up as many runs.

Again, how do people not get this? You pitch well for seven or eight or, God forbid, nine innings on a bad team, and you're going to rack up wins. That's why the best pitchers have always won games, no matter who they are playing for. Can be a last place team with a weak offense. You're still going to win your 16+ games.

If you left those games after 5 innings, maybe you were going to win 10 games, with your team losing most of those other games where you got a no decision.