To sit or not sit a quarterback and a characteristic shared by almost all successful baseball teams

Tuesday 8/20/24

My sense is the Patriots want Drake Maye to be their starting quarterback and are trying to help bring that about. You might say, "Well, it's up to them, they don't need to finesse it," but I think they want him to start having more or less earned the job.

Jacoby Brissett is so lackluster that Maybe earning the job is a matter of rhetoric and the other guy being so blah. If Brissett is the starter, there's really no reason to watch and it's a wasted year. You're burning a season. You'll be bad either way, but at least have the guy you want to be the future learn on the job and get that important experience.

I know, one can say that Maye would be developing all the while as the back-up in practice and such, and if he plays too soon, before he's ready/up to speed, or there's a decent offensive line, you run the risk of wrecking him, but I don't really believe in that. (I'm also not sure how much development there'd be as the back-up with that operation they have in place.) If you're good enough, and it's bad at first, you'll figure it out and/or be okay later. Brissett is so retread-y and he was never anything good to start with.

Red Sox: 4.5 games out now for the final Wild Card. I think I called their all-but-official time of death exactly whenever that was two or three weeks ago. They put themselves in these very difficult situations. For instance, going into that game on Sunday in Baltimore. They'd taken two of three from the Orioles--the last two games in the series--and now they were in a spot where they likely had to take three out of four by winning that last game or else full further back in the standings.

This is unrealistic, going to Baltimore and expecting to take three out of four. The 2018 Red Sox could have expectations like that, but not these Red Sox. You're looking to split. But with how you've played, and things like that horrible loss the other day, you've created these untenable situations where, if you don't come through, you fall further back.

And as I've said, it takes too damn much for this team to win a game. They need a big lead and to then hang on as the bullpen coughs it up. They don't come from behind. They gag leads. On Saturday in Baltimore they came out to a fast start. Put up a couple runs on the board in the top of the first, though it could have been more. And what was the final? 12-10? Something like that.

Here's how it works with really good teams: They win a lot of games where it doesn't take this big expenditure of resources, strategy, offense, etc. They play crisp baseball. They're consistent. They make the plays in the field. They have good at-bats. Over weeks and months, that all adds up. They don't have to treat a game on August 18 like it's the World Series, stressing every match-up.

We are now at the point of the season where if the Red Sox were going to make the playoffs, they'll need the big winning streak. They'll have to win eight or ten in a row or take twelve out of fifteen or something even hotter. These teams in front of you have settled in as winning ball clubs. They're not this herky-jerky thing that you are.

Good baseball is a proposition of having an even-keel. It's that crispness I was talking about. You play your crisp ball, and you can lose 5-2. But playing the same way the next day gets you a 6-3 win in the rubber match of the series. And that's a characteristic that most successful teams throughout the sport's history share.

On Sunday, the Sox lost 4-2 to Baltimore and it was one of those games where they had a lot of people on base and the Orioles didn't have many at all. Had the Sox gotten a single hit at any of a number of junctures, you felt like they were going to win, but you also fit that they just weren't going to get that hit all day long.

And they didn't. They had all of these chances and nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, Baltimore played their game, were opportunistic. When you play that kind of game there are some days when the balls find their way between fielders or land in front of outfielders. Other days, you don't get the results.

But baseball is a game of sticking with it because over time, if that's the right thing that you're sticking with, it'll work out so that you win fifty-nine percent of your games. That's a great thing about the sport: You need to know you're doing it right even when you're not getting the results on that afternoon. A batter hits the ball four times on the screws and takes the collar. But he knows if he makes that kind of contact consistently, in time, it comes out in the wash that he's a .320 hitter.

Team play is similar. The Red Sox, to compare them to a single batter, are more like a guy who gets into the box with a new swing every day--or every at-bat--and trying this, trying that, attempting to get hit by the pitch, hoping for a walk, what have you, to be successful. That's just not going to work over time.