What is to become of history, period?: baseball now and then
Friday 9/25/26
The Guardians turned around and beat the Red Sox 1-0 after the Sox had just beaten the Guardians 1-0. I wonder how many times teams have done that in baseball history? More importantly for Boston: Ranger Suarez was solid again. That's four starts in a row. He's your Game 3 starter if it gets there next week.
The Sox' offense is concerning. The Red Sox have had all this time to prepare for the playoffs. Clearly they cashed out on the regular season. I think that's a mistake. They don't seem ready to me, even after all that. Their strength is their pitching. The first two starters, maybe the third, and their back of the bullpen. That's what gives them their best chance/hope to win.
There were injuries and what not, but Willson Contreras really fell off. He was in the midst of this big year, and now it's like a solid year. He's still not back. There are three games left. This team strikes out so much. 12 more strikeouts last night, and Roman Anthony wasn't even in the line-up. That's such a regular one-game number for them. Adley Rutschman helps keep their K totals healthy. I'm not a fan of this player.
Sonny Gray finished the regular season 18-5 for the Red Sox with a 2.72 ERA. There was a time this year that it felt like the only win they could get was a Sonny Gray win. When the season was way, way off course, he did what he could to keep it from being lost for good. Played the role of stopper perfectly and gave you more than you could have asked for in the best year of his career.
He would be my pick for the Cy Young. He has no chance. Cam Schlittler will win it unanimously or close to it. If this were 1988, Gray would win. But wins are now held against starting pitchers by the voters and people who don't know baseball and parrot what they they think they're supposed to parrot. Wins aren't the product of run support that others will tell you. Great pitchers have almost always found ways to rack up wins. Context matters. Within-the-game context. Situational understanding and pitching accordingly.
Caleb Durbin: best defensive Red Sox third baseman since Frank Malzone? Could be. Adrian Beltre was very good. Just the one year here. True, the same can be said as of this moment Durbin, but he'll have more time. (It's hard for me to credit someone as a franchise's best anything when they only play a year with that team.) Mike Lowell was pretty good. Wade Boggs wasn't that good defensively until he left Boston. Shaky during his early years. Boggs was a bit to third base like Steve Sax was to second base until he made himself into a strong defender.
Pud Galvin with his 20.5 WAR season of 1884. The 71 complete games—which was actually less than his prior year’s total— probably helped. For his career, Galvin had 83.3 WAR. He averaged 4.1/162.
Do you know how bad Vlad Guerrero was this year? I'd talked about that a number of times, but here's another way of putting it: Cal Raleigh, with his batting average of .180, has an OPS+ of 91 to Guerrero's 92. I'd argue that Raleigh has been more impactful.
Encountered someone wondering aloud if Carlton Fisk was a steroid guy because how could anyone be a catcher in their forties? I don't think Fisk did steroids. Rather that he was proud and ornery and trained hard/lifted a lot. Some of this is documented. Fisk couldn't let go. He had to be pushed out when the time came. Given his druthers, he would have kept trying to stay, thinking he could train his way to even greater longevity. Fisk was the 1800s Vermont farmer version of a baseball player.
That is my read on the man, anyway. It's how I understand him after following and thinking about him over the course of most of my life, and also understanding the old school New England quality that in part defined him. That quality is in little evidence now in these parts. New Englanders are as soft, lazy, self-serving, and narcissistic as everyone else. Obviously I have this quality. I can't conceive of how someone could have it to greater degree, which I think this record makes plain. One of the things I am is that New England.
The person who make the steroid remark was typical of just about everyone else alive now. They knew nothing about Fisk, and did what people do in 2026, which is to talk out of their ass. They also said that a catcher couldn't possibly be good in his forties (with no fore knowledge of anything about Fisk, his stats, his career trajectory, his game, his make-up). Fisk was excellent in his forties and should have finished higher in MVP voting--definitely in the top ten--in 1990.
Ernie Banks had the best year a Cubs player has ever had in 1959. Banks was so good that season that he deservedly won the MVP over Hank Aaron in what may have been the Hammer’s best year (though who can tell given his consistent awesomeness).
Mike Trout will retire without ever having a season in which he batted .300, hit 30 homers, and had 100 RBI.
Fisk adjacent: I found these documentaries--that sounds more serious than they are--about the Red Sox' 1975 and 1976 seasons; you know, local market wrap-up "the year that was" videos. The 1976 squad was seen as such a disappointment (not in the video; those things are always upbeat) to fans at the time, but they'd probably be a Wild Card team now and this year's Red Sox team is going to have a similar record.
It'll always be a shame about the 1975 team. All those stars. All those players who are such a big part of Red Sox history. Those players became a part of the fabric of New England. And they'll always be that. Well, maybe not. Everything is becoming lost. People die off, which wouldn't be the problem it is in these matters if anyone wrote well and anyone read. What is to become of history, period?
I'm watching game 161 of the Red Sox' 1967 season, so the penultimate tilt, a must-win game for the Sox against the Twins at Fenway. (It's also the earliest surviving complete game color telecast we have.) Carl Yastrzemski comes up and knocks in a run. Announcers tell us it's his 116th RBI on the year. He finishes--and leads the league, of course, in his Triple Crown season--with 121. The next game was also must-win for Boston. This guy had 5 RBI left to go.
What I would say about Yaz in 1967: it may not be the best season anyone has ever had, but no player in baseball (or perhaps any sport) has ever been more valuable to his team than he was that year. It's the most valuable MVP season.
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