Why hugely lopsided scores don't mean that much in baseball

Monday 8/31/26

Tom Caron brought up this maxim he has on the postgame show yesterday that a team can likely make up no more than a game a week. Thus, with the calendar being what it is, and the Red Sox being as many games back as they are, they're unlikely to catch the Yankees now.

This seems a somewhat arbitrary designation to me. You win three in a row, they lose three in a row--a perfectly normal thing to happen--and boom, there's three weeks in three days.

But I didn't anticipate the Red Sox catching the Yankees before this last series began. They're probably going to the Bronx for the first round of the playoffs and, unfortunately, I don't think they'll win, but I hope I'm wrong and that they do catch the Yankees and play those games at Fenway or, if they don't, they find a way to take two-out-of-three at Yankee Stadium.

I've seen enough of Ranger Suarez by this point to be of the mind that you're just not going to get what you need from him. This isn't rust from his IL stint. It's something else. He's had plenty of time to get right, and he can't do it. Guys age, they lose sharpness, skill. Is that what's happened here? Could be. He's healthy.

Have also been worried about Sonny Gray, who's been less efficient of late and could be hurt. There was talk of pushing him back from his start today. He's said he doesn't like extra rest. Take that for what it's worth.

Willson Contreras has tailed off with his numbers. Looked like he could finish in the top ten in batting average, homers, and RBI, and then would have a top ten MVP finish, but that's all doubtful/trending to unlikely now. Then again, if he got hot...

Roman Anthony had a nice day in his return to the line-up. They hit him leadoff. Your lone bright spot, or potential bright spot, I guess, because it's just one game and that doesn't necessarily mean anything, of the day.

There's been a lot of crying and complaining about the catch made by Ceddanne Rafaela that was overturned, as if this was the difference in the game and if only the ruling had been upheld...

I guess you never know. A single play can mean things go way off in a direction they wouldn't have, but I don't think it helps or illuminates anything to go down this rhetorical path. You were shellacked. My attitude is that a single play wouldn't have changed that. Even if there's some chance--act like that's not the case. I had my doubts it was a catch anyway.

The manner in which Red Sox fans talked about it, though...as if it was as clear as anything could be. I know, someone will say, "That's the nature of fans!" but I read that--or translate it, I suppose--as, "Fans can't accurately perceive things!" and I just don't accept that. It's somewhat similar, though, to that person who calls a Rolling Stones album the best Rolling Stones album because it's their favorite Rolling Stones album, as though they're necessarily one and the same.

Lou Merloni got upset during the broadcast when the Yankees stole a base being up 6 runs or whatever it was. I confess I've never understood this either. The whole "stop trying as hard" thing, or "stop scoring now, you've scored enough."

First of all, that's not some insurmountable lead and this was a big game. I never understood this even in youth sports, though. Including when I was on a team being handed a beat down. I wouldn't have wanted someone to go easier on me. Especially because I was trying as hard as I could to battle. Then it's like someone is mocking you. That's how I felt, anyway. I wanted to do better and get better. If not for myself, then for my team, in the instances when maybe we'd get it handed to us 11-2 but I scored the 2 goals.

These are professional athletes, too. Are their feelings hurt? That's just...silly. What does it matter if they guy steals the base? The next time, if you're up big on them, you're free to do the same thing. Everyone should know this and accept it.

You also wish there was some bad blood. The stuff of a true rivalry, and one team was sticking it to the other. That's not a negative in sports.

It strikes me as curious when people make a big deal out of blowout losses in baseball. Especially with baseball. Now, if you lose 9-0 in the NHL, that's likely symptomatic of other issues. Like your team quits.

But 10-3 in baseball, 15-3, 23-3, it's the same deal. You got walloped, the game was put away, and you're just trying to get to your next game, where you can do better, without managing this current game in a way that precludes you from doing that as you play out the rest of it. The floodgates are open then. You've written it off and you're playing for the next contest. So what does the final score matter? But people take it as this indication of something that it just usually isn't.

The embarrassing aspect of yesterday's blowout for the Red Sox was that you had this big game on this fairly big stage for the penultimate day of August, with your great rival, and you closed it out with a position pitcher on the mound and balls flying over the outfield wall as more Yankees circled the bases. But it's academic at that point anyway.

Single-game baseball thwackings don't mean what single-game football, basketball, and hockey thwackings mean. Now, if a team comes to your ballpark for a four-game series and wins 10-1, 7-0, 8-2, 6-1, that means something a hell of a lot.

Think about something such as the so-called Boston Massacre of 1978 (with apologies to those who fell on King Street in 1770) when the Yankees came into Fenway and obliterated the Sox. Those games were hardly competitive. It looked like those teams could've played ten more games and there was no way the Red Sox would have won one of them. It's to the credit of that Red Sox team that they rallied and forced the famous one-game playoff that they did, despite how we all know that went.