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Blogs from our Community

Charlie Hoke

The pressure of being a star

When you're the perennial All-Star and lauded as the team's superstar, you may feel you need to do it all. October 2, 1978, down by a run in the tiebreaker game to see who would go on to the ALCS, the Red Sox had two men on with Carl Yastrzemski at the plate [1] with 2 outs facing Rich Gossage. Gossage's first pitch was low for the ball. The second pitch was popped up as Yaz could not hold up his swing and Yankees 3rd Baseman Graig Nettles caught the box for the final out. Le
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Charlie Hoke

Choosing the lesser of two evils and the three batter rule

Do you put the go-ahead run on base and walk a dangerous hitter to load the bases or do you pitch to him? In game 7 of the 2025 ALCS, the Mariners with a two-run lead, faced a decision with 1 out, runners on 2nd and 3rd and George Springer at the plate.  With 22 previous post-season home runs and 2 more during the 2025 ALCS, Springer a right handed hitter was facing Eduard Bazardo who had not lost a game for the Mariners all season, yet Bazardo had thrown 15 pitches over 2 innings the
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

A MasterClass in holding leads - Eduard Bazardo

Eduard Bazardo, one of 4 remaining ex-Sox players and the only pitcher on still contending teams, will have a chance to play in the 2025 World Series. He plays a vital role for the 2025 Seattle Mariners coming out of the bullpen to preserve leads [1].  Signed as an international free agent in 2014 at the age of 19, Bazardo steadily rose through the minor leagues peaking as the 19th best prospect on the Sox and appeared poised to join the Sox in the majors but a lat injury on May 19, 2021 la
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

Letting a starter stay in the game

When is the right time to take a starting pitcher out of the game? Who earns the right to stay in a game? In the current game, it is rare for a starter to complete a game. With the availability of bullpen specialists and detailed metrics analysis on pitch counts, platoon advantages, and individual matchups, managers now opt to bring in a reliever for a starter before a starter is ready to leave. In game 4 of the 2025 ALCS playoffs, veteran Max Scherzer all but chased his manager back t
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

Let the Rookie win

Rookies have made an impact in the post season for both good and bad. Is it wise to trust a rookie during the Playoffs and World Series? Of the remaining 2025 Playoff teams, there are 3 rookies on the Brewers, 1 on Toronto and 1 on the Dodgers. Milwaukee Brewers Issac Collins, OF Caleb Durbin, 3B Jacob Misiorowski, RP Los Angeles Dodgers Rori Sasaki, RP Toronto Blue Jays Trey Yesavage, SP In Game 2 of the ALCS, Trey Yesavage started and pitched u
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

Rookie Managers and the World Series

History suggests that managers in the first full season with a team have a good chance of winning the World Series. In Red Sox history, the following first year managers all won World Series in their first full season with the team: Jake Stahl (1912) Ed Barrow (1918) Terry Francona (2004) John Farrell (2012) Alex Cora (2018) Honorable mentions should go to Dick Williams who led the Red Sox to the 1967 pennant in his rookie manager season and to Joe "Walpole Joe
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

Ex-Sox facing off in the 2025 NLDS

Mookie Betts and Kyle Schwarber, two ex-Red Sox, face off in the 2025 National League Division Series. Would the Sox have been better off keeping them instead of letting both go? Mookie Betts was traded away before the 2020 season for Jeter Downs, Alex Verdugo, and Connor Wong. Of the three, only Connor Wong remains now as a Red Sox, playing catcher. Betts had turned down a $300 million extension from the Red Sox resulting in his trade before his final contract year with the Red Sox. The Do
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

The 4 Out Save

In the first games of the 2025 Wild Card Series, two winning teams had their closers pitch multiple innings and it paid off. Most managers are reluctant to use their closers for more than one inning for fear of injury, overuse, or some other reason that belies the optimal strategy of using your best closer in the most highly leveraged situations. In Game 1 between the Red Sox and the Yankees, Aroldis Chapman came in the bottom of the 8th inning with a one run lead and the tying run at first
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

The Post-Season Prize Pool

The regular season is over and now the post-season begins. So how much do the playoff teams get for getting into the postseason? Gate receipts from the guaranteed post-season games form the player pool of money. The guaranteed games are the minimum number of games in each series that must be played to determine the winner. This would be 2 games for the Wild Card Series, 3 for the Division series, and 4 for the League Championships and World Series games. 60% of these receipts from
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in MLB

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Charlie Hoke

The Boston/New York Express

Players moving between the Red Sox and the Yankees has been as common and frequent as the express air shuttle between the two cities. Of the 251 players who played for both teams, here’s some of the most significant switches. Which team has come out ahead? 2024: The Cuban Missile Soars! Signing Aroldis Chapman as a free agent is one of the more prescient moves by the Sox. A closer who has won two World Series and having played 7 seasons with the Yankees, at the age of 37, Aroldis
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Charlie Hoke

Six Down Years

If your batting average declines each year for 6 years straight, can you stay in the big leagues? Although there are many new and more advanced statistics, batting average is still a useful measure of a player's ability. Is 6 consecutive years of declining batting average irreversible? Red Sox Dave Stapleton, an infielder who played from 1980-1986, is the only MLB player who played at least seven years whose batting average declined each year throughout his career. [1] From a
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Charlie Hoke

Why was Rafael Devers reluctant to move to 1st base?

When asked to move positions, why is there is a natural reluctance? From a team perspective, it seems like an ego issue, but it may be more complex than that. During Spring Training of 2025, Rafael Devers was moved to Designated Hitter to allow newly signed free agent Gold Glove 3rd baseman Alex Bregman to play the Hot Corner. At the age of 28 and having played regularly at no other position than 3rd base, Rafael Devers balked at becoming a full-time designated hitter. He viewed this as cri
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Charlie Hoke

Vern Stephens - Red Sox shortstop - forgotten by the Hall of Fame

Who holds the single season record for RBIs for a shortstop? You may think it would be held by a Hall of Famer like Honus Wagner, Ernie Banks or Cal Ripken, or a recent retired star like Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada, or Derek Jeter, but no, the record is held by Red Sox Vern Stephens and was set in 1949. That year, batting behind Ted Williams, Vern Stephens had 159 RBIs and it was the first of two consecutive years when Stephens tied for the league lead in RBIs. This RBI total was the high
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Charlie Hoke

Ted Williams could have been even better

Ted Williams had a great career, but did this 1950 injury hurt him more than the two interruptions for military service during World War 2 and the Korean War? Three full years and close to two more years were cut short from his baseball career, yet a mid-career injury might have affected him more. The missing years often are said to have cost him the chance to have higher career totals and preventing him from getting to 3,000 hits and 600 home runs, In 1950 at the All-Star Break,
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Battle Your Tail Off

Bring City Connect Swag To Your Red Sox Collection With FOCO’s New Bobblehead Launch

FOCO is a partner with Talk Sox and support of their products helps support this site; 100% of the funds/materials received from these promotions go directly to our users in the form of prizes and gifts. It’s time to play ball, but in some brand-new, swagged-out uniforms.  The world-famous Fenway Park: Home of our beloved Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox’s famously known ballpark has been the Red Sox home for baseball for the last 113 years, that’s over a century, which is crazy to think ab
Charlie Hoke

Jim Rice's Unbreakable Record

Hall of Famer Jim Rice set a record that may never be broken. As a rookie in 1975, Rice, together with Fred Lynn, shared the nickname the "Gold Dust Twins" for their great performance and future potential. Jim Rice fulfilled that promise with consecutive spectacular seasons from 1977 to 1979, achieving a feat that had not been done before or duplicated since. During 3 consecutive years, 1977, 1978, and 1979, Jim Rice is the only player in MLB history to achieve these 5 statistical acc
Charlie Hoke

Charlie Hoke in Great Sox

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Battle Your Tail Off

Dreaming Of Baseball Writing? Create A Blog With Talk Sox!

1. Create Your Blog When you click the Blogs section on the top menu, you'll be taken to a list of most the most recent entries from our community. At the top of this feed you'll see the "Create a Blog" button. Click it and you'll be asked to enter a few high-level details: the title of your blog within the site (i.e., "John's Red Sox Blog" or something more clever/creative), a brief description, and the category it will belong to (if you're not sure, just pick "General"). To hop on over
Battle Your Tail Off

It's The Offseason So That Means "You're The Red Sox GM!"; The 2025 Payroll Blueprint Tool Has Released

Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool (formerly the Payroll Blueprint) to build your ideal Red Sox roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience. The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB
Battle Your Tail Off

Talk Sox Tips & Tricks: The Feed!

As opposed to the previous default state of the site, you may want to set a custom feed as your Talk Sox landing page. It's that useful. Instead of having to click through the (kinda insanely large now) site, you can tailor a feed to show basically whatever you want: select authors, topics you've followed, fellow users, unread content only... the list goes on. First, to find your personal feed, near the top right of the screen you will see a newspaper icon in the red bar below your user inf
Brock Beauchamp

Brock Beauchamp in Tips & Tricks

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Battle Your Tail Off

Talk Sox Tips & Tricks, Part One: Tables!

Talk Sox Tips & Tricks, Part One: Tables! With this series of blog entries, I'm going to try to cover some of the features of the new site in a few paragraphs. Using the old site, as I'm sure many of you are aware, tables were basically unusable. That has changed! I'll tackle B-Ref tables quickly in this post but you can do similar things with FanGraphs or other sites that use table data (which is how almost all stat sites display their content). First, pop on over to Rafael Dever''s B-Ref p
Brock Beauchamp

Brock Beauchamp in Tips & Tricks

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Michel1960's Blog

Me and 12 other visitors at our local baseball park

Baseball overhere in Holland is just a little sport. Most attention goes to soccer, speedskating and speed cycling. Nevertheless,our national team has a rich history aswell as several team. Media attention is verty poor, Somtimes with a little luck we see our Kingdom of the Netherlands fellow countryman Xander Bogaerts for a few seconds on national tv. Last saturday I was at our local baseball park to cover a homegame from our The Hawks team. Only me and twelf other people wrre there.A real
Michel1960

Michel1960

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