I'm beginning to think that on this thread pessimistic is synonymous with realistic. It you are high on the Sox, you must be high on something else--bourbon, whatever.
Well, count me out of the pessimism school, and here's why.
The 9 latest games: 3 vs. the best AL Team, 3 vs. the best NL Team, and 3 vs. the 47% winning Jays--and the Sox won 7 of them with good enough pitching and surprisingly good hitting.
Season to date--and we are at 75 games, almost at 81, which is half the season--the Sox team ERA, 3.45, is 5th best in MLB. The 2018 Sox finished at 8th, ERA 3.75.
The hitting is not nearly as good as 2018, which was 1st in runs scored and OPS. However, the 2024 Sox are 9th in runs scored and 5th in OPS, and I think they can get better--barring further key injuries--because two of their top OPS guys, Casas @ .857 and Abreu @ .829--missed those 9 games. Plus there are really only three experienced hitters--Devers, O'Neill, and Refsnyder--on the active roster. Wong, Casas, Abreu, Duran, Rafaela, Hamilton, Valdez, and Gonzalez are still learning. That's a double-edged sword, I know, but I take those 9 games in June as being very timely in terms of the future. Old Julius said it best: I came, I saw, I conquered. He also said Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, which freely translated says there are 3 wild card slots in the AL.
Defense still stinks--well, the infield, anyway--but maybe with fewer unearned runs. We'll see. And a tiny counterbalance is that the baserunning adds to the offense to help compensate for those unearned runs (also earned runs that weren't).
I think the Sox need 92 wins to make the postseason. How doable is that? They need to play 60% ball the rest of the way. So far they are winning at a 53% rate, so the improvement needs to be 7%. Piece of cake--if the 53% is valid and not, as too many on here seem to think, blind stupid luck. To remind: if it's luck, it's almost half a season of luck.
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Originally Posted by Maxbialystock
