8/26 Rays @ SOX

[dgalehouse]

The mood swings and the daily change in player evaluations are very interesting.

[notin]

It is beyond question he basically collapsed last year and stayed that way this year. His WAR to date is -.5. But that's based mostly on April and May when his ERA's were 5.87 and an almost world record 9.64 in May. Grounds for DFA? I'm guessing many on talksox thought so. Instead, the Sox put him on the IL for over 60 days, which turned out to be a wise move.

 

Somehow he seems to have regained his knuckle curve and almost his fastball that worked so well in the first half of last season. And, if you watched him last night in his 3d stint in 3 nights, you saw one very determined guy.

 

The jury is still out on how long this will last, but it is crazy not to say, "boy did we and don't we badly need some version of the good Matt Barnes right freaking now." Houck is out. Whitlock is back, but Cora can't use him every night. Schreiber is still good but not as good as earlier, plus he is a one inning guy.

 

I just looked at the wild card standings, I readily agree the Sox are definitely a long shot to get to the postseason. They are 8 games back of the Jays and Mariners with 36 games to go, and their run differential of -44 ain't promising.

 

But, as moonslav loves to remind us, in baseball, including especially MLB, anything can happen.

 

 

Definitely did here.

 

I always kept him around for my 2023 thread posts, but not because I wanted him there. Just because I knew he would be, much to my chagrin.

 

I’ve even thrown out bad contract swaps, like Barnes for NYM C James McCann.

 

But as of now, Mr. Barnes has my attention in a different way…