Brock Beauchamp

This is such a fun read! Well done, @Jared Mulholland!

I think it’s the mediocrity. The same thing is happening on our Cubs site; the Cubs and Sox have had very similar seasons.

Thanks for all the positive comments! I truly appreciate it. There's always anxiety around a project of this kind. I take community very seriously and I'm always low-key terrified that I'm going to mess up and ruin a two-decade old community.

Trying a new thing here. The game thread will exist in the Red Sox forum for the day and I will move it to the game thread forum tomorrow morning.

On the other sites, we carry the latest game thread in the team (Red Sox) forum. The next morning, I move it to the game thread forum and create a new thread in the team (Red Sox) forum. Is this something we want to do here as well? I like having the game thread in the most populous forum because it gets the most eyeballs, then moving it to another forum for later reference.

I like to check in every so often and get the community’s thoughts on things. We’re two weeks in and we’re about 75% of functionality. Due to the unusual time we launched, things like prospect lists and other features will roll out over the next couple of months. So what are your thoughts? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? I’m still on the lookout for a consistent videographer so if you have interest or know someone who does, PM me. Almost all the front page writers so far are very inexperienced but I’m super-impressed with this group. You Sox fans are a passionate, smart bunch of people. We’ve had WAY MORE people signing up to write than any site we’ve launched before now and the content has been impressively good. With that said, in the coming weeks we’re bringing in more experienced writers including someone to handle most of the front page management so I’m freed up to work more on outreach. Please, let me know your thoughts, good and bad.

To be fair, I literally laughed out loud when the Yankees signed Ellsbury to that contract.

I think ownership is clearly to blame here. This year, the Sox have the 11th-highest payroll in baseball (per SpoTrac). Two years ago, it was sixth-highest. Five years ago, it was the highest in baseball. Ten years ago, it was fifth-highest. The Sox can't compete directly with the Yankees and Dodgers on spending. That's a reasonable limit. But they should at least be spending at Cubs-level and Giants-level. This is a franchise that dominates New England, which has a population around 15 million people. The attendance always averages over 30,000 per game. There's no excuse for a payroll outside the top ten of baseball.

The Red Sox should have the budget to keep Rafaela as a fourth outfielder should that become the best position for him in the future. I'm generally in favor of locking up young players into free agency because the dollars required to do so just aren't that large. But for the reasons pointed out in this article, I'm not sure I would have chosen Rafaela as my first target.

No worries!

On Talk Sox, we host the game threads in the game thread forum.

I was only able to watch the second half of last night's game and my takeaway is that Trevor Story looks hopeless with the stick right now.

WHAAAATTTTTTTTT

Welcome to Talk Sox!

I think they have a winner in Breslow. He's an ex-player and even during his playing career, was always known as being one of the brainiacs of the sport. He's also a pitcher who embraces the modern approach. I think he'll be able to do good things in time; the problem is that it takes 4-5 years to see pitching development fully come to fruition.

I think it's a given the Sox have to eat some of the contract. How much? Dunno. He's not a bad hitter but that defensive profile depletes whatever value he might have. He's a bit of a poor man's Luis Arraez. It's easy to fall in love with the hit tool but then you realize he brings absolutely nothing else to the table.

It's unlikely he'll ever be a front-of-the-rotation starter but on Sunday, rookie Richard Fitts showed he could be a part of the 2025 Boston Red Sox. Richard Fitts smiled as he handed the ball over to his new manager, Alex Cora, and left the mound in the 6th inning of a tie game. He had given the Red Sox exactly what they needed in his major league debut: a chance to win. But like many Red Sox starters before him, he was betrayed by shoddy defense and a combustible bullpen. The 24-year-old cruised through the first five innings against a historically bad White Sox team that had lost 111 games. Fitts wasn’t overpowering, but he was efficient. He leans on his four-seamer, which topped out at 96 MPH; he mixed in a slider and sweeper while throwing in a few splitters. With Boston leading 1-0 to begin the 6th inning, Triston Casas could not pick a grounder that ricocheted off his shin and squirted into right field. That was the beginning of the end. Fitts gave up a single to Luis Robert and was ultimately pulled with two outs and a runner on third. Cora brought in Greg Weissert to get the final out. Weissert, along with Fitts and Low-A pitcher Nicholas Judice, was traded to the Red Sox in the offseason in the deal that sent outfielder Alex Verdugo to the Yankees. Weissert promptly induced a weak grounder, which he fumbled for the second fielding error of the inning, allowing the runner at third to score. The inning was a microcosm of the entire season for the Red Sox. Fitts finished with 5.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, and 2 K. He threw 66 pitches, 44 for strikes, with five swings and misses. But swings and misses weren’t a huge part of Fitts’ game in the Triple-A Worcester this season. In 116.2 IP, he struck out 111 batters. SoxProspects.com has Fitts ranked as the #12 prospect in the Red Sox organization and third-best pitching prospect behind only Portland’s Luis Perales (#6) and David Sandlin (#11). He’s projected long-term as a back-end starter or multi-inning reliever. In his major league debut (a game in which the Red Sox would lose 7-2 after another late-inning bullpen meltdown), Fitts showed that he could be major league-quality depth. With 19 games left in the season and Boston back by four games in the Wild Card race (now behind the Twins, Tigers, and Mariners), this will likely be just a cup of coffee for Fitts. But when the calendar flips to 2025, he might want to find a bunch of good podcasts to listen to during the ride east on I-90 from Worcester to Boston. View full article

One thing I have to say as a person following both the Twins and Red Sox. This September is shaping up to be a fight for the ages... if you like watching toddlers fight.

I didn’t realize it was possible for the White Sox to score five runs in a single inning.

Yeah. I'm a Brewers fan so I watch a lot of their games. I don't really understand what has happened to Adames. It could be a blip on the radar - sometimes defense slumps - but I wouldn't bank nine figures on that being the case.