Sometimes I say things like that just to see what the reaction is.
I do believe there's some truth in it - when you go from being a powerhouse like the Sox mostly were in the years 2003-2018 to a mediocrity like the 2022-2024 teams, it tends to adjust expectations downward to the point that you're relatively happy if the team is projected to win 85 and have a shot at a Wild Card spot.
It's also a sweeping generalization that doesn't apply to a lot of fans, as we can see by reading the game threads.
Holy smoke! We're actually playing the White Sox and it's the third of a four game series. But far be it from me to mess with the mojo man of the moment.
None of us have any idea what's going on with Devers's shoulders.
But he has a .684 OPS and only 1 home run in 20 games. Sure doesn't seem like he's fully operational.
OTOH pulling themselves off the mat and winning the last 2 against the Rays showed something.
I'll just go with Parcells here: we are exactly what our record says.
Sure, but it's kind of an instant logic fail that when he got no 200 million offers this year at age 31, he's going to get them next year when he's 32...
So in this last series we scored 9 (average 3.00 per game, lousy), gave up 20 (average 6.67 per game, lousy) but won 2 out of 3.
Just another reminder that in baseball the data is derived from the games, but the games aren't derived from the data.
It's certainly a valid argument. To me Casas makes a good test case because he's a young hitter who seemed to have a great approach when he came up but now seems to have badly regressed.