5GoldGlovesOF,75

Thank you. The problem with the '26 Red Sox -- and it's not going to change -- is that Breslow chose not to supply the roster with enough established bats. When you have enough, hot starters carry slow starters until later, when they change places. There's plenty of evidence in baseball history that ballplayers are in their primes in their 20s and aren't as good in their 30s, but most younger guys have the quick-twitch tools without the veteran experience. That's where Bregman really helped out last year. Bregman's not the hitter he once was, but still knows how to slow down the game in key spots. And Boston still has that huge hole in the middle of the batting order. Contreras is a dangerous hitter, but a big hacker. Surrounding him with more deliberate batters that use the whole field would give the offense more balance. Anthony is in a funk, and a sucker for curveballs in the dirt right now -- and the league knows it. That's why I wanted him batting 5th or lower until he adjusts -- you could see he was on Cease's fastball last night. At least flip him with Abreu, who's been more consistent since the WBC.

It doesn't help me because I don't care about stats in April. Elite ballplayers don't suddenly forget how to hit, and most established stars find success from continually adjusting. Nagging injuries are the only things that slow them down, unless they have failing vision or substance issues (though I may have more of the latter because my vision is still good enough to keep watching the Red Sox).

I wanted Cease and Suarez and Gray -- really just two out of three. Check. and I wanted Bregman and Bichette and Contreras -- at least two out of three. UNCHECKED. (I actually wanted Bregman or Bichette, and preferred Yandy Diaz over Contreras because I thought that trade would cost less to complete. But apparently, Tampa wasn't interested in dealing him... and now he's third in the AL in OBP). But Breslow believes in the roster... that he didn't complete.

Maybe the plan all along in the '25 preseason was to move Campbell to full-time DH, once they salary dumped Devers... ... because the smartest guys in the conference room already knew that KC was poor on D and that Raffy would publicly freak about being replaced by Bregman so loudly that Brez could justify trading him... ... which any CBO thin-skinned enough to fire an employee for calling him a stiff surely wanted to do since Devers implored him publicly at the previous summer trade deadline to recruit pitching help.

Wait til you get to the part that it was the front office spin that Mookie wanted to leave Boston. A lot of duped fans still regurgitate that lie when they try to justify the worst trade this century.

https://joonlee.substack.com/p/inside-the-red-soxs-crisis-of-credibility An interesting and thorough summary of how Boston's front office really isn't fooling anyone anywhere anymore. The last lines confirm what we've suspected all along: for powerful people to stay in power, honesty is not the best policy. "because no one is empowered to speak plainly about money, urgency or limits, fans are left decoding mixed signals. The fan base hasn’t stopped loving the Red Sox. It just no longer knows who in the organization, if anyone, is telling them the truth."

Not buying that. Anthony played 93 games in Woo, out of a total 303 minor league games at three other levels in the org. A ballplayers development isn't just the responsibility of one manager, whose job is mainly to manage the actual games -- not as much as the instructional coaches the system assigns to each level and preseason.

I don't trust the Red Sox front office on just about anything, but can't fault any org from promoting a guy who was named Minor League Player of the Year. The list of previous winners from just the past 14 years alone boasts multiple MLB All-Stars, MVPs and Cy Youngs: Trout, Buxton, Bryant, Snell, Acuna, Vlad Jr, Witt Jr, Gunnar. That's over 50% studs; the rest at least became starting position players: Myers, Moncada, Lux, Holliday, Konnor Griffin. None of those guys looked rushed now. The Campbell dilemma -- besides his unique swing that big league analytics quickly exploited -- is that he rose so fast because of his bat that he didn't have enough time to develop into a professional infielder. He's still a pro athlete and will be a major league outfielder someday, but probably not another Barry Bonds, as his more-hyped teammates Anthony, Mayer and Teel were calling him.

And some of their righty hitters are pathetic vs. southpaws. The season is so Pretzel Logic. Yes, I'm dying to be a star And make them laugh.

Oh no -- two lefty batters hitting back-to-back, 3rd and 4th in the order. What could possibly happen if foes bring in a southpaw reliever with the game on the line? How about: anything.

Two words that somehow never get used when discussing sign inventing -- which has also been a part of the game since the beginning of time to deceive the opponent. Sign inventing and sign decoding have always been done furtively to get an edge on the opposition. Maybe the semantics -- using the term "stealing" -- just bothers some people too much... (but then, why isn't Rickey Henderson in the Hall of SHAME?). I don't know Alex Cora personally, and don't agree with a lot of his managerial strategies, but I'll always view the story in Houston as the most overblown about baseball history in baseball history.

JP Riccardi speculated last night on NESN they may have wanted to fire a coach or two but Cora stood by his men as a unit so they cleaned house (of his guys). Chad Tracy is a company man and should have a job managing somewhere in the org when he's replaced after his interim. But if the front office really wants to turn this thing around, Tracy's first moves should be to switch Mayer and Story in the middle infield. Remember, Story was signed by Bloom, not Breslow -- whose own job may be defined by who he trades away at the deadline in three months. By then, if they want something really radical, consider Franklin Arias -- who yesterday cranked a pinch-hit come-from-behind walk-off homer with two outs and two strikes to the opposite field. Arias leads all leagues in professional baseball in OPS. Tracy should also move Anthony to 5th in the batting order -- until he gets his swing back... then bat him 3rd; never leadoff again. Duran needs to leadoff and get back to his sparkplug ways. It may be a longshot, but it also may be the only shot to regenerate enough offense to get back to respectability. Durbin can keep hitting 2nd, as long as the new small ball philosophers teach, practice and implement bunt strategies for all the fast guys (like the '25 team with the most wins just did with Hamilton). Don't say bunting has gone out of style -- not in Boston, where reaching base, moving runners and scoring runs has gone out of style.

Tracy is just a fill-in until Pedroia's kid All-Star team is eliminated from their tournament.

The only shock I have is they read my post yesterday that said if they axe Cora, then they'd better fire his whole staff, too. None of them were helping young guys improve. But Bailey -- Breslow's boy -- survived the purge. Nothing against him, but a new Manager should be able to recruit his own peeps. That's a wholesale turnover. Now we still have remnants of an underachieving starting rotation.

with the O's! everyone deserves a chance to bat once a year against Bel-- I mean 40 mph!

Never confuse the Betts trade with any other, since it will always be the worst Red Sox trade of our lifetimes. Mookie was 26 when traded -- just about to enter his prime. He wasn't over-the-hill and had just reached the trailhead. He has 42.5 WAR in LA so far. In the same five plus years, Wong/Verdugo/Downs have a combined 15 WAR. That qualifies for international WAR crimes.

Sox are averaging 10 runs scored per game in this whole series! In road games this entire season, Boston has averaged 5 runs scored per game!

Teams that suck always have choices. They can do nothing and keep playing their mistakes that they've blown money on, or they can make changes... ... like trading established veterans to make room for as many young and hungry prospects as they can bring up. That option might be tough to watch, as youth adjusts to The Show, but at least their development is more intriguing than doormats that feature deteriorating skills of over-the-hill players. One can keep you watching, the other can keep you retching.

The Red Sox owe Bryan Bello $50 million dollars. Basically, what they paid Giolito for one good regular season. But Bello is under contract -- and gets to pitch in Boston -- for at least four more years.... and then he has a player option for $21 million in 2030. Or the team has a buyout for $1 million dollars. Keep on smilin. The least Cora coulda done is left Bello in to set a new record for home runs. He is the poster child of Cora's cryptic comments about locking up young talent to longterm contracts -- before they prove themselves. If a guy isn't secretly hurt, then when we consider young multi-millionaires, there's always the question of hunger. Not to eat, but to continually drive themselves to succeed. Maybe, just maybe, that was the additional "dynamic" to which Cora was alluding.

That one is still mystifying. If it was just a Boston front office mistake, we could understand because that's where each Assistant Vice President is the smartest guy in a phone booth. But all the minor league evaluators and presumably observers got together and named Campbell Minor League Player of the Year. Something had to happen besides pitchers writing a book on how to exploit KC's swing. Right now he's got a 33% K-rate in Triple A with one homer (geez, he'd fit right in on the parent club). But I've watched him carefully many times in person, and he still does not look like a big leaguer at any position. And tonight's preview -- not starting line-ups yet -- lists him back at 2B?

Because in six years when he's earned market value, the smartest men in last place won't have to pay him what he's worth.

Bello's gonna be nibbling on Triple A buffets soon if he doesn't. Tolle took a big bite outta the rotation last night.

After Atlanta owner owner Ted Turner made himself manager in 1977, I think MLB made a rule banning such idiocracy. Those Braves lost 101 games and finished dead last, 37 GB. Hall of Famer Phil Niekro had 8.5 WAR and led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts. He didn't prevent anything.

Most sane observers have already noted that Contreras would be a good supplement to an actual big league batting order. He's not a superstar elite clean-up hitter, but he's been the Red Sox best defensive player on the field by far.

In each game of the sweep, the Boston Run Preventers actually held the mighty Yankees under the league average of 4.37 runs per game. The Dead Sox also prevented themselves from scoring more than 3 runs total, which they've only done in actual games 44% of the time. If Boston keeps up this pace of scoring less than 4 per game 56% of the remaining schedule -- we know they can do it -- they will finish with a record of 69-93. Imagine those of us who predicted the under of 87.5 Ws. I feel like Nostradumbass.