5GoldGlovesOF,75

Right, fans were all yelling "Fire Fatse" because the team can't hit, and now that he's gone, guys like Merloni are saying he was an old school coach -- and the Driveline guys are the ones they kept. Durbin had a decent rookie year for Milwaukee with the second-lowest Slugging% in the line-up. Then he comes to the Red Sox where everyone struggles with the "Hit the ball in the air" mantra. And all we get to see is him pull his head with his new uppercut swing and hit in the .100s. How's that working out, Craig?

No idea. Why are you asking me? Ask them.

A sober way of looking at THIS ROSTER: instead of the Red Sox winning 77 more games, there's a better chance of the Red Sox winning 77 games total this season.

Those numbers show that even if the Red Sox win more than they lose the rest of the season, they may only finish .500. To get back to last year's record, they need to go 77-55 -- which is unthinkable with the league's weakest offense; last in homers, last in slugging. Even in the unlikely event that all the bats ON THE ROSTER improve and guys near career years, they'd still need an additional Kristian Franklin phenom to arrive and go off. So the question at this point should be revised... but probably not: Do you think Boston can win 22 more games than they lose in the next five months?

Opinion noted, but actual Red Sox big leaguers raved about the impact on their hitting by the sudden presence of JD Martinez, Kyle Schwarber, and Alex Bregman in the line-ups, at the cages, and scanning iPads. That trio arrived in 2018, 2021 and 2025, respectively. Those were the only years Boston made the playoffs since.

I feel the same about both. I'm also glad the Sox called Chad Tracy as interim. He's now the youngest manager in the AL and already experienced guiding most of the young guns when Worcester was their last stop before The Show. That's the type of guy I want working with rookies and sophomores trying to ward off the Jinx. Cora was a people person, but with the rep of being better at handling veteran players. So Tracy could be a breath of fresh air... and definitely a better choice than some old curmudgeon who can't work a cellphone trying to whip the boys back into shape.

Some posters love to cite stats to show how ex-Red Sox or almost-Red Sox or coveted-by Red Sox are doing elsewhere. I'm the voice of reason and treason: not all of those numbers would necessarily transfer verbatim if the same player was batting in the Red Sox line-up at mostly Fenway Park and facing more AL East foes, and also in their ballparks. And not getting to hit against Bello. It's also worth considering other factors, like is it harder or easier to hit the longball in other ballparks? Ex: New York's old Polo Grounds where fences were 483 feet to CF and 258 down the line in RF. If you were a righty pull hitter there, it was only 279 feet to LF... but then once your Giants moved to San Francisco's Candlestick Park, the wind was always blowing in from left.

Game was tied at the time. Chisholm rushed a crappy throw to first, which is 90 feet away (give or take a corner of the pizza box) from second, and you think he'd make a better one to home plate, which is 127 feet 3 3/8 inches from the center of the second base bag... and he's Jazz.

Point worth discussing since Cora was his biggest proponent and in three months they let both go. Maybe that's more a statement that Brez and Co. are all in on the Driveline guys -- who they retained and assigned more important titles (at least, to the new Assistant Hitting Coach). But the young players also gave Bregman credit for helping them last year, and is it only coincidence that nearly all of them started off this season struggling?

Like: watch out, you might score the run that wins the World Series! Not: don't keep running with a full count and two outs on Yoshida's grounder up the middle that the second baseman just dove to stop and then bounced a throw past the first baseman, so you can score the go-ahead run and we can eliminate the Yankees at home!

Didn't you hear Obrien the suck-up announcer say last night it wasn't his fault! It was the Toronto philosophy to take short leads so runners won't get doubled up on all those line drives the Jays rip every game right at infielders. So sick of their BS.

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.