TedYazPapiMookie

That is an excellent addition through subtraction scenario. Preller has the money to do it.

We disagree on two items: 1 - A .951 fielding percentage in the minors means Mayer is NOT a great defender. In fact, his performance in the minors was nowhere near Campbell's and you can see the transition to the MLB from the minors on defense has not been a too difficult to handle like so many think. Campbell has made 4 errors in 13 less total chances than he had in the minors at 2B. So his fielding percentage dropped from .979 to .978. Which means he's still an excellent 2B. Mayer has dropped from .951 to .941 in the MLB. That's why I disagree with what you wrote. Maybe he'll improve with a larger sample size. 2 - Abreu won a bogus gold glove because 2024 had a horrendous set of right fielders. Ceddanne Rafaela ranked higher overall defensively last year but finished behind 3 outstanding Centerfielders. This year his numbers are still ahead of Abreu. Abreu is the weakest defender in the outfield according to the numbers. Rafaela's Drs/yr in 2024 was 23 in 2025 it's already 25. Abreu's Drs/yr in 2024 was 22 and in 2025 it's 21. So that shows you just how great our outfield is. Duran's numbers show how hard it is to be a good LF in Boston. His CF Drs/yr in 2024 was 25 and LF was 12 for an average of 19. Put him in right field and Abreu in LF and the overall defense will be better based on the numbers. FYI... Verdugo won a GG in RF the year before Abreu because the competition is so weak at that position not because he's a great outfielder. He made less errors than Abreu (3 to 7) but his Drs/yr was only 10!!! Abreu has an issue with going back to the outfield fence and the side fence in RF. He gets the yips and pulls up. He even changes his footwork to catch balls that might lead him into the fence. His specialty is just like Verdugo's. He is excellent on coming in for balls to his right (glove side). He's made some outstanding catches sliding for the ball. He also has an excellent arm but he's still the third best and should cover the smaller outfield with his lack of speed compared to Duran and Rafaela. FYI, Anthony is an excellent defensive outfielder like Rafaela. He plays CF too so optimally they need to be in the big fields in Fenway.

I think it's fair to suggest this was a tire kicking exercise by San Diego because Duran is a big part of the future in Boston. BUT if San Diego is willing to part with Salas who would become our catcher of the future making Narvaez and excellent back-up in the future and Leo De Vries SS I think we should do the deal. Let's see how desperate San Diego is for Duran. Duran still has time to get hot and make the all-star team again so if that happens maybe a deal could be done in a month. De Vries is the answer at SS in the future. He's a better fielder than Mayer and if Bregman opts out then Mayer can stay at 3B and the infield should be able to play together for years. Anthony would go to RF and Abreu/Refsnyder would go to LF. No pitching is going to be given up by San Diego which is what we need but the two key prospects would closeout our needs on offense so next off season we could focus on the 3 through 5 spots in the starting rotation and more quality relievers. 2026 could be a really great year where we get close to the level of talent we had in 2018.

Tonight's 1 run loss is typical of the season: The batting order never makes sense, and the starting line-up never makes sense. Duran then Devers so back to back lefties. With Duran just starting to hit how many RBIs have been missed out on in the 1st inning thanks to Cora? Some folks point out that Devers is leading in RBIs and you have to ask yourself how that is possible? Simple. Rafaela seems to be on base a lot for Devers. So why not bat him second and Devers 3rd. Left-right-left and more runs scored in the first inning to start the game by being ahead! Also, Gonzalez and Toro in the line-up. Why? To rest Mayer? He's played 8 games, how tired can he be? Since Casas went down we have used Gonzalez, Toro, Sogard and Wong at 1B in the 34 games. They are bad Band-Aids. To stay in the race, you get a real 1B and worry about the personnel after the season. If you want to use a Band-Aid, have it mean something to the future of the club and use Anthony. He doesn't have to play there long term, just for 2025 or if he's good at it, then maybe you deal Casas in the off season or keep him as quality depth because he's obviously better than the 3 amigos and Wong at 1B. The line-up keeps this team from being competitive. Mayer needs to play all but 1 game or 2 each month, not each week. Who made the two errors tonight that cost us a run? Toro and Gonzalez!! Could it have been avoided with a real 1B or Anthony at 1B and Story at 3B while Bregman is out? Maybe. But since the two guys who made them are AAA players, why not use your best AAA player and your 4th pick in the draft instead of those two? It makes no sense. They are building the future at a snail's pace and are non-competitive at the same time!! These are simply wasted games that don't go in the win column, that don't develop Mayer and Anthony and don't prepare the team for 2026.

Great story. I was unaware of the injury and as far as the numbers go, his upside with no service time and no injuries would have been comparable to Ruth. He was the greatest hitter of all time. Thanks for sharing the story.

Duran hasn't clicked yet this season. Two mediocre months so far. Lets hope June revives Duran. The problem with pointing out Duran's slow start is that you are inferring maybe we should use someone else at leadoff. Look in the cupboard, it's bare. Between Mookie and Duran we had a long line of failures at leadoff. We have so many other issues that lead-off man doesn't hit the top 20 list. The number one issue for me is too many bench guys logging too many games. Cora has no idea how to manage. If you want to keep your bench fresh when you are below .500, you have a huge whole in your philosophy as a manager. Get the 2026 starters on the field daily and play them as if you are in a pennant race (which we are not) so they get accustomed to a normal competitive season. Since 2018 Cora has grossly over played his bench when the team was both good and bad and thank goodness the 2018 was so good they overcame his mistake. Since then, they have achieved nothing with his philosophy of playing guys that remind him of himself. Put your best 9 out there and give them a day off each month, worst case 2 games. This will tell you who has stamina and who is ready to play 150 games a year and whether they can hold up to the grind in August. It does this team no good to see guys like Hamilton making Campbell sit. He's a bad back-up at best and he's taking valuable time from Campbell. You can go down the rest of the bench and say the same thing. Let Narvaez, Anthony, Campbell, Mayer, Story (until Bregman returns), Duran, Rafaela, Abreu/Refsnyder and Devers play daily with minimal substitutions. This team is playing for a Division Title in 2026 and needs to prepare. Without Bregman, this team is not playoff competitive so focus on developing the team not trying to make the last wildcard spot. It's not going to happen. The team is 29-32 and there are 24 games at least until Bregman returns. There are two "easy" series in June vs LAA and two against the Yankees, the rest are against TB, SF, TOR and SEA. All teams that we are likely not to sweep so the month appears to be another .500 type month so that puts us at 41-44 going into July. That leaves 77 games in July, Aug and Sep with Bregman hopefully. Those 25 series are comprised of 12 vs guaranteed playoff teams, 8 versus likely playoff teams and 5 versus bad teams. If the WC3 spot takes 90 wins then Boston will need to go 49-28 versus all these outstanding teams to make the last playoff spot. It could happen but it's very unlikely. So stop playing the scrubs and start planning for 2026 and make some deadline deals that move Yoshida and Story so there will be some payroll available in 2026 to patch any remaining holes. In 2026, a really good team would have a platoon pairing of Abreu/Refsnyder as their fourth outfielders. That's the kind of quality depth this team needs. We haven't had it since DD ran the show and we haven't competed since then. Breslow needs to get Cora to play his future team or be gone. Breslow knows the GM window in Boston is 3 years and even success won't guarantee a job. 2026 is year 3.

I guess you haven't read many of my posts. I have too many reasons to rehash here for firing Cora, the batting order is one small one he's done badly for 6 years. I also don't care about the record this year since losing Bregman eliminated from any chance of making he playoffs based on how long he will be out. What I care about is building the team for 2026 the proper way and it starts with losing Cora. The line-up next year is clear right now and Story should be moved to 3B so Mayer and Campbell can get used to handling the middle of the diamond. For this year, we need Anthony to play 1B so he gets hitting time to move up the learning curve faster. The rest of the defense is set with Abreu/Refsnyder in RF and Rafaela in CF and Duran in LF. Narvaez needs to nearly all the catching since Wong was a one time wonder at hitting. They'll need a new back-up in 2026. Cora needs to stop playing the scrubs and start playing the team of the future. He needs a logical batting order that doesn't have players moving spots based on hot and cold because the pitching is going to take a pounding when Crochet, Buehler and Giolito aren't on the mound. So let the hitters get comfortable with the order of the future. I like Duran, Bregman (Campbell until Bregman returns), Devers, Narvaez (Campbell when Bregman returns), Anthony, Rafaela, Abreu/Refsnyder, Story (until Bregman returns) and Mayer. That's a point in time suggestion. As each of the young players learns to adapt to the oppositions book on them we may need to move them around a bit before committing to it at the start of 2026. As far as the pitching goes, generalizations about what they should do are meaningless. Each SP and RP needs the coaching staff to work with them define approaches that will work for them and then take it game by without a general plan, the plan needs to be specific to the game and the circumstances.

I've noticed a lot of player bashing in the above comments. I think fans need to step back and consider the source of each player. How many experienced professional hitters do we have: 1 - Bregman (OUT), 2 - Devers, 3 - Story, 4 - Yoshida How many hitters have less than two years of experience that start? 1 - Rafaela, 2 - Abreu, 3 - Campbell, 4 - Mayer, 5 - Narvaez, 6 - Casas (OUT), 7 - the Bench Seeing things broken out this way, why are expectations so high? Story and Yoshida have not produced much so right now the first group is ONLY Devers. The rest of the team is learning how to make adjustments as teams build books on how to pitch them. Campbell was red hot to start the year and then went ice cold which is typical of year 1 players. The reaction by fans is sign him long-term when he's hot and put him back in AAA when he's cold. Both are over-reactions. Let him run the course of learning how to hit MLB pitchers. It's not like Devers and Duran didn't go through the same struggles when they broke in. About the only guy I can remember that didn't was Mookie. So ease up on the criticism and let the players develop. That's why Anthony should be up filling in at 1B so he moves down the hitting development chain sooner rather than later. He can go back to OF defense and still be stellar at it in 2026. He'll help the hitting more in 2026 if he gets his feet wet now. Who cares if the back-ups that are playing too much because of Cora are doing good or bad, we aren't going anywhere now that Bregman is out and those players aren't going to start in 2026 so lets play the 2026 starters and let them go through the maturation cycle for hitting and defense.

Stats are fun to present because you can pick ones that support your argument. Abreu under clutch stats - 2 outs RISP his average is .038!!! That seems to contradict the .802 OPS. According to Baseball Reference his OPS with 2 outs RISP is .321. That tells a completely different story than the one you suggested. All you have to do is find the right stat and you can make a player look at lot better than he actually is. Now go to his LEVERAGE numbers and his average under HIGH LEVERAGE is .188. A second stat that contradicts what you wrote. Lets show one more example of not being clutch just for fun. Abreu vs a SP in his first at bat is hitting .279 early in the game, his second at bat he's hitting .227 in the middle of the game and his 3rd at bat he's hitting .115 late in the game. I've got nothing against Abreu except he can't hit lefties and he's not clutch. He's a nice part time power hitter who belongs around the 7th spot in the order. If you don't believe me look up 2024 and see how much Rafaela produced from the 9 spot as opposed to the platoon player in the 2 hole. Flip in and I think the Red Sox win more games even with Rafaela's Ks last year. I hope you've noted he's dramatically cut his Ks which means more production theoretically. Too bad Cora disrespects him and pigeon-holed him into a 9 hitter. I always thought Rafaela hitting after Duran would get him more fastballs, raise his average and increase his productivity but hey you have no issues with Cora-logic, the new way to building a batting order. Why would 140 years of history be more correct than Cora!!

When your batting order doesn't follow fundamental rules of logic, one run games are much more difficult to win. When your manager makes mistakes all throughout the game, one run games are much more difficult to win. When your talent level of players allowed to play in the game is less than your opponents, one run games are much more difficult to win. When Cora uses his best players and forgets about his biases and creates a line-up that makes sense, the one run games will start going our way. If Duran leads off, Devers needs to hit 3rd. Simple logic. Today they face a RH pitcher so he stacked the line-up with righties at the bottom and lefties at the top, that's a rookie manager move but Cora has years of experience. That means he's learned nothing from all the experience. As a game progresses your opponent can use either RH or LH pitchers. Since the three-hitter rule was implemented, clustering one RH and LH hitters makes it much easier for the opposing manager to be most effective with his relievers. You can call Cora unconventional in an attempt to cover-up the obvious that he's clueless but the results of his actions means losses. Six years of losses!!! The reason the 2018 Red Sox did so well was their talent, since this team doesn't have anywhere near as much talent Cora can't just make a batting order that allows his favorites to bat more often. He has to look at building a quality batting order that will take this team into the future. Duran is the first lead-off hitter that has been good since Mookie. He needs to bat there if he's hitting .220 or .320 because point in time averages like slumps or being hot should only apply to the bottom half of your order and right and left-handed hitters only matter after the type of hitter is identified. The top four hitters should be your best hitters, and they can't include platoon guys like Abreu. Duran, Bregman, Devers should be the order at the top. The four hitter needs to be an RBI guy which means it's not Abreu because he's one of the least productive hitters on the team. He hits well in non-clutch situation but 2024 resulted with 400 at bats and only 59 runs scored and 58 RBIs batting in the second spot in the line-up. Rafaela hit 9th and put up 70 runs scored and 75 RBIs. What's wrong with this picture? The nine hitter is more productive than the 2 hitter. That should send up a red flag that the hitters are poorly place in the order, but it didn't for the unknowledgeable manager. He stuck with the guys he liked and ignored the stats. The way to win more one run games is to fire Cora and replace him with a real manager who understands the game, like a Bochy or a Dusty Baker.

Can't disagree more. Write down what a manager's job description and then try to check off just one item that he's done well since 2018? The fact that his bench time in Houston is mentioned as a positive is mind boggling. He led a group of players that he was supposed to be mentoring to hatching the biggest cheating scandal in the sport's history. I can't comprehend how you can even begin to respect him as a person or a manager. To each his own but I wouldn't let my kids play for him after the things he's done. And that's without reviewing all his managerial mistakes in 2018, 2019 and 2021 to 2024. That much experience and we still see the same roster mistakes, the same pitching staff mistakes and the same over playing the bench players mistakes. NOPE. He needs to go immediately to show Boston fans that the front office can win back some of its integrity by firing him. Why not hire an experienced manager with integrity like Boche in Texas. Heck, maybe Dusty Baker could come out of retirement for a year or two to try to undo the clubhouse damage Cora has done. There has to be a better answer with all those young players with talent waiting to find a path to greatness.

Wins have always been the goal of the pitcher but now the optics of the game are skewed by insignificant metrics that force bad decisions on managers. We've seen Snell pulled from a game he was dominating because of metric misinformation. You can't measure heart real time so you must know the pitcher. In my era, many decades ago I completely changed how I pitched when runners were on base to better prevent the runners from scoring. I believed it led to more wins for the team. That type of thinking seems to have passed with the advent of metrics. Instead, the pitcher uses stats from historic games that may have been pitched by a completely different type of pitcher to tell what pitch and in what area of the strike zone and with what speed to throw the ball. These poorly devised suggestions remove the gut feel of the pitcher at how to keep the runners from scoring. If the pitcher was a robot throwing to robots, that approach might work. In real life, the pitcher and his experience at getting batters out with runners on base is far more valuable than the normalized data provided by the metrics. That's why in the old days, pitchers went longer in games and learned more about their stuff and how to use it to get batters out when they were under adversity. Wins are important and often differentiate between the good pitchers and the not as good pitchers but as mentioned, the relievers are a huge problem. If a starting pitcher leaves the game after five innings with the lead and the relievers blow the game then the offense comes back and wins the game, I believe the starter should get the win. If they lose the game there should be a new statistic that counts games where the starter left the game after 5 innings with the lead. The starters success should be counted by both wins and the new statistic. Holds were invented for relievers, the starters need a new stat for games they should have won and they should get credit for games where the team won after blowing a lead the starter gave them. As someone else said above, I'm still all about ERA and WHIP. It's too bad the scorekeeping has declined so badly that errors are not being properly assessed. It kills the ERAs and WHIPs on bad fielding teams like the Red Sox. Devers alone may have raised the team ERA by half a point or more with all his misplays that didnt' create an error. I'm not sure there is an optimal way to weight Wins, I just know that I look for pitchers who know how to get out of jams by themselves and how many more games they typically win compared to those who struggle to stop rallies by the other team.

I think people focus too much on the pitch clock because it does not rush a pitcher unless the pitcher is generally a slow mover. Most pitchers find the pitch clock an annoyance because it applies to every pitch and sometimes you want to think about things and contemplate where you are in the game but the time between pitches is not rushing anyone from a physical exertion standpoint. Those that talk about recovery time after a pitch are grasping at theories not facts. Do a study on Sale and see what his average time between pitches have been over his career or deGrom. They are two of the hardest throwers with minimal recovery time between pitches and they don't experience a jump in injuries because of it compared to a pitcher who throws just as hard but dawdles more between pitches. I can't think of a hard throwing dawdler off the top of my head but someone who can is in a position to compare the fast worker and slow worker and the recovery time after the pitch is still less way less than the pitch clock imposes on them. Injuries come from tons of activities during the off season, Spring Training, the Regular Season and the Post Season. Training techniques probably cause the most injuries. Mechanics can cause them. You name any activity in the preparation of a pitcher, and it could contribute to the problem. Not enough is known about what causes the injuries. There are too many factors to isolate them effectively. My vote on the pitch clock is that only slow workers may be impacted, the time between pitches is enough to stay healthy but the pitch clock has limited pitching strategies, especially with runners on base. Varying times to throw over to 1B and not put yourself at risk of forfeiting a pitch has been eliminated. The throw-over rule limits holding runners on base. None of these impact injuries they just give an advantage to the offense.

Pitchers used to work at their own pace. I know I normally pitched very quickly and I never had an arm issue working quickly. Pitchers like Sale and many others simply are quick workers because they are comfortable with it. I also took my time when situations dictated especially with runners on base. To me, that's the impact of the clock. It removes strategy options from the pitchers but the impact on their arm seems like a huge stretch because most pitchers should have been pitching with a pace faster than the current clock allows. If they shorten the time from where it is now, I think your point might be more valid for pitchers, especially the ones that are not in shape physically. Those should not exist (David Wells comes to mind) but I'm sure a more rigorous pace will impact the need for more physical training. Legs and arms need to be in better shape as the clock gets shorter.

I think if you dig into the training techniques that allow a pitcher to jump 3 to 5 mph in a short time period you will find the source of the stress on the elbow. Without the money incentive, parents and kids would not be using the modern techniques for increasing velocity. That's not going to happen so expect the injuries to keep expanding until the MLB puts together a guideline that outlines what will hurt your elbow or not hurt your elbow when it comes to training techniques for increasing velocity. One MLB player that I coached when he was younger had TJ surgery in High School because his father was an ex-player and got him hooked up with a program that did aggressive velocity training. He jumped from the upper 80s to mid 90s in High School. The player made it to the pros as a reliever and has had a second TJ surgery before 30. He's made over $6Million in his career so far so was it worth it? The MLB needs to focus on safer training techniques for youth baseball and beyond.

Excellent point. Lots goes into pitching issues. My dad was a pitcher, I was a pitcher and my sons were pitchers. Arm problems can happen from starting and stopping as you suggested, from playing other positions like 3B or 2B where the arm motion is not like a pitching motion and from overuse. I missed a summer of pitching after I threw 176 pitches and enflamed my ulnar nerve. That was back before people counted pitches and I was considered to have a rubber arm playing SS and pitching while playing for two teams.

If you recognize DD's technique and schedule for extending players he believes to get the fairest contract amount you want to do the new contract during Spring Training a year before the player becomes a free agent. That's why Sale was ST in 2019 and Mookie was ST in 2020. He was on schedule and took care of Mookie in arbitration by raising his money nearly $10 Million a year. You may be right that he should have done it earlier, but his raises were very carefully laid out to smooth cashflow and observe the most stats before offering a number. So they made sense.

Excellent point.

This article may generate a lot of chatter but it's really the suggestions for a panicked team without direction, so it doesn't apply. The future is simple, play the guys who will be with the team for years to come and forget about the playoffs, they had no chance to make them once Bregman went down. It's simple look to the starting line-up in 2026 and play them now. C - Narvaez 1B - Anthony (He'll be in Right Field in 2026 this is a temp fix to get him hitting experience) 2B - Campbell SS - Mayer 3B - Story (Until Bregman returns) LF - Duran CF - Rafaela RF - Abreu/Refsnyder (platoon) DH - Devers The other guys are meaningless back-ups so stop playing them more than once every couple of weeks. because the starters need reps not rest. Starting pitching isn't that good once you get past Crochet and Buehler. Eovaldi is gone, Pivetta is gone. They would have complimented our two big guns better than the rest of the mediocre pitchers. Fitts and gang are all SP5s being forced into pitching as SP3s and SP4s so the team must hit to win if our top two are not pitching. The bull pen isn't all that great either. In time, Hendriks will come back to form and Chapman has always been a streaky dominance that resembles Mitch Williams from years gone bye. The rest are league average cheap relievers. The core roster above will grow into a contender if time is dedicated to their growth rather than the Cora circus that moves people around too much and uses too many below league average players that are expendable bench guys. Hamilton doesn't belong in the majors any more than Jeter Downs. The same can be said for most of the bench. They are like the non-top two relievers. Breslow needs to figure out how to fill the holes that will exist in 2026 with players like Yoshida and Story and Abreu. Abreu has some value right now but as a platoon guy, it's not much value. Story must start hitting at 3B so he can be moved when Bregman comes back. Yoshida needs to get in shape to gain some value to be moved at 1/2 price. Pick up $9Million of the $18Million owed on the rest of his contract. Do the deals while looking to 2026 and beyond. This year needs just one thing at this point since we are out of contention. A new manager with experience not a bad bench coach. Let Breslow put his head in the noose by bringing his own manager and coaches rather than the crap he inherited from Bloom. Accountability for Breslow should improve results. As of now, he's provided a big upgrade in talent and the team hasn't performed any better. That points to Cora not Breslow. Bringing in his own man, changes the pointer to Breslow.

To be fair, if they dumped Cora after his ST screw-up in 2019 then the avalanche of problems that followed probably wouldn't have happen. We might still have Mookie and 2020 would have been a down year but not an embarrassing year and the new manager still would have had a championship foundation of players to manage, and Bloom wouldn't have torn down the 2018 team. Cora is the lynch pin of the entire disaster.

I agree a 1B might be difficult to trade for but i think a combination of Abreu and Yoshida could land a decent 1B in trade. Since AL East teams probably wouldn't do a deal you have to look to guys like: Nate Lowe, Josh Bell, Gavin Sheets, Pavin Smith, Justin Turner who are less in value than Abreu so you could ask for a reliever as well to fix two places. I think Kurtz from Oakland is going to be a special 1B in the future so I would give Oakland Abreu and Casas. There are more controllable years going to OAK in the deal but I think the apparent overpay would pay off in the long run. The team 1B we are using now could play until Kurtz comes off the IL. Then you might have a future infield of Kurtz, Campbell, Mayer and Bregman with an outfield of Duran, Rafaela and Anthony and a DH of Devers. Boston's future is very bright with that group.

You are a funny guy. I was speaking of Sale and his way of pitching. He has always been a guy who pitches with his hair on fire. When he pitched for Chicago, he opened the game throwing with high energy and never chose to coast through a game. It made him great but when he ran out of gas, you could tell based on his control. When he came to Boston, he and Farrell got along great because Farrell understood pitching and didn't try to change his technique. His 2017 season was awesome until he got a bit tired in August like he did in Chicago and Kluber made an incredible run to pass him for Cy Young. In 2018, Sale was even better through the all-star break. I thought he was an absolute lock for the Cy Young especially with Boston 10 games ahead of everyone. He started the all-star game on July 17th with a 2.23 ERA and five straight starts with double digit strikeouts. After the all-star game he had back-to-back 6 inning shutouts with 9 and 10 Ks and was peaking as a pitcher. Entering August his ERA after the two post all-star game starts was 2.04. Enter Cora. Knowing his August routine was to get dead arm and miss a couple of weeks he decides to proactively put Sale on the IL with a tight shoulder (minor comment Sale made after his bullpen). So, Cora "the thinking man's manager (hahaha)" sits him from July 27th to Aug 12th. Sale is seen rolling his eyes in the background at the press conference when Cora is talking about why he's going on the IL. To me, it suggested it was all BS but Sale never contradicted the reason publicly, so it was accepted by most. On Aug 12th Sale pitched against BAL and was even better than before. He faced 16 batters and struck out 12 and the one hit was a ground ball to Devers that he booted but for some unknown reason it was declared an error ruining his perfect game. He pitched 5 innings and only 68 pitches but thanks to the Devers error being declared a hit Cora had an opportunity to pull him when he might have beat Clemens 20 K record, Sale was so sharp that day it was amazing. During his next bullpen session Sale made the mistake of being honest and told the pitching coach his shoulder was feeling a bit stiff. Immediately Cora put him on the IL again (they were still 10 games up or so) and this time Cora cautiously sat him twice as long, a full month. The big difference was he had him take time off from throwing. From the start of August to his Sept 11th start Sale had been on the IL 6 weeks for no reason other than Cora wanted him fresh for the playoffs. He was completely inactive for 2 weeks!!! Not the way to keep him fresh!!! When he came back on the 11th of Sept Cora pitched him 1 inning and he struck out 2 and hit a batter. Cautious? Or just an idiot manager, you be the judge. Sale's next start was on the 16th of Sept and he threw 3 innings faced 9 batters and struck out one. Cautious again? He wasn't building arm strength after 6 weeks off. He was limiting his pitches to 26 and 42 in his two starts after his long layoff. At this point, Sale's ERA was 1.92 for the season. His next start was the 21st at CLE. The game started off fairly normal. He had 4 Ks in the first two innings and coasted with three quick outs in the 3rd. Then in the 4th he showed he's human, he started with a K then a HR to Josh Donaldson, then Yandy Diaz singled and CORA PULLED HIM at 73 pitches, and the reliever allowed Diaz to score so 3.1 IP, 2 ER, 7 Ks, 15 batters faced. Should he have been pulled? Nope. His stuff was good enough the runner was highly unlikely to score, and he might have pitched threw the 5th for the win. This was the first sign that his mojo was fading. He hadn't given up a HR since June 1!! Does this sound like a guy with an ARM PROBLEM as so many have suggested when he signed his contract? Or just a numbskull manager? His last regular season start was vs BAL the team he had 12 Ks in 5 innings 6 weeks earlier. This time the game was in Boston and part of a doubleheader. I remember thinking that day that the game reminded me of watching a car accident in slow motion. Sale hit the leadoff man, struck out the 2 hitter, gave up a triple to the 3 hitter and hit the 4th hitter. A sac fly drove in the second run and a fly out ended the inning. Not very Sale-like. The third was a ground out, fly out and strike out so it appeared the good Sale was back and on track. In the 4th he gave up a hit to start the inning, a strike out, a grounder to Devers that he chose to throw to 2B but his judgement was bad as always and he was safe, and then 2 strike outs to make up for Devers mistake. The 5th started with a pop-up not caught that went for a hit since the 2B never touched it, then a pop-out to Sale, a strikeout, then a double by Adam Jones driving in a run and Sale was pulled. This was his worst outing since June 1 yet it wasn't terrible. 4.2 IP, 4 hits, 1 BB, 3 ER, 8 Ks in 92 pitches. My belief is that Sale's "time off" was complete BS created by a clueless manager that cost Sale the Cy Young. Taking 6 weeks off in August and September and then trying to restart the engine to perform at his previous peak level before the lay-off is Cora being Cora. He has no skills at running a pitching staff. MOJO gone and the fan base thinks something is wrong with SALE not CORA!!! Sale's skills are right back where they were in 2018 in 2024 and now 2025. Cora should have been nicknamed MEAT like in Bull Durham. "Don't think, it hurts the team." Now back that idiocy up against his 2019 faux pas inviting the SPs to come two weeks later than usual to ST and you have the Dennis the Menace of managers.

If Breslow says no to Anthony at 1B he needs to go out and get a real 1B. Campbell needs to stay at 2B or SS if Mayer has issues fielding at SS like in the minors. Whether you believe in fielding percentage or not a .953 fielding percentage is a big red flag. Using Story as the stand-in for Bregman makes sense if Mayer can hit at this level. Plus getting Mayer and Campbell comfortable to be like Seager and Semien will help a lot down the road.

Sale lost his mojo by sitting for nearly two months. What never made sense was shutting him down to try to proactively avoid his typical dead arm from previous seasons. Taking that much time off is like restarting from spring training. That's why Sept looked like it did for Sale. No mojo from knowing he had the Cy Young in the bag and Cora told him to sit because he thought he was smart and could avoid the dead arm interruption by resting him. Cora is a big rest guy. It gives the scrubs time to play when it comes to the hitters, and it kills the momentum of the starters who don't like "resting" like Cora did as a player. They lose their edge. Once a five man rotation is created you don't want unexpected rests, you only want resting when the PITCHER says he needs it.

Hamilton belongs in AAA. Campbell belongs at 2B since we owe Story $70Million, Anthony needs to play 1B for 2025 and taking time from either Duran or Rafaela will hurt the team incredibly. Duran on offense and Rafaela on defense. Mayer needs to raise his game on defense and has to go through the hitting adjustments that Campbell is trying to make right now. There will be a book on Mayer just like there is now one on Campbell and both young players need to learn how to adapt as their book gets built and implemented by other pitching staffs. Anthony will need to go through the same process just like every rookie does. Once Bregman gets back, they will need to decide Story's future.