Adam Samrov

A. Bartlett Giamatti’s poem “Green Fields of the Mind” describes my feelings for the end of this season better than I ever could—it’s designed to break your heart. The prose of the former commissioner is one that most baseball fans know: “The game starts in the spring, when everything else begins again and blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings and as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” Giamatti wrote the poem to describe the end of the 1977 season, one in which the Boston Red Sox had to beat Baltimore in order for the season to continue into the postseason. And if they win, Giamatti wrote, “(S)chool would never start, rain would never come, and the sun would warm the back of your neck forever.” Fast-forward nearly a half-century and Giamatti’s words of continue to ring true. The 2026 Red Sox were at points dire and at others almost indescribable. The end, however, was as abrupt as it was nearly 50 years ago. “Today, a (Wednesday) of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped and summer was gone.” When the Red Sox season ends, I’m usually bummed for a little bit of time. I don’t follow hockey or basketball as much and even so, those sports don’t play almost every day like baseball does. You can set your watch to it; more often than not during the summer, the Red Sox are playing at 7:05 at night. But at a point, usually after New Year’s, you start thinking about it again. Spring training is close. Who are the Sox signing? Who have they signed? Who is coming back and is everyone healthy? As Giamatti writes, everything else begins again. But this year, something is lurking that could have baseball fans facing the fall alone for a while: the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and the players. It runs out on December 1, as the cold of winter really starts to descend on the Northeast, and both sides seem to be dug in—which means the Wild Card Series loss to the Yankees might be the last time we see the Red Sox for a while. And that really bums me out and leaves me with an empty feeling. And with the uncertainty of what’s to come, it’s going to be a sad offseason, however long it ends up. “…and just when you need it the most, it stops.” When will we see the Red Sox step on the field again? Nobody knows, and that’s the emptiest feeling of all. View full article

Jake BennettFranklin AriasAnthony EyansonJustin GonzalesKyson WitherspoonHenry GodboutMarcus PhillipsJuan ValeraEnddy AzocarDorian SotoYoeilin CespedesMikey RomeroTyler UberstineSadbiel DelzineJohn HolobetzYophery RodriguezFranklin PrimeraJohanfran GarciaHayden MullinsMiguel Bleis

The start of the 2026 season has not been a great one for the Boston Red Sox's middle relief corps, but especially not for Greg Weissert. In eight appearances this season, Weissert has given up homers in three of them -- including a three-run homer in the sixth inning against Eugenio Suarez and a solo shot from Elly De La Cruz in the opening series against the Cincinnati Reds. The last homer he allowed was a three-run shot by Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres, turning a one-run lead into a two-run deficit en route to the team's 8-6 loss. From his deep arsenal, the changeup and slider have been the weak links, with hitters going 3-for-5 off the former specifically. The De La Cruz homer, a shot with an exit velocity of almost 107 mph, came off the slider. He’s cut down the time he’s throwing the slider roughly in half compared to last year, often choosing to throw a sweeper in those spots. The sweeper is used 18 percent of the time, predominantly to right-handed hitters, who struggle to pick the ball up coming across the plate. The slider is down from 16 percent use rate in 2025 to only 9 percent in 2026. The sinker and the four-seamer are Weissert’s strongest pitches so far in the 2026 season, holding batters to a 2-for-16 (.125) effort, the only blemish the homer by Suarez, who had 49 round-trippers a year ago for the Mariners and Diamondbacks. Combined, he is throwing those two pitches more than 50 percent of the time he’s on the mound. After the game, Weissert blamed the Suarez blast on bad execution: "Maybe I threw one too many fastballs to him facing him [yesterday and today],” Weissert told Christopher Smith of Masslive.com. “But you can nitpick. If he pops it up, it’s a great outing. If you do what you do, he does what he does, it’s a bad one.” Everything is magnified in the first couple weeks of the season, records included, but even more so for relievers. But there's signs that the tide is turning for Weissert, who helped Italy reach the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic this spring. In his past three outings, Weissert has pitched 2.2 innings, allowing only one hit, striking out three and walking one. In that time period, he's inherited three base runners but none have scored and his ERA is down from 9.64 to 6.14. He also has three holds, for any old-school fans that still value handling pressure in non-save situations. Most importantly, though, he’s throwing first pitch strikes nearly 70 percent of the time, which would be the best mark of his career. So far this season, Weissert has entered in either the fifth, sixth or seventh innings, a role he appears likely to maintain throughout 2026. The Red Sox need guys like Weissert, Ryan Watson and Jovani Moran to be that bridge between the starters and the back-end of the bullpen with Aroldis Chapman, Garrett Whitlock, and eventually Justin Slaten as they try to dig out of their early hole in the American League East. View full article