The Big Story – Sox Lead Wild Card Race: So, where are the “the sky is always falling” folks in Boston’s media now? The ones who said the only reason the Red Sox rolled into the All-Star break on a big winning streak was that they just played bad teams? Those people, like the Globe’s Prince of Darkness and radio’s always negative Felger and Mazz, immediately pointed to their 4-5 start to the second half against three NL Division leaders as proof. Except that’s what good teams are supposed to do — play .500 against the good teams and pound the mediocre to bad ones. Which is what the Sox have done by going 19-5 since that winning streak started, including a weekend sweep of AL West-leading Houston. That had them starting the week with the top Wild Card record and in second place just three back of Toronto in the AL East.
So what do they do now? Complain about the not so great haul at the trade deadline — what else?
Sports 101: Name the only team in major league history with a winning record against the Yankees.
News Item – Pags Bags The Sun: Not sure if it’s going to mean the Connecticut Sun are headed to Boston, but former Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca agreed to pay the highest price ever to buy a WNBA team for $325 million last week. But there may be opposition to his desire to move them to Boston, as the league had already ticketed Boston as an expansion site in the near future. Stay tuned.
News Item – Height of Hypocrisy Award: It certainly takes pretty large stones for anyone tied to the Houston Astros to call out another team for sign stealing. But the scuttle was that’s what angered Hector Neris leading to the benches being emptied at Fenway on Saturday.
The Numbers:
.272 – AAA batting average of Kristian Campbell after 32 games to show he’s finding himself after lingering around .200 for the first half of his stay in Worcester.
4 – number on the growing list of professional athletes being investigated for illegal gambling after Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase went on paid leave while baseball looks into his case.
… Of the Week Awards
Thumbs Down – Ryne Sandberg: The Cubs’ great second baseman, who hit 282 homers in his Hall of Fame career, succumbed to cancer at 65. RIP Ryno.
Inning of the Week: It came when Atlanta thought it had blown open a 3-3 game by scoring eight runs in the top of the eighth inning. But amazingly the Reds blew that to smithereens by scoring eight in the bottom of the inning to knot it at 11-11. It was just the third time in history teams have each scored eight runs in the same inning. Atlanta eventually won 12-11 in 10 innings.
Game of the Week: Then the next day the Pirates scored nine runs in the first inning but still managed to lose as Colorado got a 17-16 wild win on a two-run walk-off by a guy I never heard of, Brenton Doyle.
Sports 101 Answer: After sweeping them last weekend, the Miami Marlins are the only team with a winning record vs. NY at 25-24.
Final Thought – And Another About The Sox: Boston’s media crybabies also said the Sox flushed the season down the toilet when they traded Rafael Devers to the Giants. Except that hasn’t happened, or been the boon to the Giants they predicted as well. On the day they got the then insubordinate but now sainted Devers, SF was 44-31, and now they are 55-55. For the mathematically challenged, that’s a worst-in-baseball 13-24 with Devers. While it’s 25-14 for the Sox since the trade that’s taken them from out of the wild card race at 37-37 to owner of the top WC slot at 62-51.
The second thing that they said was the only reason Devers was traded was that the brass wanted to dump his contract. Not true, as I guarantee you if he had picked up a first baseman’s mitt when Triston Casas went down Raffy’d still be here.
But with Roman Anthony deemed ready for the majors they had a bottleneck at OF/DH and someone had to go. They picked Devers and it was the right move for the long term because they got rid of a bad contract that would have forced them to pay a DH $31 million per for seven seasons. Plus Anthony has delivered. In his 46 MLB games, he’s hit .283 with 14 doubles, 2 homers, 19 RBI and a whopping 27 runs scored. For Devers, it’s .233 with 9 doubles, 5 homers, 19 RBI and 14 runs scored. Seems even to me at worst. Plus if the Sox invest the $250 million saved (a major if, I know) in a free agent pitcher like Framber Valdez next winter or revisit trading for Minnesota’s Joe Ryan, who they missed out on last week, trading Devers will be a big win going forward.
Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.