The Big Story – Pennant Race Grips The Hub: It was an up-and-down week for the Sox that saw them drop two games to AL East-leading Toronto. They held onto second place, but only by a game ahead of the Yanks. They also dropped to second in the Wild Card race, a game up on the Yanks and four ahead of Cleveland for the final slot. So with five weeks left the race is intensifying and the first thing people are doing in the morning is check the scores to see if anything changed overnight. That could be this week as they’ve already faced Baltimore twice (Monday and Tuesday) at Fenway Park, where they’re 41-23 in 2025. Then it’s four vs. the Yankees on the road, where they’re a less than stellar 27-34. So they’ll need to be better at the stadium to maintain their place in the standings. Otherwise they’ll be on the outside looking up at the wild card standings by week’s end.
Sports 101: Just 10 Heisman trophies have also made it to the NFL Hall of Fame. How many can you name?
News Item – Roman Anthony Update: The kid continues to give indications he’s for real. And while he’s likely better batting later in the order for his RBI ability, it’s hard to argue that an on base percentage hovering around .400 (.398) isn’t a great fit at lead-off too. It’s led him to score 37 times in 56 games. The game illustrating that most was his two-at-bat, one-hit (a homer), four-walk game vs. Houston last week where he had one RBI and those four walks led to four runs scored for a rare 2-4-1-1-4 line. With the homer he joined Ted Williams, Tony C and the exiled Raffy Devers as just the fourth Sox player 21 or under to hit homers in back-to-back games.
News Item – Trade Deadline Update: The first Red Sox start for Dustin May had the fellowship of the miserable yacking about what a bad deal it was. But the six-inning, five-hit, 8-k, no-run second start in a 14-1 win over Houston was more like it.
News Item – Milwaukee Brewers: The Brew Crew is the hottest team in baseball. They’d won 14 straight until losing on Sunday, which propelled them to the best record in baseball at 78-45. At the heart of it all was their monstrous MLB-leading run differential vs. opponents. It’s a +161, which is 44 runs over the second-best Chicago Cubs at +117. The Red Sox are fourth best at +93.
The Numbers:
1.15 – ERA of Sox closer Aroldis Chapman after giving up one run in his last 19.3 innings when he has 28 struck out.
2 – times the Red Sox have won a game while only having three hits according to the Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham. The first was in June vs. Seattle and the second was Friday’s 2-1 win over Miami.
253 – career homers for Pete Alonso to finally push someone past Darryl Strawberry to become the Mets all-time homer king, which Strawberry has been since 1988.
… Of the Week Awards
Who’s Hot – Trevor Story: Knocked in the winning run in Friday’s 2-1 win over Miami and his three-run bomb was the decisive blow in the next day’s 7-5 win. Overall he was 4-8 with a homer and four RBI. That gave him 18 RBI in his previous 18 games
Random Thoughts:
If you’re counting, after doing it again Sunday vs. Miami, that was the seventh blown save for Greg Weissert.
Sports 101 Answer:The 10 Heisman/NFL Hall of Famers are Doak Walker (SMU), Paul Hornung (ND), Roger Staubach (Navy), OJ Simpson (USC), Tony Dorsett (Pitt), Earl Campbell (Texas), Marcus Allen (USC), Barry Sanders (Oak St), Tim Brown (ND) and Charles Woodson (UM).
Final Thought – Five Observations After Pats’ 20-12 win over Minnesota:
1 – Don’t want to kick Jerod Mayo when he’s down, but things seem much tighter under Coach Vrabel.
2 – Drake Maye: I know why they’re doing it. But given he won just one game last year, he needs more work against real defenses.
3 – Have the Pats Finally Found a Slot Receiver? If you watched the first two games it was hard not to notice All-Name Teamer Efton Chism III and not just because he looks like he’s 12 years old. But with 12 catches for 121 yards and two TD’s he grabbed attention. Most impressive is his Wes Welker-like quickness in tight space, and fight for extra yards after the catch, like on the TD vs. Minnesota when he should have been tackled on the 8. Not a lock, but he’s getting close.
4 – The Defense: Hard to tell anything about the D because the full first team has not played one down together.
5 – Kyle Dugger: A good player coming off a bad year. Hope they don’t give up on him, but it appears Vrabel has.
Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.