Category: News

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.

The Big Story – Sox Second-Half Start: In going 4-5 in their tough opening nine-game stretch with the NL’s three division leaders it wasn’t great, but it could have been worse, as they lost the first two games of each series vs. Chicago and Philly as well as losing the opener vs. L.A. before rallying to win the four they did.

Garrett Crochet did what aces are supposed to do by winning twice after Boston losses as he moved to 12-4 with a 2.23 ERA on the year. Which left them 57-50, 6.5 back of AL East-leading Toronto and the second best among Wild Card contenders.

Sports 101: Name the only pitcher to hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat.

News Item – 4 Thoughts from First 4 Days of Patriot Training Camp: (1) Returning OC Josh McDaniels’ early emphasisis for having Drake Maye getting rid of the ball quicker than a year ago. (2) With him already on thin ice, disappointing 2024 second-round pick Ja’Lynn Polk made the hole deeper by missing all four days. (3) The pass rush led by Keion White and Milton Williams got off to a good start in the early drills. (4) Seeing Caedan Wallace now playing guard after being drafted to play left tackle is another reminder of what a bust the 2024 draft has been.

News Item – Clayton Kershaw vs. Whitey Ford: Kershaw is locked in a tight battle with the great Yankee lefty for having the highest win-loss percentage in baseball history among those with 200 or more wins. After going 236-106 in 16 seasons, Ford is the retired career leader. So the Sox’ 4-2 win over Kershaw Saturday had historic consequences as it cut KC’s lead over Ford down from .692 to .690.

News Item – Player of the Week: The A’s Nick Kurtz had arguably the greatest single hitting game in MLB history on Friday. When he went six for six with eight RBI in a 15-3 win over Houston. It included a single, a double and becoming the first rookie in history to hit four homers in a game.

Alumni News – Matthew Judon: The former Patriots linebacker is still out on the street looking for work. This after acting like a 10-year-old in camp last year to get a big bump in pay. The Pats said no and traded him to Atlanta for the third-round pick who became guard Jared Wilson.

But after a 5.5-sack, 41-tackle season he’s found out the Patriots aren’t the only team that doesn’t think he was worth his asking price.

The Numbers:

41 – homers for Seattle’s Cal Raleigh to bring him within one of Javy Lopez’s mark for most homers hit as a catcher in one season.

44 – strikeouts by Red Sox hitters when they lost two of three to Dave Dombrowski’s Phillies.

163 – homers by Kyle Schwarber in three-plus years since the Sox let him walk over the same $20 million per they gave the next winter to Masataka Yoshida — who has 25 Boston homers since.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Up – Alex Cora: For again bucking trends in managing his pitching staff. This time by bringing Aroldis Chapman in to face Schwarber in the seventh inning with the tying run on second. Chapman induced a pop to second to end the threat.

Anti-Rafael Devers Award –– “I’ll do anything to help the team”: That’s what the Sox’ best outfielder, Ceddanne Rafaela, said when asked about playing second base lately to help fill the black hole there and relieve their DH/OF bottleneck as well.

Future Lost Court Case of the Week: Donald Trump was back to telling sports how it can operate again last week. This time by signing an executive order to limit how much college athletes can make by putting a cap on NIL money. The problem is the NCAA settled the O’Bannon lawsuit (that opened the door for NIL) because they knew they’d lose in court on anti-trust issues. Which will happen again because the E.O. also illegally restricts individual earning rights.

A Little History – DiMaggio’s 56-Game History: The most amazing thing about Joe D’s famed 56-game hitting streak lies in illustrating how different the 1941 game was compared to 2025, when 100k seasons by players are commonplace. While DiMaggio hit .408 (91-223) with 56 runs scored, 55 RBI and 15 homers, he struck out only five times over those 56 games and not once during the final 32.

Sports 101 Answer: While more famous for throwing his knuckle ball, Hoyt Wilhelm is also the only pitcher to hit a home run in his first MLB at bat as a NY Giant in 1952.

Final Word – A Little Extra History: If you don’t know, in the game after the streak ended, he immediately went on a 15-game streak. And in 1933 he hit in 61 straight playing with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League.

Email Dave Long at dlong@hippopress.com.