5/28-5/31 Red Sox @ Rangers Series Thread

Happy E-Rod day!!

face it, this is a .470 baseball team. With young players and a good farm ... the future is bright.

Baseball is baseball even when your team is losing and baseball is entertainment. The team is entertaining even when they lose, but the psychological problems of SoxNation is not entertaining. And we have no Grady Little ... he was not entertaining.

"Le base-ball sont son divertissement favori."

I'm always up for a good horror movie. Who doesn't like to watch a great train-wreck? Wait til Mount Papi erupts. Strap yourself in. You're right. It's going to be entertaining in one sense.

Thoros Of Myr gave life back to Beric Dondarion using the powers of The Lord Of Light...Somthing I've never thought possible.
Be Thoros Eddie! Blew some life into that rotten corpse! Bring on your high heat 'cause our nights has been dark and full of errors!

Hopefully not another Abe Alvarez situation. But I have high hopes.

But Rodriguez is a lefty who is making his major league debut, and Abe Alvarez is also a lefty who once made his major league debut. Also, the last two letters in their surnames are "e z." Also, both begin their first names with a vowel. You can't deny the connection.

Rangers have been crushing the ball lately. Hopefully a lefty can keep Fielder in check, he's been raking.

I want Rodriguez to be this year's Stroman so bad, which is completely unfair.

Actually at the moment, it's a .447 team. I think the farm is pretty good and the future can be bright so I'm inclined to agree with you there.

The 2015 team really hasn't been very entertaining. They've actually been quite boring this year. A good amount of their games have been easily over by the 2nd inning when the starter has gotten mauled. And there's been a lot of other times, where there's very little sense that a late inning deficit is surmountable. Years where the Sox are good or at least entertaining, you sense that the game isn't over until it's over. That's not the case this year so far. The games have been quite easy to tune out.

Not sure what psychological problems nonsense you're referring to. The Sox won a Championship a mere 2 years ago. From a personal standpoint, I waited 24 years and others waited much, much longer, so 2 years is absolutely nothing. Nobody is committing suicide over the Sox lousy season to date, but that doesn't mean that we all have to wave pom-poms, and yell, "Great job guys. A little better luck and all is well!" Baseball is a bottom line game. When the team wins, the fans are happy, and when they lose, not so much. No big mystery. I'm fine with losing temporarily if I think there's a payoff down the road (such as good farm system developing good young core players who can be the centerpiece of a sustained run of playoff caliber teams). The Astros and Cubs are beginning to see that payoff this year, although I really have no idea how the Astros are doing it.

I'm in between panic and confusion; I just don't see how a team with Ortiz, Napoli, Betts, Bogaerts, Sandoval, Pedroia, Buchholz, Porcello, Uehara, Tazawa, Ramirez can be this bad. Any of those guys can be a legit All-Star any given year and they've all underperformed (sans Pedroia) and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me except to file it under "weird things happen".

There has to be some sort of happy medium. I mean not every game is life and death, and it's a long, long season, and you can't win every year, which is true enough, but you also have to be able to call a spade a spade.

When I was growing up, after watching the devastation that was the 1986 World Series, and knowing that my father had been a fan since 1949 and had never seen a Championship, I figured I'd never see one. 2003 kind of reinforced that notion. But the Sox winning in 2004 and the way they won, humiliating the Yankees along the way, was a fantasy come true to life. Then I wanted the Sox to win it again just so it wouldn't be a fluke or another 86 year drought, and sure enough it was only a 3 year wait. Then my only dream left was to see them win it all at Fenway - what would that be like? And 2013 came out of nowhere. My only regret was that my son was way too young to see it, so now my only Championship dream is that I can watch it with my son some day when he's old enough to understand it. So my cup has runneth over. It's easy for me to daydream about 2004, or 2007, or 2013, and blot out 2015.

That said, watching the team collapse in Sept 2011, be awful to watch and root for in 2012, be terrible in 2014, and be listless in 2015 so far, that's a lot of losing baseball. I grew up watching the Sox win a consistent and boring 85 games a year each year. Other than the Hobson era, I don't remember last place finishes or teams capable of losing 90 plus games per year. Given their payroll, that's kind of inexcusable, unless you're building up your farm system kind of the way Theo did with the Cubs.

If the Sox are going to stink this year, then for me, it's okay to criticize them and say they stink. Meanwhile I'll hope that farm system produces a strong lineup like I think they can. A few good pitching developments/pickups and the Sox could become very entertaining as the decade goes on.

So does this mean Bradley is back with the team after E-Rod's start?