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9/28-10/1 Red Sox @ Orioles Series Thread
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Post by soxfaninnj on Oct 1, 2023 16:17:35 GMT -5
Really obnoxious win
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Post by julyanmorley on Oct 1, 2023 16:23:42 GMT -5
Valdez finishes at .266/.311/.453
Not too shabby
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Post by oldfaithful2019 on Oct 1, 2023 16:37:03 GMT -5
It has been a while since he smiled like that !! Like to see it. I'm not much ofa stats guy so I dont post much but after all the dugie hate it got me looking last night at his game ab's since he got hurt... 17 games as of last night he was bad. So I looked at the 17 games prior to the hamstring injury and they were very good. When ya look why all the hate? I will only speak for myself, but there is no hate here for Verdugo. He is my favorite player and I can't wait for the gold glove announcements. He has had a terrible offensive performance post all star game. Pre all star game he was a bit better than where I would expect him to be. I can be patient with him, just like I was with Dewey Evans back in the 70's !!! I hope he is back in 2024.
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Post by Guidas on Oct 1, 2023 16:48:24 GMT -5
Great win!
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Post by terriblehondo on Oct 1, 2023 16:51:31 GMT -5
Wait till next year!
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Post by julyanmorley on Oct 1, 2023 16:52:33 GMT -5
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.
Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.
But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutability never loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day full of bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of the ninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit, only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in New York washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Boston had won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Boston losing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up. Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down the right-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman, former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes for three breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages her agent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.
Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year, erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in his soul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watching the clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the center-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.
New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked up from the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, new to the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative, a big man off balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It is suddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast, a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved. His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacity to absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.
Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookie from Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straight hits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The count runs two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, the ball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skipping past Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, finding the dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiating the green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, traveling steady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.
The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he'd seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.
That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.
Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.
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Post by yuchangclan on Oct 1, 2023 16:52:57 GMT -5
Just jumped on to say 2 things:
1. I nailed 78 wins on the nose. 2. Verdugo has a balsa bat.
I’ll miss these game threads, but little else about this season. Let’s hope for better results in 2024.
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Post by soxfansince67 on Oct 1, 2023 17:08:14 GMT -5
The death of Tim Wakefield, like the death of Jerry Remy, remind us of life, of which baseball is just a small part of. Make the most out of every day and give your loved ones an extra big hug.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Oct 1, 2023 17:10:09 GMT -5
Waste of a win. I guess if you're predicting mediocrity, 78-84 is a safe bet. I'd rather they had the higher draft position.
It's crazy that out of the last 10 losing full seasons, 6 of them ended at 78-84, with the seasons being 1983, 1987, 1997, 2015, 2022, and now 2023.
All of the previous five times resulted in better records, 86-76 in 1984, Morgan Magic in 1988 with an 89-73 AL East division title, 92-70 in 1998 as AL Wild Card, 93-69 in 2016 and an AL East title. 2023 is the first time the follow up season that followed wasn't an improvement. 2024 better be.
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Post by cheers on Oct 1, 2023 17:35:10 GMT -5
Sigh, the last instance of one of my favorite things to see. Come on April!! Thanks all for what you add to this wonderful/maddening pastime for me. If our beloved Sox can't be good (who was it that posted that when they kinda stink it is almost ALWAYS 78-84??), at least I can enjoy the mostly witty commiserating this board provides. Wishing you all a wonderful offseason and a basket full of starting pitchers. S. Edit: Oh hell, had I read more, I'd have seen it is 04071318 right above me. Last day makes me lazy.
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Post by Soxfansince1971 on Oct 1, 2023 19:29:35 GMT -5
In an alternate universe Bloom re-signs Michael Wacha and Nathan Eovaldi for 2023 to go along with Bello, Sale, Pivetta, Crawford keeping Whitlock and Houck in the bullpen with Chris Martin (Kluber and Jansen would be somewhere else). The result probably would have been finishing as the 3rd wildcard playing the Twins in the playoffs.
I wonder how much different the season would have been…
I guess alternate universes and traveling back in time is reserved for science fiction movies…. Hell, maybe Henry realizes his mistake and offers Betts $400,000,000….
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Post by greenmonster on Oct 1, 2023 19:37:32 GMT -5
138 days until Pitchers & Catchers
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Post by freddysthefuture2003 on Oct 1, 2023 21:10:13 GMT -5
In an alternate universe Bloom re-signs Michael Wacha and Nathan Eovaldi for 2023 to go along with Bello, Sale, Pivetta, Crawford keeping Whitlock and Houck in the bullpen with Chris Martin (Kluber and Jansen would be somewhere else). The result probably would have been finishing as the 3rd wildcard playing the Twins in the playoffs. I wonder how much different the season would have been… I guess alternate universes and traveling back in time is reserved for science fiction movies…. Hell, maybe Henry realizes his mistake and offers Betts $400,000,000…. Does Whitlock still suffer his injury that kept him out for a good chunk of the season? The bullpen would be screwed after that. Do Wacha and Nate breakdown after the first half? Still feels like a 4th place in the AL East team
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Oct 2, 2023 1:14:31 GMT -5
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Post by incandenza on Oct 2, 2023 7:16:54 GMT -5
Team leaders in fWAR:
Devers 3.1 Duran 2.4 Crawford 2.4 Sale 2.1 Verdugo 2.0 Pivetta 1.9 Duvall 1.8 Casas 1.7 Bello 1.6 Martin 1.5 Turner 1.3 Jansen 1.1 Paxton 1.0 Houck 1.0
Pretty tough to make the playoffs when your team leader has 3 WAR and only five guys hit 2 WAR. One problem with the roster this season was the lack of upside potential. And then on top of that almost no one overperformed, and the ones who did - Duran, Crawford, Martin - only did so against modest expectations and didn't have enough playing time to put up really impressive WAR totals.
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Post by scottysmalls on Oct 2, 2023 9:29:34 GMT -5
Team leaders in fWAR:
Devers 3.1 Duran 2.4 Crawford 2.4 Sale 2.1 Verdugo 2.0 Pivetta 1.9 Duvall 1.8 Casas 1.7 Bello 1.6 Martin 1.5 Turner 1.3 Jansen 1.1 Paxton 1.0 Houck 1.0
Pretty tough to make the playoffs when your team leader has 3 WAR and only five guys hit 2 WAR. One problem with the roster this season was the lack of upside potential. And then on top of that almost no one overperformed, and the ones who did - Duran, Crawford, Martin - only did so against modest expectations and didn't have enough playing time to put up really impressive WAR totals.
It doesn't change the point you're making but in assessing success on the season RA9 WAR might be better for pitchers. In that case Bello (2.9), Martin (2.9), Crawford (2.2) and Pivetta (2.0) were the guys over 2. Still agree the lack of top end upside was a big issue, as was Devers not even hitting his baseline.
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Post by yuchangclan on Oct 2, 2023 14:33:27 GMT -5
Team leaders in fWAR:
Devers 3.1 Duran 2.4 Crawford 2.4 Sale 2.1 Verdugo 2.0 Pivetta 1.9 Duvall 1.8 Casas 1.7 Bello 1.6 Martin 1.5 Turner 1.3 Jansen 1.1 Paxton 1.0 Houck 1.0
Pretty tough to make the playoffs when your team leader has 3 WAR and only five guys hit 2 WAR. One problem with the roster this season was the lack of upside potential. And then on top of that almost no one overperformed, and the ones who did - Duran, Crawford, Martin - only did so against modest expectations and didn't have enough playing time to put up really impressive WAR totals.
Damn. This shows how much of an impact Duran had in a pretty brief time. If he stays healthy, they would have been much more competitive down the stretch. He was their best player this season.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Oct 2, 2023 18:14:58 GMT -5
Of course they'd win the last game of the year. Why end the season without screwing something else up?
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Post by Soxfansince1971 on Oct 2, 2023 20:36:44 GMT -5
In an alternate universe Bloom re-signs Michael Wacha and Nathan Eovaldi for 2023 to go along with Bello, Sale, Pivetta, Crawford keeping Whitlock and Houck in the bullpen with Chris Martin (Kluber and Jansen would be somewhere else). The result probably would have been finishing as the 3rd wildcard playing the Twins in the playoffs. I wonder how much different the season would have been… I guess alternate universes and traveling back in time is reserved for science fiction movies…. Hell, maybe Henry realizes his mistake and offers Betts $400,000,000…. Does Whitlock still suffer his injury that kept him out for a good chunk of the season? The bullpen would be screwed after that. Do Wacha and Nate breakdown after the first half? Still feels like a 4th place in the AL East team That’s why it is an alternate universe…. Everyone is always healthy in alternate universes. This is why Bloom failed. He always made acquisitions (Mondesi, Hernandez, Paxton, Story,….) with the idea that they would play at or above their ceiling!
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Post by dirtdog on Oct 2, 2023 21:04:21 GMT -5
Team leaders in fWAR:
Devers 3.1 Duran 2.4 Crawford 2.4 Sale 2.1 Verdugo 2.0 Pivetta 1.9 Duvall 1.8 Casas 1.7 Bello 1.6 Martin 1.5 Turner 1.3 Jansen 1.1 Paxton 1.0 Houck 1.0
Pretty tough to make the playoffs when your team leader has 3 WAR and only five guys hit 2 WAR. One problem with the roster this season was the lack of upside potential. And then on top of that almost no one overperformed, and the ones who did - Duran, Crawford, Martin - only did so against modest expectations and didn't have enough playing time to put up really impressive WAR totals.
Bloom special. Retreads and patches.
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Post by bluechip on Oct 3, 2023 7:23:45 GMT -5
Team leaders in fWAR: Devers 3.1 Duran 2.4 Crawford 2.4 Sale 2.1 Verdugo 2.0 Pivetta 1.9 Duvall 1.8 Casas 1.7 Bello 1.6 Martin 1.5 Turner 1.3 Jansen 1.1 Paxton 1.0 Houck 1.0 Pretty tough to make the playoffs when your team leader has 3 WAR and only five guys hit 2 WAR. One problem with the roster this season was the lack of upside potential. And then on top of that almost no one overperformed, and the ones who did - Duran, Crawford, Martin - only did so against modest expectations and didn't have enough playing time to put up really impressive WAR totals.
bWAR was better: Devers 3.5 Martin 3.2 Bello 3.1 Verdugo 2.6 Crawford 2.5 Pivetta 2.4 Casas 2.2 Duran 2.2 Wong 2.2 Turner 2.1 Winckowski 1.9 Sale 1.7 Duvall 1.5 Yoshida 1.4 Bernardino 1.3 Houck 1.3 Paxton 1.1
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