There are plenty of posts who think being in the final WC spot right now is just fine, Chaim's got a long-term POV, etc.
I'm one of the people who has made such posts and, yes, I very much believe that sitting for the moment in the final WC spot with more than 100 games to play is just fine. I also believe that if they're sitting in that final wild card spot at the end of this particular season, then that, too, will be just fine. And, yes, I very much believe that Bloom has a long term point of view.
The Red Sox are quite obviously following the model of the Dodgers, much as the Giants--with
their Friedman mentee--appear to be doing. They are working to set up a long stretch of competitiveness sustained in large part by an assembly line of prospects and supplemented by strategic free agent signings. But it takes time to build that assembly line, and that's what the Sox are doing at the same time they are fielding competitive but not championship-caliber teams.
My guess is that you know that this is the plan, and that your true frustration is that you simply don't agree with that plan. And that's certainly more than fine. It's the sort of thing that reasonable fans can disagree about. But it's hardly productive to declare that, because some people around here are OK with competing for a wildcard that we're "a-OK" with the year starting at 11-19. That is not what anyone here has said, and no one was happy about that.
At that same time, 11-19 was obviously not indicative of this club's level of talent. 11-19 was NOT the team that Bloom assembled. 11-19 was NOT indicative of ownership or management punting the season. In any way. Nearly every advanced-metric analysis of the AL East at the start of the season showed the four clubs within a couple of wins of each other. The Sox were built to be about as good as those other three teams, in other words. And many posters here pointed that out all along. The Sox put up a dreadful stretch starting at game 15 (they opened the season 7-7 before going 4-12) in which a number of well-established hitters simply went ice cold all at the same time. That has obviously turned around, and with more than 100 games to play, the Sox are 4.5 games behind Toronto and 3.5 games behind Tampa, with a definitive run-diff advantage over both of them. That is NOT merely because they have been "beating up on shitty teams lately." It has been pointed out multiple times by multiple posters that their hot streak has included plenty of wins against decent to very good teams. The Sox, in other words, are probably about as good as both Toronto and Tampa. If you want to argue that they're a little worse, fine, that's reasonable. The Yankees may prove to be in a different class. We shall see.
My question for you, and I hope you will choose to answer it: Do you think the Red Sox will make the playoffs?