This is where I'm at. They're still much to far out of the divisional race to care about that, they really need to continue working to righting the ship and recovering from their historically awful start. It's telling that the hot streak they've been on still hasn't been yet able to overcome the damage of April.
That's one way of looking at it. Re: the bolded, one has to consider the unbalanced schedule and the AL East though. The Yanks, Rays, and Jays will be gunning for the postseason and represent more difficult opponents than, say, what the ChiSox will be facing for the rest of the year.
Absolutely true, and the same probably applies to the Angels (if they're for real) with the Rangers, A's, and M's in their division. The Sox will need to tread water against the MFY / Rays / Jays and beat up on the dregs of the league to have a shot.
I'd agree generally. But I think these next few games are very important, in a gather ye rosebuds way. If they can't use this stretch against weak teams to better position themselves, it's going to be more difficult to do it later.
Believe it or not, but the Sox have lost ground in the division during this hot streak. Since May 8, the Sox are 11-4 but the Yankees are 13-5. Even without the piss poor April, they might still be pretty far out in the division.
You know this, but there was nothing historically awful about their start, unless you are limiting this to the past ~30 years of Red Sox baseball. When the Sox were 10-19 there were three other teams with worse records.
I don't think that winning the division matters nearly as much when there are 3 wild card spots to reach for. The Yankees can run with the division so long as the Sox get IN.
See above - the bigger playoffs give teams a longer time to decide if they are in or out.
So are 95% of his posts, but that hasn't stopped them yet. You would have thought the same people crying during a bad stretch last year would have learned not to overreact this year, but here we are again.
Yeah, the clock ticks down. (Per bRef the win expectancy from the 5th to 7th innings was 95-98%.)
Although the Orioles are playing everyone tough the last few weeks, 2-2 against NY and 2-1 against TB in their seven games before this series.
Can I propose that the definition for “bone head loss” is related to win expectancy? Maybe if >98% in innings 5-7 or >95% in innings 8 or later?
It's really just Friday night's loss. 23-24 with three games to go means 2-1 gets to .500.
This is a totally reasonable point of view, but especially with the 3rd Wild Card I just don’t view late May as the bellwether moment, especially because there are good reasons to think this team will be better in July/August than it is right now. Maybe I’m being naive, but as discussed in other places:
I'm not sure I agree with that analysis. The Sox kicked Ass in the first half last year, without Mr. Sale.
If you think their true talent level is a 90-95 win team (.555 to .586 WP), and they start playing like that tomorrow, they'll finish with a 64 to 69 additional wins. Their total wins would be 86-91.
Things can change, certainly. Last year Sale, after a month of scaling up in the minors, came back in early August and gave us 9 starts. Most of the time he went 5 or 5.1 innings, and the team went 7-2.
This is all back-of-the-envelope stuff anyway. The point is to drill down a little bit on our two friends: But There Are More Games (how many, against who?) and They Can Still Get Hot (how hot, for how long, resultng in what?)
Its a good question. Some of this is inherently wishful because, well, it’s a beautiful Sunday in May and the Sox have 4 banners this century above home plate.
To clarify, by bellweather I didn't really mean "punt" vs. "go for it" based on this 10 game stretch. Just that they needed a good stretch to climb back into it.
Totally, that makes sense. So much of the season is left.
Bello has a total of 12 career AAA innings pitched, he's not going to be a meaningful part of this season's rotation. Maybe he gets a doubleheader call up like Winckowski did yesterday, but this organization isn't going to rush his progress.
Maybe, but maybe not. If by the ASB Bello continues to pitch well at AAA I don't think it's out of the question the team might prefer to bring him up to the Majors without feeling like they're "rushing" him.
That may be the case, but it's not just "all the other kids" -- under Bloom's watch they brought Houck up after just a handful of starts in AAA. Again, the pandemic played a major role there, and the 2020 team was a dumpster fire, but it's not as if this would be unprecedented.
Am I missing something? They are only 2-2 so far. 2-8 and 8-2 both remain possible.
I had done the WP range for the CWS (3), BAL (5), and CIN (2) stretch of 10 games. They're 4 and 3 with 3 to go.
