So, Pete seems almost perpetually salty these days. There seemed to be an uptick last year when he blew a gasket over the Vazquez trade (which I think worked out ok) and took what was admittedly a down and confounding year almost personally.
His
latest column has just tons of jabs at the Sox – the owner avoids pressers, Casas is arrogant about his poor defensive play (using a quote I read as humor as evidence), Rich Hill has thrown more innings than any Sox starter, they have no All-Star players, they should just release Dalbec or trade him, Kike has sucked, etc.
It’s not the substance of what he’s saying is wrong so much as the kind of relentlessness of it all. I still think Pete is a talented writer but I had high hopes for him taking over the Cafardo role (tho obviously not the way he did). At times now I almost get the sense that as a columnist now he feels some obligation to always be looking at the glass half empty, for hypocrisy, discontent and failure. Which is fine if you are covering, say, the White House. But this is baseball.
Admittedly he’s finding plenty right now to be disappointed with but
@Chad Finn and Alex Speier do as well. They just don’t seem to
revel in the failure quite the way Pete does. And that’s a little disappointing given that I think he’s a solid writer (as evidenced by the Cohen stuff in this column), a believer in advanced metrics and seems to legitimately love and understand the modern game.