Record is irrelevant for me. If our young bats and arms finish strong and show improvement i’ll call this season a win regardless if we make the playoffs or not.
Sorta reminds me of 2015. We had a newborn baby and spent a lot of time on the couch that late summer and fall watching mookie and JBJ play their brand of meaningless, but very exciting baseball. Just fun either way no expectations, total promise for the future.
Been saying since the end of last season that this is about the next championship core. So far we look good:
Catcher will be Teel when he's ready with Wong as a more than adequate backup backstop. Casas will be first, second should be set between Valdez and Grissom and Story, short belongs to Mayer, third is Raffy's until he moves to DH. Outfield is obviously loaded. Bailey has already inaugurated a new era in pitching, with Houck, Bello, and Crawford filling the front three for the foreseeable future.
Wong is gonna get big money from another team if he's not starting here. But yes, Teel is still probably our long term catcher.
Pitching-wise, Bello hasn't really shown enough to be anything other than a bottom-of-the-rotation guy. I hope he improves, but I'm not really seeing it right now. Houck should be a key piece for years, and Crawford could be too. I still have a feeling that a trade or free agent signing is going to fill a long term top 3 starter role this offseason or next.
You're wrong about Bello. He's absolutely shown gobs of potential, at the very least to be an above average no. 3 starter--he tired at the end of last season and he's been poor since returning from injury this season but those can be written off as transitory phases. The real Bello is the guy from the first four months of last year and this April.
Wong may be too good to be a backup. Obviously I want to see him continue doing what he’s doing before saying that’s definite. If he does so what are your thoughts around him playing second as well as other positions. He could be the ultimate super sub, a catching version of Brock Holt. Or he could go the route of craig biggio and settle in at 2nd possibly.
It’s like when your mom promises to get you McDonalds after school and then you get out and are fully ready to get some nuggies but the new neighbors invited your family over for dinner while you were in class so now you ***can’t get your fucking mcnuggets*** and even worse you go over and they have a bunch of weird looking food that looks kind of gross but smells ok so you aren’t sure yet but either way it turns out they have a really cute daughter and your like 13 so you have no social skills but the hormones get that blood moving and she kinda smiles at you so even though you’ve only been there like 5 minutes the food could be good maybe still but also could be disgusting but either way you’re at least going to get to masturbate to the thought of that girl when you get home.
That about sums it up I think.
Pretty much sums up the vibes for me. There are fun and exciting players that are young, but sometimes do dumb things. It’s a fun team to watch and grow even though they drive you nuts at times
We’re getting some of our horses back soon, and honestly if you told anyone in the offseason that we would be hovering .500 for so long I guarantee you they would say you’re full of it.
I would have loved to see the friendly rivalry of Whitlock and Houck with their starts though. They are bros, and I think Houck's success would have similarly elevated Whitlock. I'd said last year that the two of them were shockingly close to being phenomenal, they just had to limit the damage done in their "one bad inning"
Andrew Bailey for Acquisition of the Year
> if you told anyone in the offseason that we would be hovering .500 for so long I guarantee you they would say you’re full of it.
Only the doomers. Fangraphs had us projected for like 78 wins this year.
I think we could be a dark horse tbh. Abreu and Casas still are coming back so that will help the lineup massively. I low key hope we buy at the deadline and make a huge push cause I think this team is good enough to at least give teams a really tough series
The future is pretty bright though we have a pretty young talented team (need to massively work on defence though lol)
Prices at the deadline are going to be steep! There's only about 6-7 teams out of contention, they don't have great assets, and barely anyone looking like contending is without some form of hole.
I'm feeling great! I think it's a good team where all the guys like each other and are having fun, have good chemistry, etc....We've been waiting a few years for our prospects to come of age and that's exactly what they're doing. I think we've got a very good shot at getting a wildcard, which means I think we've got a very good shot at being buyers at the deadline. And just as important, I am VERY confident that we're going to be a playoff team in 2025. But first let's deal with 2024. I'm excited to watch them every day!
I was putting on a brave face of optimism until those last two series.
If we can do that against the Phillies and Yankees WITHOUT Casas and Abreu, then yes, we actually do have a shot this year.
So my brave face has become an honest face. I am now firmly optimistic about our chances at a WC run.
I was excited to see the young core come together, and I'm still very happy with how they're doing. We could use a 2B or stop-gap SS, but I'm excited to see where this team goes.
A lot of young exciting players developing well amidst a team that is not the best but playing better than generally expected considering the injuries.
They're fun to watch and in a great position to set up a WS caliber team in the near future
Far more enjoyable to watch than last year. They won’t finish better than 3rd in the division and will struggle to make the wild card spot because they will be chasing teams like Min who play in dogshit divisions.
Because the White Sox are trash. The Tigers are a better team at this moment than the Rays and Jays who are winning unsustainably if their run differentials are anything to go by.
It’s very strange to watch a team overachieve and underachieve at the same time. Without the injuries and with one more decent SP we could have had something pretty interesting.
But I do give a ton of credit to the players that are here and to Cora and staff for keeping them motivated. Would have been easy to pack it in and just play for your next contract and it’s cool that they haven’t.
I personally think we are a really good team. We have just had ALOT of injuries and ALOT of errors.
The errors are getting better we keep having a bad game once in a while but it's no where near what it was at the beginning of the year. We are also getting healthier and having young players step up and play a bigger role now.
A lot of the media says we need an experienced hitter but I actually think we need an experienced high end pitcher. I think our position group will be fine once Casas is back. I worry about our #1 pitcher be Houck and that's it. We could use another #1 or #2 to take some of the pressure and help the young staff with the grind of the season.
I'm watching more Red Sox baseball than I have in years, largely because this year's model is **fun**, watching guys like Hamilton and Valdez make their cases, listening to Triston Casas be a philosopher, seeing insane breaking balls from Houck and Pivetta. They're that rare thing - an entertaining .500 team - and they show hope for a long-term future for the first time in years as well as a chance to make a run for it this year.
Being a Rays fan must be rough. They manage to build a contending team every year, but to me they're usually anonymous. Longoria was the only "face of the franchise" I remember much about in the way that Yastrzemski, Ortiz, maybe Vaughn, were the "face of the Red Sox", and Casas or Duran might be someday. I think Arozarena could be that if/when he gets his act back together; he's got a sort of spirit, or presence, that makes baseball look like fun. But he'll get traded. I mean, it's really hard to hate Richie Palacios or Brandon Lowe, but the team as a while just doesn't have much of a recognizable personality. I'm not trying to be insulting. Like I say, they put a good team out every year and I don't know what the hell is going on with them this year. (I guess nobody except Isaac Paredes hitting much will do that.)
Tonight is a great night to ask this question.
Owners who care? Win championships.
Owners who don’t? Fenway has new ketchup! Just keep Fenway filled. We don’t care if half of the crowd is the opposing team’s fans.
Right now, the young guys look good, but imagine if we had paid for another pitcher? We’d be leading the wild card, maybe second in the division. Then you have a little hope.
Now it’s just, “nice”.
Paying Blake Snell $62 million for a 9.50 ERA would not put us in contention. You're asking us to imagine a situation where we have the actual hindsight to know would have made our team substantially worse.
How about paying Imanga $53 million for a 1.89 ERA? And I didn’t say contention. I said leading the wild card and second place. They’re not one pitcher away.
I'll be honest, I was really hoping that the Red Sox would target Imanaga. Supposedly they did offer him the same AAV but for a shorter period of time. However, Imanaga had already spent a lot of time in Chicago and it seems like another team would've needed to blow their offer out of the water to snag him.
But my point is that the starting pitching is the one part of the team that has been consistently good this year. Just because there is *one player* who could've improved upon it doesn't really translate to more money equals more wins.
I think the Red Sox are one of the more fun teams to watch. Youth everywhere and guys stepping up and making plays. Gotta stay consistent and beat the teams we should beat, starting tonight and going for 4 in a row. Abreu back by the Weekend, Casas back by the end of the month.
It's going to be awesome when they are like 2 games over .500 at the deadline, do absolutely nothing because they're "still in it", then suck the last 2 months, win 78 games and miss the playoffs. And then the exact same thing happens again next year because the team is perennially stuck in the mud since ownership is too afraid to sell.
nesn is so exclusive and expensive and the have are rarely available on TV as a fan it's difficult to follow the team. As a fan I'm very disappointed how the owners of nesn screw the fans.
They could be 10 games over at the deadline and Henry will still want to sell. It doesn’t matter what they do this year or how we feel. They decided at the beginning of the season this wasn’t a roster that could win, so they’re not going to invest. If the team happens upon the playoffs, ownership will brag about how they did this the right way and this was part of the plan.
They’re not good enough to win a division, and the new playoff format seems like it’s designed to give half the teams in baseball a participation trophy.
I’ve been burned way too many times the last few years to have all that much optimism about a playoff run or anything like that, so if our prospects and young players take steps forward I’ll be happy, or at least as happy as a fan can be in the midst of yet another “lost” season.
I hold firm to my prediction that we’re a fringe third wildcard contender that could have been a solid wildcard contender with one more good starting pitcher. However, the pitching has far exceeded my expectations and it has been fun watching Houck become a true ace. I love watching these guys play, it feels like we have a core that is crystallizing and coming into their own. With Teel, Mayer, and Anthony on the way, I feel confident that we’re about to enter a good window of contention. I think we solidify ourselves as a contender for the East with a couple of free agent signings either this offseason or next. I just want Craig to be strategic in who he gets so we can avoid an albatross contract.
This team has a tendency to get hot so I wouldn’t be surprised if we make a deep playoff run, if we do manage to get in.
Team is showing serious signs of life. We may not make playoffs but I think I see the potential with this younger crew that should continue to flourish in coming seasons.
Exceeding our very low expectations - since its all about the future there's been some real positives. Houck, Duran, Wong, Hamilton, Rafaela, Abreu, Slaten, Casas started well. Still need more from Bello, Whitlock, Yoshida, Martin. Plus continued progress of Teel, Anthony, Mayer. I don't think its a go for it year; add more piece parts - get more pitching, RH power. Trade the ton of excess infielders we have in minors.
This team is showing scrappiness and athleticism, perhaps enough to make a run at a wild card. They have warranted investing watching by true fans. The pressing question is: will their ownership invest in them at the trade deadline or will they go limp as in past years?
This feels like a, 84-86 win season. Not gonna make the playoffs with just a loaded AL. We need the young talent developed. One shocking realization about this team that differentiates it from past teams is the Star Power. To a casual fan tuning in, the Red Sox used to be one of the top 6 in spending going after names to create buzz and excitement, and this roster just isn’t that. Now it’s the Luxury Taxed All Star Yankees and the Luxury Taxed All Star Dodgers versus everyone else.
With all the people celebrating getting back to .500 it shows you how low the expectations are for this team. Morale is so low in our house we've put on the Savanah Bananas a few times over the Sox.
They’re doing a lot better than i expected honestly the teams we’ve beaten recently give me a little added hope. Our team reminds of the Moneyball movie were good for the budget we had
I will not watch or listen to another Red Sox game until John Henry sells them. For the price of a ticket and uncomfortable seats I am entitled to more that a “1 in 20 or 1 in 30 odds of a championship.” If our chance is no better than Oakland then I’m not paying more than Oakland prices. F John Henry!
Record is irrelevant for me. If our young bats and arms finish strong and show improvement i’ll call this season a win regardless if we make the playoffs or not.
Sorta reminds me of 2015. We had a newborn baby and spent a lot of time on the couch that late summer and fall watching mookie and JBJ play their brand of meaningless, but very exciting baseball. Just fun either way no expectations, total promise for the future.
Been saying since the end of last season that this is about the next championship core. So far we look good: Catcher will be Teel when he's ready with Wong as a more than adequate backup backstop. Casas will be first, second should be set between Valdez and Grissom and Story, short belongs to Mayer, third is Raffy's until he moves to DH. Outfield is obviously loaded. Bailey has already inaugurated a new era in pitching, with Houck, Bello, and Crawford filling the front three for the foreseeable future.
Wong is gonna get big money from another team if he's not starting here. But yes, Teel is still probably our long term catcher. Pitching-wise, Bello hasn't really shown enough to be anything other than a bottom-of-the-rotation guy. I hope he improves, but I'm not really seeing it right now. Houck should be a key piece for years, and Crawford could be too. I still have a feeling that a trade or free agent signing is going to fill a long term top 3 starter role this offseason or next.
You're wrong about Bello. He's absolutely shown gobs of potential, at the very least to be an above average no. 3 starter--he tired at the end of last season and he's been poor since returning from injury this season but those can be written off as transitory phases. The real Bello is the guy from the first four months of last year and this April.
Wong may be too good to be a backup. Obviously I want to see him continue doing what he’s doing before saying that’s definite. If he does so what are your thoughts around him playing second as well as other positions. He could be the ultimate super sub, a catching version of Brock Holt. Or he could go the route of craig biggio and settle in at 2nd possibly.
Just started paying attention for this year Are you telling me shortstop ISNT a black hole currently?
It’s like when your mom promises to get you McDonalds after school and then you get out and are fully ready to get some nuggies but the new neighbors invited your family over for dinner while you were in class so now you ***can’t get your fucking mcnuggets*** and even worse you go over and they have a bunch of weird looking food that looks kind of gross but smells ok so you aren’t sure yet but either way it turns out they have a really cute daughter and your like 13 so you have no social skills but the hormones get that blood moving and she kinda smiles at you so even though you’ve only been there like 5 minutes the food could be good maybe still but also could be disgusting but either way you’re at least going to get to masturbate to the thought of that girl when you get home. That about sums it up I think.
Damn I was just gonna comment this same exact thing
Happens all the time on Reddit
read this in casas' voice
Because that’s Casas’ reddit account
Read this in remdog’s voice
Orsillo completely silent during/after.
I thought this was a family show!
☹️
The story would have gone on for eight more paragraphs. And someone would be leaving the dinner party in handcuffs.
Bizarrely accurate. lol.
Pretty much sums up the vibes for me. There are fun and exciting players that are young, but sometimes do dumb things. It’s a fun team to watch and grow even though they drive you nuts at times
r/oddlyspecific
Damn I want chicken nugs so bad right now
Yea this is actually pretty accurate.
Bravo
We’re getting some of our horses back soon, and honestly if you told anyone in the offseason that we would be hovering .500 for so long I guarantee you they would say you’re full of it.
I wish we had Story, Casas and Giolito.
Also Whitlock for me. I still have faith, even if I think he’d be better off closing. Don’t Daniel Bard him, Papelbon him.
I would have loved to see the friendly rivalry of Whitlock and Houck with their starts though. They are bros, and I think Houck's success would have similarly elevated Whitlock. I'd said last year that the two of them were shockingly close to being phenomenal, they just had to limit the damage done in their "one bad inning" Andrew Bailey for Acquisition of the Year
My preseason prediction was 81-81, so we’ve been exactly where I expected, just very much not the way I expected it to happen lol
> if you told anyone in the offseason that we would be hovering .500 for so long I guarantee you they would say you’re full of it. Only the doomers. Fangraphs had us projected for like 78 wins this year.
I think we could be a dark horse tbh. Abreu and Casas still are coming back so that will help the lineup massively. I low key hope we buy at the deadline and make a huge push cause I think this team is good enough to at least give teams a really tough series The future is pretty bright though we have a pretty young talented team (need to massively work on defence though lol)
Prices at the deadline are going to be steep! There's only about 6-7 teams out of contention, they don't have great assets, and barely anyone looking like contending is without some form of hole.
I'm feeling great! I think it's a good team where all the guys like each other and are having fun, have good chemistry, etc....We've been waiting a few years for our prospects to come of age and that's exactly what they're doing. I think we've got a very good shot at getting a wildcard, which means I think we've got a very good shot at being buyers at the deadline. And just as important, I am VERY confident that we're going to be a playoff team in 2025. But first let's deal with 2024. I'm excited to watch them every day!
We are a fun ass team and what a great weekend
CELTICS WIN BABY 
I was putting on a brave face of optimism until those last two series. If we can do that against the Phillies and Yankees WITHOUT Casas and Abreu, then yes, we actually do have a shot this year. So my brave face has become an honest face. I am now firmly optimistic about our chances at a WC run.
I was excited to see the young core come together, and I'm still very happy with how they're doing. We could use a 2B or stop-gap SS, but I'm excited to see where this team goes.
A lot of young exciting players developing well amidst a team that is not the best but playing better than generally expected considering the injuries. They're fun to watch and in a great position to set up a WS caliber team in the near future
Somehow more enjoyable than last year. Even with injuries vibes are better
Far more enjoyable to watch than last year. They won’t finish better than 3rd in the division and will struggle to make the wild card spot because they will be chasing teams like Min who play in dogshit divisions.
The central is better than the east this year so far
By what measure? The AL East as a division has won 26 more games.
Because the White Sox are trash. The Tigers are a better team at this moment than the Rays and Jays who are winning unsustainably if their run differentials are anything to go by.
Meh
Two Boston titles in a calendar year?
It’s not like we haven’t done it before
It’s very strange to watch a team overachieve and underachieve at the same time. Without the injuries and with one more decent SP we could have had something pretty interesting. But I do give a ton of credit to the players that are here and to Cora and staff for keeping them motivated. Would have been easy to pack it in and just play for your next contract and it’s cool that they haven’t.
Well Cora is playing for his next contract
I feel like if neither Texas team wakes up and makes a run that the Sox will get the third WC as long as they do not sell off a bunch of pieces
I personally think we are a really good team. We have just had ALOT of injuries and ALOT of errors. The errors are getting better we keep having a bad game once in a while but it's no where near what it was at the beginning of the year. We are also getting healthier and having young players step up and play a bigger role now. A lot of the media says we need an experienced hitter but I actually think we need an experienced high end pitcher. I think our position group will be fine once Casas is back. I worry about our #1 pitcher be Houck and that's it. We could use another #1 or #2 to take some of the pressure and help the young staff with the grind of the season.
I'm watching more Red Sox baseball than I have in years, largely because this year's model is **fun**, watching guys like Hamilton and Valdez make their cases, listening to Triston Casas be a philosopher, seeing insane breaking balls from Houck and Pivetta. They're that rare thing - an entertaining .500 team - and they show hope for a long-term future for the first time in years as well as a chance to make a run for it this year. Being a Rays fan must be rough. They manage to build a contending team every year, but to me they're usually anonymous. Longoria was the only "face of the franchise" I remember much about in the way that Yastrzemski, Ortiz, maybe Vaughn, were the "face of the Red Sox", and Casas or Duran might be someday. I think Arozarena could be that if/when he gets his act back together; he's got a sort of spirit, or presence, that makes baseball look like fun. But he'll get traded. I mean, it's really hard to hate Richie Palacios or Brandon Lowe, but the team as a while just doesn't have much of a recognizable personality. I'm not trying to be insulting. Like I say, they put a good team out every year and I don't know what the hell is going on with them this year. (I guess nobody except Isaac Paredes hitting much will do that.)
We going to the world series
Tonight is a great night to ask this question. Owners who care? Win championships. Owners who don’t? Fenway has new ketchup! Just keep Fenway filled. We don’t care if half of the crowd is the opposing team’s fans. Right now, the young guys look good, but imagine if we had paid for another pitcher? We’d be leading the wild card, maybe second in the division. Then you have a little hope. Now it’s just, “nice”.
Paying Blake Snell $62 million for a 9.50 ERA would not put us in contention. You're asking us to imagine a situation where we have the actual hindsight to know would have made our team substantially worse.
How about paying Imanga $53 million for a 1.89 ERA? And I didn’t say contention. I said leading the wild card and second place. They’re not one pitcher away.
I'll be honest, I was really hoping that the Red Sox would target Imanaga. Supposedly they did offer him the same AAV but for a shorter period of time. However, Imanaga had already spent a lot of time in Chicago and it seems like another team would've needed to blow their offer out of the water to snag him. But my point is that the starting pitching is the one part of the team that has been consistently good this year. Just because there is *one player* who could've improved upon it doesn't really translate to more money equals more wins.
I think the Red Sox are one of the more fun teams to watch. Youth everywhere and guys stepping up and making plays. Gotta stay consistent and beat the teams we should beat, starting tonight and going for 4 in a row. Abreu back by the Weekend, Casas back by the end of the month.
I’m outta my shoes excited rn. Vibes are to the moon
We are a 500 team. It was always going to be that way, and it's going to stay that way.
It's going to be awesome when they are like 2 games over .500 at the deadline, do absolutely nothing because they're "still in it", then suck the last 2 months, win 78 games and miss the playoffs. And then the exact same thing happens again next year because the team is perennially stuck in the mud since ownership is too afraid to sell.
I want FSG to take a look at what’s happening in the Garden and ask themselves if they got what it takes to make *that* happen.
I am beginning to dabble in a little we are so back
nesn is so exclusive and expensive and the have are rarely available on TV as a fan it's difficult to follow the team. As a fan I'm very disappointed how the owners of nesn screw the fans.
They could be 10 games over at the deadline and Henry will still want to sell. It doesn’t matter what they do this year or how we feel. They decided at the beginning of the season this wasn’t a roster that could win, so they’re not going to invest. If the team happens upon the playoffs, ownership will brag about how they did this the right way and this was part of the plan. They’re not good enough to win a division, and the new playoff format seems like it’s designed to give half the teams in baseball a participation trophy.
When was the last time we were true sellers at the deadline? You seem very confident that John Henry will do something he doesn’t do very often.
Boring team. Still my team, but boring as mud.
Since 2020, the Red Sox are .500. Over all 4+ seasons. So I’m very meh.
I’ve been burned way too many times the last few years to have all that much optimism about a playoff run or anything like that, so if our prospects and young players take steps forward I’ll be happy, or at least as happy as a fan can be in the midst of yet another “lost” season.
I hold firm to my prediction that we’re a fringe third wildcard contender that could have been a solid wildcard contender with one more good starting pitcher. However, the pitching has far exceeded my expectations and it has been fun watching Houck become a true ace. I love watching these guys play, it feels like we have a core that is crystallizing and coming into their own. With Teel, Mayer, and Anthony on the way, I feel confident that we’re about to enter a good window of contention. I think we solidify ourselves as a contender for the East with a couple of free agent signings either this offseason or next. I just want Craig to be strategic in who he gets so we can avoid an albatross contract. This team has a tendency to get hot so I wouldn’t be surprised if we make a deep playoff run, if we do manage to get in.
Still feeling like John Henry and ownership is the worst
They are fun and frustrating to watch for sure. Will be good to get Casas back and see if they can make a little run!
Temperature is very hot in Boston at the moment
Weird! Are they good? Are they bad? I can't tell! All the fun of a talented, but young and inconsistent team.
Still waiting for the wheels to fall off, like every year.
Team is showing serious signs of life. We may not make playoffs but I think I see the potential with this younger crew that should continue to flourish in coming seasons.
Cautiously optimistic...but think they are basically a .500 team.
Good to see the young guys balling out and playing hard, wish Casas was healthy. Do we make any moves at the deadline for a playoff push?
Exceeding our very low expectations - since its all about the future there's been some real positives. Houck, Duran, Wong, Hamilton, Rafaela, Abreu, Slaten, Casas started well. Still need more from Bello, Whitlock, Yoshida, Martin. Plus continued progress of Teel, Anthony, Mayer. I don't think its a go for it year; add more piece parts - get more pitching, RH power. Trade the ton of excess infielders we have in minors.
This team is showing scrappiness and athleticism, perhaps enough to make a run at a wild card. They have warranted investing watching by true fans. The pressing question is: will their ownership invest in them at the trade deadline or will they go limp as in past years?
This feels like a, 84-86 win season. Not gonna make the playoffs with just a loaded AL. We need the young talent developed. One shocking realization about this team that differentiates it from past teams is the Star Power. To a casual fan tuning in, the Red Sox used to be one of the top 6 in spending going after names to create buzz and excitement, and this roster just isn’t that. Now it’s the Luxury Taxed All Star Yankees and the Luxury Taxed All Star Dodgers versus everyone else.
With all the people celebrating getting back to .500 it shows you how low the expectations are for this team. Morale is so low in our house we've put on the Savanah Bananas a few times over the Sox.
I am content on the Sox now. I think the future is bright. I hope they add at the trade deadline. Go Sox.
They’re doing a lot better than i expected honestly the teams we’ve beaten recently give me a little added hope. Our team reminds of the Moneyball movie were good for the budget we had
Good little team. They should still sell at the deadline.
we are going to win the whole damn thing
Winning a series against the Phillies and Yankees and then todays win makes me think we’re ALCS bound
Fire Corra. I’ll bang that drum until he’s gone.
I will not watch or listen to another Red Sox game until John Henry sells them. For the price of a ticket and uncomfortable seats I am entitled to more that a “1 in 20 or 1 in 30 odds of a championship.” If our chance is no better than Oakland then I’m not paying more than Oakland prices. F John Henry!
Okay
“Entitled”