The 2002 team was really damned good...it was a crime that they didn't make the playoffs. You had career-year Derek Lowe and still-close-to-peak Pedro at the top of the rotation plus a devastating middle of the lineup. It's kind of amazing how quick they fell out of it considering that Cliff Floyd tore the cover off the ball too after they traded for him.
I'm just worried that the Yankees will go all-in on Machado, deGrom, and a bunch of other pieces and basically close the Red Sox' window before it opens.
The funny thing is that Cliff Floyd became an absolute SoSH whipping boy due to his lack of run production. It seemed antithetical to everything SoSH was about, but we were all deeply frustrated by that team. Plus Butch Hobson's Elbo Chips had convinced us to love Seung Song.
It was quite the anomaly. He hit 316/374/561 in 47 games with 21 doubles and 7 home runs, but managed only 18 RBI. Not capitalizing on his acquisition at the deadline with a deep playoff run was heartbreaking for my 15 year old self.
They can't keep us out of the playoffs and anything can happen in a short series.
I've resigned myself to the fact that there is nothing the Red Sox and their fans can do to deter the Yankees from cashing in a pile of chips for big acquisitions if that is what the Steinbrenner brothers decide to do. I just hope that they have to compete with multiple teams for those players and Cashman's Jedi mind tricks fail to work this time around.
Exactly. There's little the Red Sox can do if the Yankees want to cash in their prospects for Machado or deGrom or Happ or whomever else. And it seems foolish and a little defeatist to worry about it. The Red Sox as currently constituted a damn good team. There's plenty of reason to be confident in their chances to win the division and be competitive in October regardless of what the Yankees do at the trade deadline.
The Red Sox are now 3.5 games up. Granted, with two and a half months to go that's a thoroughly trivial lead, but it still seems unnecessarily defeatist--even for SoSH--to talk as if we're the ones looking for a window to open.
We have a pretty great schedule the rest of the month. Yankees have 4 in Cleveland this weekend. Ideally we get this to 5-6 games before we meet them in August.
Warmly recalled this post after the Yankee meltdown last night. It's like you spun a hex.
He's not saying it's a done deal, just that it's not, well, you know, out of the question.
Yeah...whatever advantage we have is paper thin. The Yankees could get Machado, the best starting pitcher on the market, and the best reliever on the market. I think they'd be foolish to do so, but it would be ridiculously hard to beat them if they did.
Haha, as Rasputin notes, I wasn’t opining on our chances of getting there, just noting the modest task in front of us (by way of noting how historically impressive the team has been to date).
The following teams finished the season X games above .500:
Given the seemingly ridiculous cost they would have to pay for a rental, I've assumed that the Yankees aren't serious players for either Machado or deGrom. However, after thinking it through, I'm not so sure any more. More specifically, if we are to presume that the Sox window is closing and that the Yankees are at or near the beginning of theirs, it would be an interesting bit of war-gaming for them to attempt a kill shot this year.
The Red Sox are 32-19 against teams with .500 or better records this year.
I think the Machado price tag as a rental will be lower than expected, and if NY can get him without using Andujar, that frees up Andujar as the lead chip for SP help, which is what they really need.
Sorry, haven’t been in many game threads this year, didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. Was still a fun exercise for me to undertake while on the can though — so thanks for that!
I guess it depends on your definition of “utterly crucial,” but you don’t dread the idea of a single game in which the best case is burning Severino for four days and starting the ALDS with Sabathia (?), and the alternative is James Paxton ending your season?
With, at best, a 65% chance of the best case and a 35% chance of the worst case.
Forget who said it, but basically someone (a relatively new lurker, I believe) made what I and others perceived as a serious comment that they'd rather be .500 against good teams than 16-2 (or whatever the record was at that time) against bad teams, because beating up on bad teams shows us nothing about how good they actually are.
It was good info! I’m sure no one is upset about seeing how good they’ve been laid out [emoji16]
Yup, that was the discussion, and unless there’s some inexplicable long con, it was serious. Wasn’t it soxeast?
If the Yankees can get him without giving up Adjujar, they'll probably do it. I can't imagine that Baltimore would do that, but it's Baltimore, so who knows.
A one game playoff between winning teams is essentially a crapshoot. So while I agree that once you get through that there's little difference (other that rotation setup, which may or may not be significant) avoiding that one game would seem to be a very significant advantage.
Hah, I was waiting for that. I meant exclusive of the playoffs — MLB history is of course littered with 100-win teams who didn’t close the deal. Indeed, of the 27 teams since the ‘86 Mets who have won 100 games, only four of them have won it all (‘98 and ‘09 MFY, ‘16 Cubs, ‘17 Astros).
That is entirely and 100% only David Price's fault.
Actual results >>>>>>>> "projection" systems.
Plus the foregone opportunity of potentially playing the ALDS against a 90-win Indians team (with its dumpster fire of a bullpen) rather than a 100+ win team.
