I have to say that it was almost the opposite on the '07 team in which I would put the ratio of 'liked' to 'disliked' players about 50/50. Sale, ERod, Eovaldi and Pivetta.etc all the way down in through the bullpen. I really like a lot of the players on this team- X, Devers, KikГ©, Verdugo, Dalbec, Arroyo, Renfroe, Schwarber. Who, in your opinion, are the teams that 'deserve' to win a championship this year?Д¬lick to expand.I think I agree with this take. Half my extended family are Yankee fans (they live in New York) and you should see/hear the whining and complaining about the Yankees.Stanton (though less about him lately obviously but my god all year long), Boone, the relievers, Chapman, even Cole. I guarantee you that if you were a fan of, say, the Yankees, you'd find a million flaws with them as well. Of course, if they don't make the playoffs, or lose before playing the Astros or Rays, or lose TO the Astros or Rays, then of course they don't 'deserve' to beat them. If they then go on to beat a team in the playoffs, they 'deserve' to advance. If they, you know, actually finish with a good enough record to make the playoffs, they 'deserve' to be there ahead of teams with worse records. But it's factually incorrect to say they don't 'deserve to win over anyone of the level of the Astros or Rays'. I mean, it's perfectly fine for you to feel the way you do about the team. Or do the other kind of crazy shit you do in the post-season and make it through. Maybe it will be different when it really is win or go home, if the Sox can get there. But bad calls and mistakes are part of the game and having zero margin is just a very difficult way to be going into games against decent teams in important series. It sure would be nice if the offense didn't put the bullpen in that position by putting up crooked numbers in some of these games against strong teams. Conditions need to be kind of ideal for us to prevail against strong teams given our current construction. But because they are just not good enough to deal with the other team getting second chances in high leverage situations. Not because our guys are mentally weak or whatever. Get the next fucking guy.Д«ut for pretty much all of us in the game thread we started getting a sense of inevitability. In the game before, big fucking deal, Gardner walks with two outs and bases loaded. But we can't, because there is just zero room for error with this bullpen. That shit happens, and you just have to knuckle the fuck down and make the out. All they did was give him an extra chance in a circumstance where we were winning. But the subsequent double and home run were not pre-ordained. We all have been so conditioned to it that we easily fall into the trap of blaming Joe West. This team simply has so much trouble getting to 27 outs against a good team that it doesn't have a 28th out in it if it gets jobbed or if the first baseman doesn't catch a routine foul. Yeah, things were magnified for the Red Sox because the bullpen is constructed with spit and bubble gum and duck tape and the way things seem to be going they just cannot overcome a little bit of adversity. and the pattern was always in a critical at bat with an EGREGIOUS call.ДЄnyway the graphs are great just the info in them is not always spot on JMO I am sure it will be bashed but i stand by it After all you can impact a game by giving calls to a team when it is going to be scrutinized and can be appealed, but against a team when it is the umpire's naked eye. perhaps even umpires especially retiring ones, are for sale these days. And, having been paying fearsome attention to these games and being gifted at spotting patterns, I still believe we got screwed in the end run this season and i have to ask myself : is it Yankee favoritism (no becasue it happened against all comer teams) Is it ant-Cora backlash years after the cheating scandal (perhaps, sadly) or is it money.and as one who believe that Len Bias was contract-killed by the Boston and NY Bookies' main men in the Mafia BECAUSE our Celtics would have been invincible, I am perhaps more likely to believe what may seem impossible but nonethless can be true. These stats do not correlate with what the announcers saw, and do not correlate with what they commented upon from where they sit and with the 'help' of that little strikes box superimposed on the screen. And this is why robots and sabre BS fail.

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