* Way back at the start of the season, the Red Sox weren’t foolish enough to propose winning the World Series as a realistic goal for 2024. Given their talent level and general lack of activity last winter, such talk would have been laughable. Instead, management set a far more modest goal: playing “meaningful baseball in September.”
Even that seemed to be low-hanging fruit for a big market team with four championships in the last 20 years.
And now that September is upon us, it’s worth asking: Are the Red Sox, in fact, playing meaningful games down the stretch? That would seem open to debate. They’ve not been eliminated, which I suppose is a positive. But they’re also four games out of a wild card spot with just 20 games remaining. They need a surge in the final three weeks, and they need a collapse by one of two teams in front of them from the AL Central — Kansas City or Minnesota.
Before their Saturday night win over the White Sox, Fangraphs had their playoff odds at just 8.7 percent, or about one in 12. Does that qualify as “meaningful” September baseball? You tell me.
The schedule is about to get a lot more challenging once the lowly White Sox leave town, with three at home with Baltimore, followed by four in New York against the Yankees. If the Red Sox can cut their deficit some by this time next week, they might still have a chance.
But it says something about how far expectations have fallen for the franchise that some might regard that as a success. Had the playoff field not been expanded to three wild card teams per league, the Sox would already be playing out the string in the season’s final month.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Red Sox were competing for division titles, pennants and championships.
* We’re about to find out some things about the Patriots and their fan base.
For two decades, the Patriots ruled the NFL, winning six Super Bowl and going to three others. A generation of Pats fans grew up believing that a first-round bye and several home playoff games were almost a birthright.
But times have changed. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are gone, and what’s left barely resembles the Patriots from their golden era. Forget Super Bowls — the current-day Patriots are much closer to the Patriots of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, who, more often that not, stumbled and bumbled their way through season after season.
Now that the postseason is a fantasy, will the team’s fan base shrink? Surely there were plenty who climbed aboard the bandwagon because everyone loves a winner. But the franchise hasn’t won a playoff game since January of 2019, and isn’t about to win another anytime soon. A third straight losing season is a virtual lock, which will make it four in the last five years.
What does that mean locally? Will there be empty seats at Gillette Stadium? Will TV ratings plummet? How long will a fan base accustomed to unmatched dominance stick around for losing season after losing season? We’re about to find out.
* Tyler Johnson, signed to a PTO deal by the Bruins, could be a nice little pickup. Give the Bruins credit: in recent seasons, they’ve done a nice job finding cheap, veteran players on short-term deals, like uncovering Kevin Shattenkirk and James van Riemsdyk last season. On the other hand, the notion that a player like Johnson, on a make-good deal, could end up on the team’s second line doesn’t speak well of the team’s up-front talent base.
* Here’s hoping that the NFL officials’ obsession with illegal formation penalties — on full display in Thursday’s season opener between Kansas City and Baltimore — is merely a passing fad, kind of like the year MLB decided to strictly enforce the balk rule for the first few weeks of the season. Otherwise, games are going to be unwatchable.
* My AFC division winners: Buffalo, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Kansas City in the AFC with Cincinnati, Baltimore and the New York Jets as wild cards. NFC division winners: Philadelphia, Green Bay, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Wild cards: Los Angeles Rams, Chicago and Detroit. Super Bowl: Green Bay over Kansas City. Just don’t take my word for it.
* All the guest starts are fun and all, but my fear is that Only Murders in the Building, now in Season 4, is in the process of jumping the proverbial shark.
* Add Coach Bill to the long list of figures in sports who made no secret of their disdain for the media while playing or coaching, only to join their ranks for a paycheck — or several, as the case may be — as soon as they could. What’s the word for that again?
* It’s very early, but if the first two games are any indication, the convoluted new kickoff rules in the NFL have not had the intended effect. To the contrary, the Chiefs-Ravers game resulted in nine touchbacks in 11 kickoffs, and neither of the two returned kicks took the ball back as far as the 30-year line — the starting point for most touchbacks.
* Although the Red Sox publicly declared their plan was to be buyers in July and they made good on that vow, I keep hearing that, in the final two days before the trade deadline, they were listening very intently on some tempting offers to sell.
* With some gigantic upsets and thrilling matches, the U.S. Open really delivered over the last two weeks. Now, if they could just do something about having some of the best matches drift well past midnight.
* I doubt it will happen, but admit it: it would be a lot of fun to watch Roman Anthony and Kristian Campbell in the big leagues for the final few weeks of the season. Having to clear two spots on the 40-man roster is just one of the obstacles. But it sure would be entertaining and would whet fans’ appetites for next year.
* Don’t mind me — I’ll just be over here, immersing myself in Neil Young’s Archives Vol. iII. It says something about his career that, even as this volume covers inarguably his weakest period (the 1980s), it’s still a treasure trove of lost gems and unreleased marvels.
* With Grade Sizemore in town as the interim manager of the White Sox, fully one-third of the American League managers this season once played for the Red Sox. The others: Kevin Cash (Tampa Bay), Rocco Baldelli (Minnesota), Mark Kotsay (Oakland), and, of course, Alex Cora.
