End of the Reign

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last week or so, you know that the Red Sox are no longer the current World Series

champions. The Washington Nationals took that title by prevailing over the Houston Astros. It was a seven game series that easily displayed the strengths and weakness of each team.

Whenever a team other than the Red Sox wins the series, there's an obvious urge to compare the Sox to the winning team. How close are the Sox to being able to win again? How much better is that team than the Sox are right now?

Sometimes, the answer is that the Sox aren't even close. You might see an explosive lineup that the Sox don't possess. You might see a killer rotation that the Sox can't touch.

Or, like this year, you can look and feel pretty good about the Sox and their team. Which, frankly, you'd expect from a team just a year removed from winning 118 games on the way to a title of their own. But, while watching the series, I never had that "aha" moment where I saw the difference between the two teams staring me in the face.

Take the Nationals. They won by riding one of the most expensive rotations in baseball. The Sox, you may remember, also have an expensive rotation. Of course, it's just not expensive. The Sox rotation, when healthy, can certainly go toe to toe with anything the Nationals or Astros were throwing at you. Especially if you're counting EdRo and his 19-win season as the real him. Now, the Sox are probably going to lose Porcello before next season. But, a healthy Sale-Price-EdRo is still a pretty scary top three entering a playoff series.

The Sox can also match the Nationals in the "young stud" department, with Rafael Devers doing his best Juan Soto impression. Bogaerts plays the role of Rendon. Or, maybe Mookie is the better comp. No matter how you match them up, the line-up certainly looks pretty favorable for the Sox. 

Really, the main difference is that after their slow start, the Nationals were healthy enough to show their true colors the rest of the way. The Red Sox? Not so much. Sale and Price were never able to round into form after IL stints. 

So, after the series I'm pretty happy with the Sox of the future. Especially with JD officially back in the fold. I expect 2020 to be much closer to 2018 than 2019.

And it should be a lot of fun.