A Few Days Can Seem Like Forever

Remember Monday?

The Red Sox had just been swept at home by the Orioles. It was their fourth straight loss. They were manhandled the entire series. To make matters worse, the Yankees were playing well, and had closed the gap. The lead in the American League East had dropped to 2.5 games. Not only that, but the Red Sox were about to head off on a long road trip, including a stop in New York.

Yuck.

But, here we sit waiting for the New York series to start under completely different circumstances. The Red Sox swept their series on the road, while the Yankees were swept at home. The lead has extended all the way back to 5.5 games, which is huge for a couple reasons.

The Yankees, and more importantly their fans, know that they can't catch the Red Sox in this series. A series sweep still has the Sox leaving town with a 1.5 game lead. And, that's if the Yankees sweep. If the Red Sox win even one game, they're leaving town up at least 3.5 games.

That's not a good feeling.

Which is one reason I wish I felt better about the game tonight. A win in the series opener would be crushing. But, for some reason the Sox always have trouble with Sabathia, and EdRo doesn't exactly scream "automatic win" these days. On the other hand the Yankees did have to play a double header yesterday. So, who knows? Because the sooner the Sox can come away with a win, the more pressure will be put on the Yankees. After all, a Red Sox series win might just end the whole race. The Yankees can't let that happen.

I can't wait to see how it all plays out!

The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge: Day #20

Tony, the wonderful writer of the “Off Hiatus Baseball” blog, started a fun activity based off the “30-Day Music Challenge” that Twitter users were taking. The list of challenges looks like this:

Today, we’ll continue with Challenge #20 Your favorite parallel card based on the parallel, not the player.

This was a fun, although challenging, topic. Oc course, if it wasn't challenging, it wouldn't be called a "challenge" right? But, the idea of liking a card because of the design as opposed to the player was an interesting concept. And, in this case not even the design. But, a parallel of that design. I couldn't think of a time where I chased a card because of the parallel and not because of it being a Red Sox card. Not a chrome version. Or a purple version. Maybe a snowflake parallel. That was close, but still not right. But, that didn't mean I couldn't come up with a "favorite" of all the parallels I happened to get.

That's when this card came to mind.

Anyone collecting in the nineties remembers these beauties. In 1992 Topps came up with a great parallel. A few few of the cards would be produced with gold covering the name and team banners on the bottom of the card. I don't remember the insert rate, but it was pretty low (or is it high?) even by today's standards. But, you had an additional way to get the cards. Packs had scratch tickets in them. If your ticket was a winner, you'd get one (some?) of the gold cards. But, a problem came from that. The scratch cards were thin. A flashlight was all you needed to see through the foil and know where the winners were. So, Topps was seeing all kinds of winners. Not only was that a supply problem, but it was weakening the appeal of the hard-earned gold cards pulled from packs. The solution? Cards from the scratch tickets would be marked with the additional "winner" designation. Sort of a shiny gold scarlet letter. It would tell the world that this card was somehow inferior to the regular gold cards. So, it was an unintended parallel of a parallel.

I don't remember sending away for any of these cards. I do remember getting a bunch at a yard sale at some point. I assume that's where this one came from. B then, I think the "winner" designation had the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of making them "inferior" I think they were making them "neato." It was something a little unique, and a swell story.

That's pretty cool, and a good reason to love this parallel. 

Even if I don't care for the player on the card.

Rajai Davis Makes me Happy!

One of the best things the Red Sox have done in the last week or so is the signing of Rajai Davis. (Yeah, I know. Not hard to be the Red Sox highlight of the last week or so.) It's not even because I like the player, or what he can do on the baseball field...even though I do. But, I'm happy with what he represents.

Urgency.

During this weekend sweep, reactionary members of Red Sox Nation have been talking about a collapse. Some are outright calling it. Some are doing the safety move of saying "I hope this isn't a collapse" to hedge their bets a bit. But in either case, the word is out there. Rajai Davis is the reason I'm so sure it won't happen.

People keep pointing to the last "collapse" by the Red Sox in 2011. Even though the only reason people call it a collapse is that they got swept up in the "chicken and beer" nonsense. Like they lost those games because they weren't trying. That wasn't it at all. They lost the games because they were injured. More specifically, they were injured, and Theo thought they could still just ride it out. So when Youkilis went down, they didn't trade for a replacement. They rested him and let their large lead take a hit. When they needed a starting pitcher, they didn't trade for one. They let Kyle Weiland go 0-3 for the team. With every game, it seemed, being a September loss to the Rays. Theo made a calculated decision that he didn't want to touch the club he had assembled, and they would just weather the storm. And, he almost made it. One more fluke win. One more Papelbon save. One more game where the Yankees didn't hand a game to the Rays. It would have worked.

The Red Sox are trying that this time though. When Jackie Bradley went down, they didn't try to wait it out. They didn't decide to just let it slide and wait for him to come back. They didn't call up someone from the minors who wasn't ready to be here. They accelerated the trade process, and brought in a competent replacement.

They went and got Davis.

So, they're not resting. They're going after it. Sure, they hit a bump in the road this weekend as their line-up adjusted to the missing bats and jumbled order. But every team goes through that. Even the Dodgers just lost a series. Everything will be fine.

They got Rajai Davis.

Who’s a Better Manager than Farrell?

After all, he knew enough to leave Fister in the game last night.

For some reason, once again, people are down on Farrell. I think it had something to do with Monday’s bullpen implosion in Cleveland. Once again, Farrell made the tragic error of not putting in the pitchers who would pitch well. For whatever reason, instead of putting in a pitcher who would strike every batter out, he went with the guys who would walk everyone. Odd strategy for sure. The EEIdiots even ran a poll wondering where Farrell would rank among MLB managers. Last I saw, most people had him rated “Middle of the pack” while a pretty large percentage had him as “bottom five.”

My problem with ranking managers is that I find it hard to do from afar. It’s sort of like ranking meteorologists. You probably heard that meteorologists themselves claim that they are correct a large percentage of the time. This is probably true. Looking out the window at today’s sunshine, they correctly said it would be sunny today. But, I’m thinking I could have guessed that an August day would be sunny…especially if I didn’t see any clouds to the east. So, yes, they correctly predicted the day, but I don’t give them much credit for it. I barely notice. But, if I have tickets in Section 36 for a game, and they say it’ll be sunny but it ends up rainy, I’m annoyed. I remember that. Damn local forecast made me ruin my scorecard. 

This is the same for managers. The vast majority of Farrell’s decisions are right on. He starts Chris Sale every fifth day. He plays Mookie Betts as often as he can. But, we don’t give him credit for those. Any idiot would start Chris Sale. Even though it’s possible that someone might try to pitch him every four days, or every six. We don’t count those decisions in our mental scorecards. What do we count? When he screws up. Or, more correctly, when his decisions don’t work out. When he brings in a reliever who gives up the lead, we remember that. He should have known Kelly was going to be shaky that night. We remember every decision that doesn’t go his way, and gloss over all the ones that do.

This makes us underrate him when compared to others. Just like the local meteorologist that doesn’t seem to predict the weather as well as the national average, Farrell doesn’t seem to manage as well as those “other guys”. 

But, how do we know? Who’s better?

Some people point to other managers with winning teams. See? They know what they’re doing. Of course, that’s ignoring the fact that the Sox themselves are comfortably in first place. Joe Maddon used to get a lot of credit for “doing more with less” in Tampa. That’s a pretty sweet situation for a manager. He didn’t have to actually win, just be perceived to do better than his talent would indicate. Of course, his magic apparently wore off this year in Chicago. Maybe dressing up like a nerd doesn’t actually translate to wins on the field? Buck Showalter’s name comes up a lot. He has those mad “in-game” skills. Until he left his all-world closer sitting on the bench during an elimination game. My guess is that if you look over his full season, you’ll see a lot of bonehead moves like that. Joe Girardi certainly makes plenty, according to my twitter feed. It’s funny to see the Yankees fans I follow making almost the exact same complaints as the Red Sox fans. “Joe waited one pitch too long.” “Joe mishandled Chapman there.” And so on. 

Maybe, just maybe, hating the manager is just a “grass is always greener” sort of thing. For the same reason you can’t fully appreciate JBJ’s defense unless you see him every day, maybe you can’t properly evaluate another manager unless you see him manage all the time too. Or the opposite, you can’t fairly evaluate your own manager because you see all of his perceived faults. Maybe that’s clouding your thoughts.

Maybe Farrell’s a good manager after all.

The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge: Day #19

Tony, the wonderful writer of the “Off Hiatus Baseball” blog, started a fun activity based off the “30-Day Music Challenge” that Twitter users were taking. The list of challenges looks like this:

Today, we’ll continue with Challenge #19 A favorite card from a country other than the United States.

I wish I had a really cool card for this challenge. I wish I had a card from some really obscure country that you didn't even know printed cards. Or, even, if I had grabbed a Daisuke Matsuzaka card from Japan when I was thinking about it. But, they were too expensive when I wanted one, and now that they're cheap I don't really need one. So, I had to go pretty local with the challenge, and pick this card.

Yes. It's yet another card from my almost entirely stagnant Phil Plantier player collection. (In fact, this whole exercise has me thinking that I should get that PC up and running again. I bet it could be fun.)

I like this card, as I did at the time, because it helps work towards the 1992 Topps rainbow...even though I didn't know it at the time. But, I did always know this card looked pretty neat on the page with the regular Topps and the Topps Gold. (Oddly, I don't have the "winner" variety...yet.) Made you do a double take when you realized that the cards weren't all the same.

Which definitely qualifies this as one of my favorite cards from another country.

Still should hunt down a Dice-K, though.