On Frustration

The annoyance that is the 2022 Red Sox

Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash

I should apologize. I haven’t written anything since last Monday, a week ago. I sat down to write any number of times between then and now and what has come out of my fingers and onto the screen hasn’t been fit to send you. It’s difficult to write about a team when you are this frustrated with them. I want to send you analysis laced with humor. Right now it’s just swear words and they’re not even a little bit funny.

So I’m sorry. But my excuse isn’t a good one. We’ve all been dealing with tough times, so what’s a few blown ballgames? That’s what the voice in my head says. And truthfully, if this wasn’t just a thing I do, if this was my job and I was paid for it, you’d have received at least two if not more missives which were barely contained frustration masquerading as analysis.

Since I last wrote “What’s Wrong With The Red Sox?” a week ago, the Red Sox have gone 1-6. They’ve fallen 10 games behind the first place Yankees. Ten! Last season, they didn’t fall 10 games out of first until the last day of August, and they were 16 games over .500 at the time. Now it’s barely May and they’re not just 10 games, out, they are in last place, behind the Orioles. So it’s bad. You know. I know you know.

It’s so frustrating I haven’t been able to watch games. I’ve found myself wanting to do anything else but watch Red Sox baseball. Today (Sunday as you read this) I made breakfast and read about politics and the impending Supreme Court decision instead. I can’t even believe it as I write that sentence, that something so awful as the Supreme Court taking away people’s rights would be something I’d choose to pay attention to over a Red Sox baseball game, but it’s true. (I did check the score from time to time. I’m not dead.)

Eventually I tuned in, or I tried to, but the game was on Peacock TV or whatever and I don’t have that and I already pay over $100 to have MLB.tv. I’m not paying for that too, so I didn’t watch. And don’t you know it, but those corporate jerks who stole my Red Sox game from me actually did me a favor because the Red Sox couldn’t hit (again) (again) (again ad infinitum) and lost another eminently winnable game. In retrospect, I’d have been better off reading about politics, or gathering the garbage, or cleaning the cat boxes. And hey, no retrospect required on this one. Thanks, you Peacocks!

Perhaps this is coming off as whiney. That’s fair. It probably is, at least a bit. The Red Sox don’t have to win to keep me as a fan. They don’t have to play well, or even keep their generational players. Ship ‘em all to LA! I’ll be here waiting with a wad of cash to hand over regardless. Apparently. Sadly. But that’s where I am. I’m in. Until the dirt nap, anyway.

So if the losing isn’t specifically the problem, why is it so difficult to deal with this team? As it often does, I think it comes down to expectations. What we expect from a team has a lot to do with how we handle their success or lack thereof on the field.

For example, I’m a fan of the Washington Football Team. I know, I know… They’re awful. They’ve been awful for decades. Their owner is terrible, they’re not well run, they routinely make bad decisions and compound those bad decisions by making other bad decisions based on a set of faulty assumptions derived from the first set of bad decisions. As a result, they haven’t won more than 10 games since 1991, and they’ve only managed 10 wins in a season three times since 1992. If they make the playoffs, ever, whether it’s because the rest of the division implodes around them, or an asteroid takes out the Meadowlands during a Week 17 Eagles/Giants game, it’s a good season. Any playoff appearance is a gift, an unexpected benefaction bestowed upon us by the football gods, and we Washington fans are ecstatic to accept it.

We don’t say, “This means nothing because it’s a lucky and random event not indicative of anything that is to come.” Nope. Instead, we say, “WHOO HOOO!!!” We don’t expect anything, so if something shows up, it’s exciting.

Conversely, we do expect something from the Red Sox. We expect a good, competently run team. We expect some mistakes, but on the whole we expect some measure of success. This team is not delivering that at all, at least it hasn’t so far over the first month plus of the 2022 season. And the thing that makes it so tough is it’s so early in the year. We’ve barely been able to get to know this team before they’ve utterly face-planted. It’s like opening a book and before you’re even able to read the title page a hand shoots out and hits you in the face with a cream pie. To make this bizarre analogy more exact to the 2022 Red Sox, that first pie would of course be followed up by another pie.

This losing, but more to the point, this complete inability to consistently compete, felt like a blip at first, something that would, like many things during the course of a baseball season, disappear with a bit of time. But loss after loss and it is feeling more and more like a monumental miscalculation by the front office. But not just by the front office. By the media, and by the fans. We’re all in this together. We all thought the Red Sox would be a decent team. Some maybe more decent than others, but find me a prediction that says the Red Sox will finish in last place behind the wretched Orioles because I’ve never seen one before. I guarantee you the Red Sox internal projections had them better than this.

Now we get to the part where I say it’s still early, and I’m only saying that because it’s true. It was true last week when they lost two of three to those same Orioles, and it’s true now after a 1-6 week. There’s still time to get this turned around. But, as with all things in life, that time grows shorter by the day. And the news that Michael Wacha and his 1.something ERA is going on the DL, where he’ll join Rich Hill and his 2.something ERA, doesn’t make a turnaround any more likely. Nor does the news that James Paxton, Chris Sale, and Josh Taylor all had setbacks in their rehab.

Mercifully the Red Sox are off today and two of the next four days. Their schedule for the rest of the month isn’t particularly difficult. A good team would come out of this run with a winning record more times than not. This Red Sox team… well, we’ll see. Like I said above, there’s still time to turn this around. But, if we get to June 1 and the Red Sox are still 10 games back, or worse, the talk may start to turn towards the trade deadline. If that’s how the last four months of the season go, I may opt to spend more time cleaning the cat boxes.