As much as I’d love to write every day, that’s just not realistic. But today, as yesterday, I’m serving jury duty. What that means, at least so far, is I sit in a large conference-style room with many strangers and there is nothing I actively need to do but wait. It’s kinda the perfect opportunity to write! If only I could be a professional juror! My butt would be very sore (these chairs are not well padded!), but beyond that, I can’t think of any drawbacks.
And so, with that as the backdrop, here’s a shorter (later edit: not that short!) piece on last night’s game, in which the Red Sox weren’t particularly impressive and won 9-0 anyway.
Why did they win 9-0? Because the A’s are a horrific mess of a franchise. Their ownership is the worst in the sport. They won’t spend money on anything, not their stadium, not their roster, unless they’re required to do so. Oakland’s payroll is an embarrassingly low $62 million. Their highest paid player is Ross Stripling, who is making $12.5 million in the second season of a two year deal he signed with the Giants before last season. The Giants dumped him on the A’s in February along with $3.5 million, meaning the A’s are paying their highest paid player under $10 million a season. I think it’s safe to assume any coffee in the break rooms is freeze dried and any toilet paper available is single ply. That, by the way, is a bad combination.
The Red Sox took advantage of all that last night in Oakland when the A’s put up more errors than hits. It was truly a clown show of a performance against which any other major league team would have won. It’s in that vein that I tell you the fact that it was the Red Sox who won this game had very little to do with the Red Sox. They were the other team on the field and that’s about it. A win is a win is a win, as they say, possibly with more “is a win”s tacked on for good measure. This one counts as much as beating the Yankees in New York, or the Orioles in Baltimore, it’s true, but this one was MUCH MUCH easier.
The A’s starting pitcher walked four guys in 2.2 innings, which is more indicative of his inability to control his pitches than anything else. And now, after 10 minutes of trying to find a scatterplot of his pitches, I’m sorry to say you’ll just have to take my word for it.
But even so, I do have good news for those of you who like charts! This is the guy they put in after they took that guy out.
That’s a lot of blue! Also, blue is bad. Red is good. I mean, duh.
That’s the guy the Red Sox faced for the last 5.1 innings of the game. It was 8-0 when he came in and the competitive portion of the contest had long since ceased so it’s not hyperbole to say the Red Sox could’ve won this one 20-0 pretty easily had they played well and tried hard over the last five innings.
I’m not trying to be hard on the Red Sox here. They won and by a lot. Good! Who knows what will happen over the next two games, but at least last night there were Triple-A teams that would absolutely have beaten the A’s.
Larry Lucchino
Former Red Sox President/CEO Larry Lucchino died yesterday, Monday, April 1 at age 78. Lucchino was a part of the ownership group headed by John Henry that bought the Red Sox from the Yawkey trust back in 2002. He was a huge part of the organization for 14 years, including three World Series championships, which is three more than I thought I’d ever see.
The Red Sox have a long article on him that you can read here which summarizes his career better than I can do here, and John Powers has a proper obituary at the Boston Globe, but there are a few things that stand out to me about Lucchino. He was extremely direct, often refreshingly so, especially in light of the way things are now. It was Lucchino who first called the Yankees “the evil empire,” a line that sticks with me still. It was clever, it poked the bear, and it was funny at the same time, and it’s not anything anyone currently associated with the Red Sox would ever utter.
The other thing was his focus on keeping Fenway Park as the Red Sox home. In an era when new was intrinsically better, when the previous ownership group had explicitly tried to move from Fenway Park into a new larger, soulless, Disneyfied version (like the Yankees eventually did in New York), Lucchino saw the history and value of Fenway. He spearheaded, along with many others, the drive to renovate Fenway, to bring it up to modern standards as much as possible, and to keep it a part of the Red Sox for future generations. As a dad, I got to take my kids to Fenway Park in 2016, which wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for Lucchino.
He was a huge and vital part of the Red Sox for over a decade and he will be missed. Rest in peace, Larry Lucchino.
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I'd suggest the A's Owners are some of the "better" arguments for why NOBODY should own Sports Teams
I have been saddened to read & hear about what has gone on in Oakland over decades with both the A's & Raiders with Al Davis etc.
I think the Green Bay Packers Model is a much better idea - because otherwise 1-2 upset Owners can basically "blackmail" a whole City !
Sorry, but I don't care about any individual Owners of any Teams - they shouldn't actually exist
Nobody should own an intangible entity
& nobody, but the people of Boston should decide the future of a historical place like Fenway Park
How would the people of Boston feel should the entirely "unthinkable" occur - The Indicted Fascist Death Cult Leader bought The Red Sox ....... it's rather obviously easy to say that won't happen, but what happens IF some "undesirable" does buy your team ? What recourse is there ? None !
That's my point - a long time ago America lost its way in relation to "ownership"
Over my lifetime we have seen people gradually realise that a Sports Capitalist Free for All doesn't produce the type of results that inspire the future generations to get involved ........ Nobody could realistically suggest that MLB looks to be "trending" in the correct direction & everybody knows that what has happened in Oakland, could soon come to their City
Not Everything in Life should be For Sale
Some Things are more important ........ FAR more important