Unlike Pats, Sox a well-oiled machine
It’s not just the 15-2 record that should give Red Sox fans cause for optimism. Sorry, but win-loss records in April can be mirages; just ask fans of the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers, who busted out of the gate with a 13-0 record and by July were a game under .500. They played decently the rest of the season but didn’t make the playoffs.
Don’t get me wrong: Celebrate that 15-2 record. Just to pick one player — and there are many — celebrate that Rick Porcello, a disaster last season, is looking more like the Cy Young Award winner he was in 2016. His six shutout innings in the Sox’ latest blowout victory — 9-0 over the Angels Wednesday night at Angel Stadium — boosted his record to 4-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.40, and, geez, wait: Porcello is fast closing in on the halfway point to his 11win total from last season. Again, we’re in April.
So, yes, 15-2 is to be celebrated, Rick Porcello is to be celebrated. Mookie Betts’ latest three-home run game is to be celebrated. Jackie Bradley Jr., whose defense is off the charts, is starting to hit. Celebrate that. Hanley Ramirez is playing like his younger self from the Miami days. Celebrate that as well.
But more than anything, celebrate this: The Red Sox are not embarrassing. True, it’s really, really hard to win a lot of games and be embarrassing at the same time, except that last year’s Red Sox did exactly that. They won 93 games for the second year in a row, good for their second first-place finish in a row . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . it was hard to follow those Red Sox without occasional bouts of redfaceness.
It’d be impossible for any of our professional sports leagues to pass a “No Embarrassment Allowed” rule. But that doesn’t preclude individual fans from holding fast to that very rule, with the understanding that in certain cases they can handle losing — but never losers.
Last year’s Red Sox were losers, and there’s really no getting around that. They just were. From the botched Manny Machado affair to Price vs. Eck to the Apple Watch Caper, the 2017 Red Sox were bigger losers than the 1932 Red Sox, one of a string of awful Sox teams from the post-Babe Ruth days. These guys went 43111, drawing only 182,150 fans all season.
But, again, their only crime was their ineptness. To borrow a little from Bill Belichick, they were what they were.
This is what I’m seeing from the 2018 Red Sox: Accountability, camaraderie, focus, teamwork . . . the list goes on and on. I suppose camaraderie and teamwork are the same thing, except that you can have teamwork on the field and yet no camaraderie off of it. We can see the teamwork; the postgame quotes suggest the camaraderie. But the best past is the accountability: The Red Sox started the season running the bases like fools, and, in an upset, rookie manager Alex Cora called it unacceptable. The old manager, John Farrell, called it “aggressive.”
Just yesterday in this space, I called out the Patriots for the clumsy, maladroit manner in which they’ve been running their shop since losing Super Bowl LII to the Philadelphia Eagles. And now it occurs to me that the Pats and Red Sox have reversed roles: The Red Sox are the well-oiled machine, and the Pats are a collection of whiners and complainers. If you were to take all the drama going on with Belichick, Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Robert Kraft, and run it through a strainer, you’d come up with something resembling Price vs. Eck, only without the airplane.
The real test for the Red Sox — and the Patriots — will be what happens in July. The Pats will be opening training camp, and that’s a time of year when a lot of area sports fans head to Foxboro to watch boring drills while sitting under a scorching midday sun. And liking it.
But if the Red Sox are playing scorching hot hardball — and more importantly, playing it in a way that is not — then we could see a market correction this summer.