- 2 days ago
On Thursday's edition of Zolak and Bertrand, the guys reacted to the Red Sox losing two out of three games to the Houston Astros. While discussing the Sox, the guys made the point that they still do not have any excuse to be left out of the postseason this year.
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00:00Still in the second wild card, you haven't completely fallen apart or anything like that,
00:03but you played two good teams and there's just a trend now with them. The Red Sox at home,
00:07much different team than the team that's on the road. 27 and 34 when they're traveling. And I
00:12think that's a sign of a young team, one in eight in extra innings when you're on the road. These
00:16are things that are going to kind of follow them. And when you're a wild card team, especially a
00:20second wild card team, guess what you're going to be doing? You're going to be playing on the
00:23road in the playoffs. So you better be ready to figure that out or have a solution.
00:25Uh-oh. Is the discrepancy road and home a young team or is it a team that doesn't operate as
00:31cleanly as they do at Fenway Park in terms of their operation? I have seen that recently with
00:35some of the allegations. Maybe they got better angles. Squeeze into the forearms. Easy to cheat at
00:40home. To be fair, when they face Scooble, that was in Detroit and that's what they referenced. So
00:45I don't know. Walker Buehler, six innings pitched, four earned runs. Was good in the middle, he said.
00:53Not great in the first inning. Not great in his final inning. And then you had Alex Cora
00:57getting thrown out. It was a weird scene, by the way, too, because you get a balk off the top
01:02and then almost balked in the run after the initial balk. And then they take it back. Alex Cora goes out
01:09there, argues it, goes back to the dugout, then comes back out an inning later and ultimately gets
01:14tossed on that second go around there. Now tied for the most ejections in baseball this year with
01:19Aaron Boone, Alex Cora. And Cora, after the game, first off, admits very cleanly,
01:24I was wrong. They were right. And then goes on this whole spiel saying, I wasn't trying to get
01:28kicked out. I wasn't trying to do any of these things. I went out there to get a clarification
01:32on the rule. Okay. You know, he was like, maybe they thought I was being sarcastic or whatever.
01:38I don't know. He seemed pretty angry. And you saw Duran, Kyle Hudson, the whole team thought they
01:41were 100% right when it went down. It feels like pretty unrealistic that they just tossed them
01:46to toss them as he was walking back to the dugout. Was something said to them the first time,
01:49though? Cora, like, hey, don't come back out. Probably. Yeah. You know what I mean?
01:53Well, he said... Yeah, he said that he was asking for it to learn and use it as an educational
01:58moment for himself and that he thought that maybe the ump thought he was being sarcastic,
02:03but he wasn't, which to me means that he was definitely being sarcastic. Exactly.
02:06He's tricky. Yeah. You could see him in the dugout. He's Joe Mazul in it. Yeah. And then after the guy
02:11calls you out for being sarcastic, you're like, no, no, no, that wasn't me. What are you talking about?
02:15And it's the same line every time Dave Dombrowski taught me in 2018 after what happened in the
02:19playoffs, it's my job to stay in the dugout. We get it. You say you don't like to be ejected.
02:23Well, the truth is, Alex Cora, you've been ejected as much as any other manager in the sport
02:27this year. So clearly there's something there where you're getting thrown out of games.
02:32Like you mentioned, Milken, they're now in the second wildcard, 40 games remaining.
02:36Just 13 of those are against clubs that currently hold postseason spots. Is there pressure on this
02:41team right now, Zoe? Heck yeah. Absolutely. One percent. We talk about
02:45the schedule all year. Like you got this meaty part of the schedule coming up or you got
02:48the soft part coming up. You got games coming up at home. This is where you should take care
02:53of business. It just, you sit there and you watch some of these games. It's like, okay,
02:58score a ton of runs last night. Can't, or two nights ago, can't generate anything last night.
03:03Damn it. Last night we could have used another bat. Yeah. Could have used another positional
03:06player. You know, a couple nights ago, could have used another pitcher. But I mean,
03:11May came out and pitched well the other night. So I give him credit for that. Made Breslau look
03:15good. Cause he comes out and throws two clunkers. You're really bitching about the trade deadline.
03:20So I think there's a ton of pressure on them. I gotta be honest with you. Like the expectation
03:24should be that they're a playoff team. We talked about sort of the second half collapses over the
03:28years with Alex Cora and this franchise. And to be totally honest with you, with the way that
03:32it's set up, what I just read to you, only 13 games left. You're in the second wildcard right now.
03:36You have 13 games left with teams that currently have a playoff spot. That's a soft schedule to
03:40end the year. There's zero reason. And I look, I know we talked about the workload and all that
03:45stuff. From a talent perspective, you have enough talent on this roster, enough proven talent on this
03:50roster. The expectations going into the year, there should not be a second half collapse like we have
03:55seen over the last few years. And if there is, there does need to be a change in sort of the
03:59operation that's going forward. I'm sorry. Let me ask you a question real quick. Take the production out of
04:03it and the way you view the player. Are they a better team without Devers?
04:06I mean, from feels like they came together a little bit right after it. Yes. Yeah. How
04:10sustainable is that? And I'm not talking about the production of desert Devers, but at some point
04:15you got to go out and get some, get some thumpers, man. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, it feels
04:20like they're a bat short for sure in terms of being a legit contender, but I still think
04:24you're not saying Devers would have made it better, but I think they proved they could win games
04:29without this guy. I just look at it. And I think what went right for them in June, in July,
04:34because everyone wants to forget there was a six game losing streak right after you got rid of
04:37Raphael Devers, the power of friendship. Didn't just snap in all of a sudden. We're a good baseball
04:41team. The argument you can make there is, Oh, they found a way to get Roman Anthony in the lineup.
04:45And guess what? Roman Anthony has been arguably the best player on the team. And one of the best
04:49players in the, by the way, is that I can, can I just stop right there? Cause I've heard that
04:52argument by the way too. And that like getting rid of Devers allowed you now to play problem. You did
04:57that to yourself. I was just going to say that like that. I'm sorry. Having another awesome bat in your
05:01lineup should not prevent you from having another awesome bat in your life. You should be able to
05:05figure that out and have both of those guys in your lineup at the same time. Yeah. Using that as an
05:09excuse to ship Devers out for nothing and saying that now we have Roman, like, look at what we
05:14wouldn't have Roman Anthony in the lineup, but Raphael Devers was still here is crazy to me. That's a
05:17crazy argument to make, especially with Devers having a really good month of August and playing a
05:21good first base over there. And you have Abraham Toro at first base. So at this point, he's been a bottom
05:2510 hitter in the sport for two months. Romy Gonzalez starting against a righty last night. That to me tells
05:30you, I think we're getting close to the end of the Abraham Toro experience. And you really just
05:34don't have great options at first and second right now, unless you're forcing to Don Raphael into the
05:38lineup. But I think last night, like what Walker Bueller did, and I think some people were almost
05:43hoping he got just hit around to the point where you could just boot him out of the rotation.
05:47Everything under the hood looks awful, but over his last seven starts. Now he has a 369 ERA,
05:52the FIPS 560, and that's what you should pay attention to. But Kyle Harrison down at AAA,
05:58that's the name a lot of people kind of want to jump to because he was the biggest name you got
06:01back for Rafael Devers. He's put together three good starts in a row, 15 innings over those three
06:06starts, just two earned runs. His command is just as wild as Walker Bueller is. He walked four yesterday
06:11and hit a guy. So it was five guys you put on base, only one hit given up, you were missing bats,
06:16but he's not some major solution for them either. So that's a little awkward bringing Christian
06:21Campbell in. I know the numbers look really good surface-wise. Underneath, they're not that good.
06:26They're very average. He isn't hitting the ball like he was a year ago. So neither of those two guys scream
06:31a major, you know, boost to what you're doing. And that only makes you look back at the trade deadline
06:36and question it. We have a lot of under the hood issues here for the Boston Red Sox. So
06:40it's time for an oil change. A bunch of lemons. Yeah. A couple of new belts.
06:46Fixed up. Catalytic converter. Even last night, like Rob Restliner hitting at the end of that game,
06:51that's because you're carrying three catchers. It's because you don't have a good lefty option
06:55off the bench right now. Nick is in Providence. Wants to talk Sox. What do you got, Nick?
07:01Yeah. So this team annoys me. They're a one-trick pony. They play well when they face mediocre pitching
07:06at Fenway Park. And to be honest, throughout the league, everyone sucks on the road. I was looking at
07:11the home road splits. Just about every team sucks on the road. So I'm not attributing it to
07:16to just purely the road. But the pitching on the road is the problem for this team,
07:21not the hitting. The difference in the ERA for the Red Sox between home and away is 4.05 on the road,
07:283.45 at home. They've pitched 30 fewer innings on the road than at home, but 20 more home runs allowed
07:37on the road. The road pitching is a problem. You need to have guys with balls. That's why they should
07:42got someone like Joe Ryan who can help Garrett Crochet stabilize this rotation. It's the pitching
07:48on the road. And I agree. There's going to be a lot of away games in the playoffs if they get there,
07:53and they are not ready to handle that load.
08:00Milliken?
08:02I don't think he's saying anything that's crazy there. In terms of the pitching,
08:05like the difference between home and road, you do look at it and you say,
08:08you're pitching better in what's really less offensive environments. When you're
08:12pitching at Fenway Park, we know what that ballpark can do for a lot of people.
08:16I don't read too much into it, just home versus road in that sense. I think it's just a young
08:21team. They get on the road, a team built for Fenway right now, thriving kind of off the crowd
08:25in a lot of ways. There's just a, there's a difference there. I think where a lot of my
08:28concerns come in, what worked so well in June and July was that your pitching staff was able
08:33to carry you with those two ERAs.
08:34Yeah, is it sustainable? Yeah. Is Lucas Giolito going to be that guy moving forward?
08:38I don't think so. And I think he's not a bad pitcher. I think he's like a number four or number
08:41five. He's a four to a four or five, and he's going to be run down because he threw 129 innings
08:46in 23 and didn't throw it all last year because of elbow surgery. The fact that you're going to
08:50have to ride that guy and hope he can carry you, you're just asking for a lot. I think Brian Bale,
08:55good game three starter. I'm willing to ride with that. I feel good about it. Beyond that,
08:59there's just a lot of questions in that rotation. And I love Garrett Crochet, but it's another guy
09:03carrying a full workload. He's already passed his total from last year. What does that look like by the end
09:08of September? I assume it's not going to be what we saw, you know, call it the first four months of
09:12the year. The other thing that's been going around or some of the stats and this has been on the
09:16broadcast over the last few days, Roman Anthony being compared to Ted Williams with some of the
09:20stats that he's putting up. Why? You think those are unfair expectations for him? This is like
09:25Tommy Heinsohn with Bill Russell comparison. Like, come on. It's what he's doing though. These are
09:29real. They're not just like, I understand the math. Okay. I get it. Yeah. Highest OB or highest OBP through,
09:36you know, a player's first 52 games of his career. Willie McCovey, Albert Pujols, Juan Soto,
09:41Roman Anthony. I just love how they make up these benchmarks. 52 games. That's how many he's
09:46played. You know, you know, that 52 game plateau. That's how many games he's played though. So,
09:50so far when he's come up, he's been one of the greatest on-base machines we've ever seen a
09:54player in their first 52 games. Can you play more than 52 games before we're comparing you to
09:58all-time greats? T-Bone hates Roman Anthony. He hates Roman Anthony. This is such a good
10:02on your soul story. He's your Bobby Dolbach. No, I don't hate him. I like him a lot.
10:07You know. You talk about him like Bobby Dolbach. At 21 years old. No one's denying that.
10:11While facing lefties and righties. Like, you cannot ask any more out of a 21-year-old
10:15prospect. No one's denying that, but can we cool the Jets? Ted Williams. Look what
10:21happened with Christian Campbell. Totally. Two totally different players. Totally.
10:25Totally different players. But good point. Christian Campbell had a good month. Roman Anthony's
10:29had a historical start to his career. A good two months. Great. No. It was one good
10:33month. No, Roman Anthony's had a good month and a half. A historical. A historical first
10:39two months. Cool. Keep doing it. Do it for a whole year. How about? A rookie becoming the
10:44first Red Sox player since the splendid splinter to post 20-plus extra base hits with 20-plus
10:50walks in his first 51 career games. T-Bone's kind of right. Like, the upside would cost us and
10:54how excited you were for him, and he could be your master. There are different levels. I understand
10:58him, but he could not stay on the damn field. That's what I'm saying. I'm not comparing
11:01him to him, but the guy couldn't stay on the field. Roman Anthony's been healthy his entire
11:05time. Okay. Let's just wait and see. Let's wait and see. You can only talk about what he's
11:09done through 52 games and what he's done through 52 games as a store. Okay, so talk about 52
11:12games this year. We don't have to compare him. That's what we're talking about. He's comparing
11:15him to the last guy that's done it. Yeah. To all these guys. All these top players.
11:18You know what? Different game. It was a different game. I'm with Milliken here. I'm with Milliken
11:21here because when we get rolling in the football season this year, I'm going to go
11:24back and I'm going to eliminate Drake-based nine losses from a year ago. Yes. And I'm
11:29going to pick up right where he had that first win, and then we'll start counting games.
11:32Can we factor in that Ted Williams didn't have iPads? He flew a plane. Didn't have batting
11:37gloves. Ted Williams wasn't facing the pitching that exists today. Like, there's all different
11:40variables. Different baseball. Different game. Like, what he's doing in terms of getting
11:45on the base. Roman Anthony's got a good war. Ted Williams went to war. Have you ever seen
11:48those videos, by the way, of when they colorized, like, the Babe Ruth stuff and he's taking swings
11:54and you're like, oh boy. Yeah. Put him next to Roman Anthony. Let me see what that looks
11:58like. Milliken hates Ted Williams and T-Bone hates Roman Anthony. And I don't hate Ted Williams.
12:03I don't hate. Milliken hates Jim Rice. We confirmed that the other day. My dad went to Ted Williams
12:07camp. Big deal. I don't hate Roman Anthony. I like him a lot. All right. I don't want. You
12:12just don't believe in him as a player. That's all. What has he done? What has he done? He's
12:17done a lot, but he's done it for 52 games. Let's cool the jets is all I'm saying.
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