00:00But the Red Sox, yeah, swept the Angels,
00:03who one of the only teams that's been worse than the Red Sox all year is the Angels.
00:07That's one of them.
00:08It's them, and that's kind of it, like, in the American League.
00:12Yeah, they couldn't handle the Rockies when they got their other worst-in-the-league tests.
00:16Yeah, the Rockies took it to them.
00:18Kansas City's having a bad year.
00:20No one thought they'd be good, though.
00:22Detroit's been bad.
00:23When Scuba went down, they just fell off the face of the earth,
00:26then got hot again, and then cooled back off.
00:28The A's are not good, but they've been better than you.
00:31The Orioles, you know, some of these other teams have been under .500,
00:34but the Red Sox have been down at the very bottom.
00:36The Red Sox now are eight games under .500.
00:39Eight.
00:40Which, for them, is pretty good.
00:42I mean, getting down to single digits was an accomplishment.
00:44Yeah, eight and two in their last ten to get to eight games under .500.
00:47Yeah.
00:48The final wildcard team, however, is .500.
00:55So, there was a time when I think the third wildcard was two to three games under .500.
00:59I forget who it was.
01:00It might have been Texas.
01:01It might have been Houston.
01:03It might have been somebody else.
01:04Toronto was in that mix, I feel like, for a little while.
01:06Toronto's the Twins.
01:06The Twins were around there, I think.
01:09And the team, at one point, the team, or the White Sox are leading their division now, right?
01:15Yeah.
01:16That's amazing, by the way.
01:17Good for them.
01:17And the AL West was supposed to be a monster, but they're topped it like Seattle was sitting
01:21at .500 forever leading their division.
01:23Yeah, for sure.
01:25It's shockingly bad.
01:26It's a weak American League, but you've been worse.
01:28Like, everyone who says, ah, the American League's so bad.
01:30Right, they're bad, but you suck.
01:32Like, there's a difference between being bad and sucking.
01:34And the American League has not been impressive.
01:37The fact that you're still, you know, single digit back in the wildcard race speaks for
01:42itself.
01:43But again, they just swept the team and didn't really make any progress.
01:46Like, yeah, you're chipping away, I guess, but you have to be good while all these other
01:50teams have to be bad at the same time.
01:51And that's what happens when you dig yourself a giant hole.
01:54Now, there's still a lot of baseball to be played here, and we do have a trade deadline
01:57coming up.
01:58Also, the All-Star break is very soon, and the Red Sox got snubbed.
02:02I freely admit, you know, I've been ripping this team all season.
02:06But Wilson Contreras and Sonny Gray both should be All-Stars.
02:10Contreras probably will be, because didn't Vlad say he's not going to do it?
02:13Yes, yeah.
02:14So Contreras is the next guy to step in.
02:16I don't think Contreras should get it over Kurtz or Rice, for that matter.
02:20Those guys both, I think, deserve it ahead of him.
02:22I'll have to double-check the exact numbers, but they've both been excellent this year.
02:27Sonny Gray, 10-1 with a 2-6-1.
02:31Yeah, I don't know how you justify that.
02:32ERA is the second best in the entire AL.
02:35And there's a lot of good pitchers in the American League, sure.
02:39But Sonny Gray is having a better year than just about all of them, which is pretty wild.
02:44There's also a case maybe to be made for Sedan Raffaella, though.
02:47I'm not going to jump up and down about it.
02:50I think one All-Star for a last-place team is probably all you really should reasonably expect.
02:55But, you know, snub's a snub, right?
02:56You should be in there.
02:58You're not in there.
02:58It's a loaded outfield.
03:00It's either you're taking Randy Orozarena's spot, Cody Bellinger.
03:04Those are the players you're going up against.
03:05And for a guy that has an OPS under 800, he's had a great year and a great defender.
03:10But he's not better than those kind of players that are getting on that list.
03:14There's also sort of like, I don't know, kind of macabre thought, which is that, you know,
03:18if these guys were All-Stars, they'd have more trade value.
03:21All-Star Sonny Gray sounds a lot better in a trade negotiation than Sonny Gray.
03:25He's 36.
03:25He's having a good season.
03:26Yeah, but All-Star Sonny Gray sounds a lot better.
03:30That's the other sort of subtext of this, I think, which is, yeah, it's nice to see him
03:34making a little run here.
03:35It's nice to see him sweep any team, I guess.
03:37We were all excited when they swept the Yankees.
03:39But then after that National Series, didn't that kind of seem like, okay, if any decision
03:44was about to get made, like, this was it?
03:46It was such a slim margin for error that it seemed like those last two Nationals games
03:50were the error, like that was the margin and you crossed it.
03:53Yeah, yeah.
03:54Like, all of a sudden, you know, Caleb Durbin went from a 300 hitter in June to 070 in July.
03:59And all of a sudden, Anthony Sigler was no longer a 300 hitter in Major League Baseball.
04:04Like, yeah, the guys that were so far out kicking their coverage, trying to keep this team afloat,
04:11it faltered, and then you saw what happens there, combined with, yeah, the pitching not being otherworldly
04:18and among the best in the league.
04:20And even if it's not performances, Christian, the injuries are getting untenable at this point.
04:26Like, you could deal with crochet because you had, you could deal with crochet because you had
04:30Tully and Early coming up.
04:31You could even deal with Brian Baio being demoted because Jake Bennett came up and was outstanding.
04:36Now, Ranger Suarez, on top of Early going down and Tully looking super off his last outing.
04:43Yeah, I don't know.
04:44It really did.
04:45It felt like a lot of reality hit the Red Sox right at the same time and reminded you,
04:50oh, this isn't just a good team that's playing badly.
04:53This is a bad roster that had a good couple of weeks.
04:56And I hope that this 8-2 stretch doesn't get in the way of what this roster actually is.
05:01Then there's this, Roman Anthony heading to Florida, which after nine weeks, nine weeks,
05:12they finally decided, you know, I don't think this injury is healing quite how we hoped.
05:16I think there's, I think there may be a problem here.
05:18Let's, let's get some, let's get some added people on this.
05:21Tim Healy wrote in the Globe yesterday,
05:25in sending Roman Anthony to Fort Myers, Florida to continue his injury rehab,
05:29the Red Sox have assigned him one blunt goal, make it back to Boston.
05:33The geographic reassignment is a, quote, very good opportunity, Chad Tracy said,
05:37for Anthony to not have to deal with much other than figuring out a way to return from his injury.
05:42His focus, Tracy said, a singular focus now, if you're in Florida,
05:46is to get yourself healthy and not have to deal with all the other stuff that goes with it.
05:50There it is again, Tracy said before the finale against the Angels.
05:54So it's a singular focus, very focused on getting himself healthy and getting back to us.
06:00When asked what that other stuff was, Tracy said, the day-to-day of being at Fenway.
06:07He's going to get asked questions about it constantly.
06:09And for him being there, his focus is on one thing right now, getting yourself healthy.
06:15You think the other stuff was all the questions he's going to be getting asked?
06:19Is that the others that you had to send him to Florida?
06:21Because there was too many people asking questions.
06:23You know, you can just not make them available.
06:25You can just sneak out the back.
06:26Like, he's not even really there, you know?
06:30I don't think that's what you mean.
06:31I don't think that's the other stuff that's going on here that's making it tough for Roman Anthony to get
06:36back from his injury.
06:37When's the last time you spoke into a microphone?
06:39Roman Anthony?
06:39When's the last time you heard a word from Roman Anthony?
06:41I don't even know.
06:42When's the last time you talked?
06:43He was on with Bradfow.
06:44I think at some point last week.
06:45That's right.
06:45Yeah, that's right.
06:46It was the two-minute grill with Bradfow.
06:47Okay.
06:48All right, that's one.
06:49Yeah.
06:49He talks to Bradfow.
06:50Yeah.
06:51He'll talk to Bradfow.
06:51That broke a streak of...
06:53He's going to Florida to get away from Bradfow.
06:55He's like, I can't talk to this freaking guy anymore.
06:57Bradfow would have no problem following him.
06:59I know, he would.
07:00He'd be like, he'd like take all the clothes out of his bag and like zip himself in.
07:04Call McFarlane and just get a trip to Florida real quick.
07:07Yeah, Bradfow's going to have him do the wasabi challenge like I did yesterday.
07:11Yeah.
07:12This guy, this guy keeps, he's got these weird clothes and he keeps trying to get me to snort wasabi.
07:17I don't know why.
07:18Anyway, that's what's going on with the Red Sox.
07:19A lot of fun here with the old guy.
07:22So IKF says there's a lot of distractions.
07:23And now Roman Anthony's getting shipped out of town because there's a lot of distractions.
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