Julian McWilliams

You can find it there.

And my, a real question, uh, spinning off of the, uh, comments that we played for you last night from Julian McWilliams is w- what is the real Red Sox offense? What is their real offense? And it comes off of, uh, Jimmy, I'm putting you on the spot here totally.

We have those McWilliams cuts from last night.

I think it was the second one I sent you, Jimmy.

Just let me know when you have it in your, uh, possession because to me, this is, uh, sort of the crux of the matter, is w- why do the Red Sox believe, and why do you believe as a fan, that their offense turned around? Why do you believe that all of a sudden the Red Sox started scoring runs in the middle of the year when they went basically a half season without scoring runs? To me, this is one of the fundamental questions about the organization, where they're going, both in 2026 and then beyond.

And Julian McWilliams, and Jimmy, I hope I got the right cut.

I might've gotten the wrong one.

But Julian McWilliams did address this in a conversation I had with him back on September 4th.

So here's what I wanna hit on this week, because one of the questions that I think has come up a lot lately, at least on the Baseball Hour and some other things, is who are the real Red Sox? What does the real team look like? If you take away the really bad play from early in the year and the really good play from just past the midpoint of the season, what are they? And I think it's certainly worth examining with regard to their offense.

And a lot of this popped into my head because about 10 days ago I had a discussion with Julian McWilliams of CBS Sports, formerly of The Boston Globe, and Julian made some observations about the Red Sox offense.

And before I even get to that, I should mention that he wrote a story for CBS Sports that I thought was fabulous.

So again, this goes back about 10 days, so this would be on or about s- uh, September 3rd or 4th.

So here's what we're gonna do today.

I wanna start with the Red Sox offense in 2026 and try to examine who they are and what we can expect going into the postseason.

Then I wanna replay the interview I did with Julian McWilliams on the Baseball Hour.

We're gonna...

Okay, so I'm going to give you a little sports smut, because I was planning to just talk about the fact that I sat here yesterday and told you it was a big game for the Red Sox, and they won the game, and so I was going to give them their due, but...

Julian McWilliams of CBS Sports just wrote a big takeout on the, you know, the controversy that is driveline throughout Major League Baseball.

And let me just give you the general premise of the story, which is driveline loves to sit there and take credit for the successes of a team that adopts its philosophy, a philosophy like.

The Washington Nationals.

Not a cookie cutter, one fits all kind of operation.

I'll just say finally before I stop.

If you want to read a story on this whole thing that is pretty comprehensive, and I would say for the most part pretty balanced, you should read Julian McWilliams.

It's excellent.

Maz's opening take.

Well, Red Sox, interesting story in CBSSports.com from Julian McWilliams about the role of driveline around the league and the role of driveline here.

That was Maz's opening take.

Murray believes after listening to Bert Brewer this morning that another Rabel story is coming next week, and we're all going to be reacting to it.