Is it, are we paying too much attention to when, when totally and gray exited the game and not enough to the lack of offense?

Yeah.

I mean, I said it, but we came on the air last night and the first thing I said, they lost this series because they didn't hit.

But they gave away any chance to scratch out a win because they went to the bullpen too early.

It was 1-0 each time.

And you're not scoring runs.

But last night, at the point in which you take out Sonny Gray, I think you were in the middle of 26 and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings against the Yankees in the playoffs.

I mean, they have to go after a bat in the offseason, right?

But, yeah, Tully's ahead of him in some – Well,

he might be ahead of him in the playoff rotation too, right? So it certainly looks that way.

And Tully, I mean, the thing that blows me away is – Even with the loss the other night, I think the Red Sox have won.

It's 10 out of 12 or 11 out of his last 13 starts.

which is really crazy.

Again, those are team wins, and I know wins don't matter when it comes to pitchers anymore, but he has been a second half.

He's been good all year, but the second half for a guy...

What are the odds that these two guys are ready come game one at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday?

We

were talking about it last night.

He's as fast a guy as I've seen.

Just straight out a burner.

And 60 stolen bases, his third straight year of, I think, 55 or more in the minors.

He had like 89 in college.

I mean, this guy is at the University of Washington.

Do you fear the momentum factor with this team? Period.

He's

no Joe Schmo, but he still gets bumped up.

You're no Joe Schmo.

Yeah, that's an educated opinion.

It is kind of hovering over it again, isn't it? At the beginning of the year, I thought a lot about it.

Then it was kind of out of my mind as you went through this.

It's been a fun season for the Sox.

It just seems like that's not the way anyone's thinking.

these last three, four weeks, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, Greg Breslow was on Tuesday in a pregame, and I brought that up, and he was ready to rip my head off because the team's never going to admit that.

You know what I mean? I mean, you can go in the funk.

We saw 2011.

They lost 20 out of 27 and didn't make the playoffs.

I mean, that can happen, but...

Has he pitched himself, in your opinion, out of a playoff rotation spot? Not yet,

Opie strategy of... yeah that keeps everyone on edge well tom congratulations you're the best obviously um thank you uh okay what is this yankee series and mean to you uh how important is it obviously just in your mind home field in the playoffs as a litmus as a where are you looking at this series coming up tomorrow

Yeah, I mean, I think all of it.

Any shot at home field, which I think is important if you could pull it off.

I mean, you're three back in a lost column.

You've got 29 games, so it's against the odds, but you've got time.

And if you want really any shot at that, obviously winning three out of four this series would give you that chance.

And I think that would be a big difference for this team.

Where do you land on this? Yeah,

Are we being a little inconsistent with how we view some of those happenings and where Contreras isn't as criticized but Duran has been? And is there a reason maybe that it's been a little inconsistent based on what you've seen? It's a good

question.

I don't know why the reaction is different.

Maybe in the case of Contreras, because it is sort of surrounding an injury, right? The reason, and he said it again yesterday, he goes, listen, if I'm healthy, I'm not getting booed because I'm running that out.

And the booing, you know, is centered around him not running it out.

He's done it twice.

Did it right before the road trip.

I'm glad you brought

Tom, how's it going?

Good.

Thanks, Rich.

That might say more about your joint than anything about me if I'm classing it up.

I want to get right to it.

Kind of a Boston sports leadership roundtable we're having.

So cool to have you all sitting here together with us.

You need that home ice advantage, and you need to feel like you can win any game in Boston.

Um, w- what's the deal with him? Is he just tired, and, and how, uh, like, do you see this staff going forward this month?

Well, he, he looked tired last night, and this is a guy who, you know, is regularly 100, 101.

I, I think he only touched 100 twice last night.

I thought it was interesting, Tracy, after the game, when I asked him, he said that, you know, when you use a guy a lot, that's what happens.

He moves a little velo.

That, that says he's tired, right? And then I asked Guerrero, and he kind of, you know, did the head snap and looked at me like, "No, I'm not tired.

I'm good.

Like, you know, 'cause he's a kid and, you know, how much do you wanna wear him out in August?

What's it been like to cover this team on a daily basis over a month where they just basically don't ever lose?

Well, I mean, I mean, you mentioned covering the, the '15 Blue Jays and, and, you know, for me, it was the 2018 Red Sox, right? They won the World Series.

They won 108 games during the regular season.

They, they basically never lost, right? But that was wire to wire.

Those teams were really good from the start.

This is a team that was 14 games under .500 in June.

I mean, this was a last-place team.

Yeah.

What are you hearing about that?

Well, I mean, again, they're saying all the right things and saying there was not an issue with him, and it just seemed to me like this is a guy, and J.P. Ricciardi, who was on with us during the trade deadline special, I thought said it best.

He's one of these, a product of the AAU culture where he's been such a highly touted prospect all his life, and he's just not really dealt with failure.

And, you know, there's whispers about, did he commit himself to the off-season workouts enough? Did he heed the offers of extra work and opportunities to go work with coaches in season and off-season? And, you know, I was never there to see him say no, but the fact that the injuries just continue to pile up.

And I've played 100 games at a pro season already.

Yeah.

So it just seems like the classic sort of change of venue candidate.

Since they've been winning, is there just this... unexplainable vibe around the team that is willing this into existence? What's going on? I think there's definitely

What are you hearing about that?

Yeah, well, I mean, not much.

The reports are that he won't need surgery.

That's the latest.

He just got back.

He's a hand specialist.

What I'm getting, it's non-displaced, which means he would need surgery, and it would be on the shorter, but you're still talking...

And from what you're hearing, could that be happening?

Like you say, you've played together in the past and, uh, and am I right in saying that, that you lived together for a little while?

Yes, we did.

Uh, my, I wanna say my second pro year, uh, I got a shoulder surgery, uh, at the beginning of training camp and, uh, Jimmy's family was, uh, really, uh, really, um, just excited to invite me to come over to, to, to kinda like rehab my shoulder and, uh, Mary and the kids just, uh, open arms, uh, like one of them.

And uh, I stay them for about, uh, I wanna say a month.

Um, so it was just, uh, I was just the, the fourth child kinda in a sense.

Uh, and then, um, you know, me and Jimmy were actually, um, from the same area kinda.

Uh, we grew up kinda like he's...

What, what, what made him such a good leader, you know, on the ice and off it when you were over there?

If that's the case, how far are you willing to go and what are you looking for?

Yeah, well, I mean, you're looking for that.

You're looking for the right-handed bat.

And I don't know how far you're willing to go.

Is a tie France and Seattle going to excite you? Luis Arias isn't going to give you the power.

They've got to give you two hits every game.

But right now, you're getting hits.

a great

Mm-hmm.

Curtis got it.

He's basically, he's a veteran.

He has a right to say what he wants to whoever he wants.

He's been there for a while, he, you know, in the Major Leagues, and he's done a good job for the most part.

But basically what it is is it's like, okay, you guys have done nothing, but you think you're everything because that's what the world's telling you.

You haven't done a thing in this game.

Mm-hmm

TC, good morning.

Good morning.

Wiggy, tough day back, buddy.

I can't believe I'm not jumping on the Curtis train, but Curtis having a good day.

Just wanted to talk about the whole Chapman thing.

Basically what Chapman's doing, and Wiggy, I'm sorry, but you missed on this

one.

Curtis got it.

Of all the players that have shown out here in the last couple of weeks, guys like Anthony Sigler and Andrew Monasterio and a guy who's going to pitch Jake Bennett tomorrow, how many of these do you think will be a part of a winning team moving forward?

That's a really good question.

You've got a lot of guys who are doing things they haven't done before and a lot of guys who are starting right now who have yet to prove that they can be everyday starters.

Siegler is an interesting guy because he could just be a guy who blossoms late with the opportunity.

Second base has been a real improvement for them.

Marcelo Meyer wasn't hitting.

And, you know, the injury, and now you've given some other guys opportunities at second base.

I'm just curious if they're going to add to it.

I have a feeling this is bothering him more even.

I think so, too.

You know, listen, I mean, William Braves had a real rough week, and, you know, especially over the weekend with the Yankee games, you saw the emotion.

You know, these guys feel helpless with what's going on in Venezuela right now.

When players are out in front of the gate, you know, collecting money, trying to show their support, you know, you don't see that from Major League players often.

So you can't imagine what these guys are going through while that's happening back home.

and where Contreras is an emotional guy to begin with.

Red Sox got to start sitting some of these guys down.

Defensively, there's still issues.

Yeah, I mean, listen, we spent a lot of time ripping Durbin.

But he has been really good defensively the entire season, and now he's hitting.

And he gets hurt yesterday, and they move Siegler over to third, and the very first ball is hit to him, and that's an error.

And then, you know, the error on Meyer in the seventh inning after he got a sore foot, whatever the case.

But it was as soon as one.

Like, it feels so fragile.

I mean, you

So, yeah, I mean, it would behoove everyone, fans, the organization, if they made the decision to sell as soon as possible.

Yeah, and listen, both Breslow and Kennedy said the same thing off the top.

They said, well, there's a two-week stretch here to see.

And that's fine.

You have to say that.

And I keep going back to 2019, the year after they won it all, the year they let Dave Dombrowski go.

And they didn't do anything at all at the trade deadline.

Does that mean anything to you?

It just seems that from the roster construction to the manager to the fundamentals and inability, I've never seen this team so disconnected, and I, like you, sat through the Bobby Valentine year as well.

And I thought we would, you know, we had what? There were 11 games on the 500 the other day for the first time since the COVID year.

And now you start comparing this season to 2020 and to 2012 under Bobby Valentine, and you thought you'd never have to revisit those seasons.

Yeah, that's the second at least seeming disagreement on an injury to a major player, right? The Anthony thing, where, again, it might be semantics that a strain is a partial tear, whatever the case, but it certainly seemed like Roman Anthony was going out of his way to make it clear he didn't agree with what was being said about his wrist and his leg and his finger.

And then yesterday when you get, yeah, Croce saying a lot worse than what we thought.

No idea when he's going to throw.

And then Breslau telling Chris Smith, good progress, nothing new.

What do you think could or might happen regarding certain positions there, Tom?

Tom, Karen, let's start with, I don't know if I have a full update on this, where Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony are in their respective comebacks.

Well, the trouble is at the moment they're not doing anything.

They're both shut down.

I mean, Anthony's doing everything but swinging a bat, which is, you know, the thing he needs to do.

And he tried that and they had to back off because he felt discomfort afterwards.

So that, you know, until he can start swinging a bat and when you start swinging a bat, it's a long progression.

First dry swings, then off the tee.

This team, Tom, just seems to be very concerned with what's happening in the crowd.

Yeah, the meeting that Veritech would lead before the start of each series, but then it was more about my tendencies against certain hitters and what he would see them doing in the on-deck circle, and he would let that inform his decision as to how to approach hitters more so than reams of data given to him by staff members.

Yeah, and that's more interesting than it might even seem on surface because I think what good teams have in baseball is guys who still sort of have that approach even now.

I mean, there's more information than ever before, and they all have the information.

But I still feel the best teams have at least a couple of guys who believe they're just going to kick everybody's ass no matter what they're facing.

And there's a great story, Alice Corey used to tell, when they got Kyle Schwarber back in 2021, right? It was a really young team and struggling at the plate.

And he came in, it was a couple of weeks after the trade deadline before he was ready to play.

It was in August.

You know, you've got to execute the pitch.

mean, are they going to start to take a small victory lapse after performances like we got from Durant out of this

series? Well, you know, the whole driveline thing, sometimes we lump it in and just make it represent all that is evil in modern coaching.

Their philosophy is hit the ball, line drive, in the air, hard.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

the worry sometimes is I feel the young hitters, especially take that and, and just turn it into, I have to swing as hard as I can.

And I think you've seen that with Caleb Durbin.

I think that's it last year.

So my question to you, Tom, is if we get towards the trade deadline and the Red Sox do sell, what's it going to take for them to sell because of the optics of it? Like, where would they have to be to actually be actively selling? Like, in full sell mode at the deadline.

I don't know if he is or not, but, uh, I don't think there's any evidence that he's, that he's a, a clubhouse cancer.

Yeah.

It's j- it's such a Boston concept that, you know, unless he's coming here from New York or Chicago, you know, like, he doesn't know anything about leadership.

He's been in a small market.

And we think, like, you know, 26 teams are small markets.

And, and so you gotta come here to prove it.

I, you know, I don't know.

Oh, yeah.