Category: Red Sox

I Need a Hype Man Like Donald Trump’s Hype Man

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All politics aside, Donald Trump’s hype man was ELECTRIC at the State of the Union tonight. Legit might put Bruce Buffer out of a job. I have not seen a hype man like this since early 2000’s hip hop. If I’m ever going to consider myself successful, I need a hype man to introduce me before I enter any room like Dwight Schrute’s Garden Party.

Ranking Boston’s 11 Championships This Century

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It’s only lunchtime, but I’m going to call it early and say that this is the best tweet of the day. It’s the final plays from all 11 Boston championships this century, in a tidy 2:18 minute clip. Getting back to the original question, though, which one was the sweetest? Let’s discuss.

11. 2007 Red Sox Winning never gets old, but there wasn’t much drama in this Fall Classic.

10. 2004 Patriots A very businesslike championship for the most dominant professional football team of my lifetime.

9. 2018 Red Sox A complete steamroller of a team, they rolled through the playoffs without much opposition. A very satisfying, even if not dramatic, championship.

8. 2014 Patriots Brady got back on the board after a ten-year drought, but one play in particular is more memorable than the game as a whole.

7. 2008 Celtics Made the Celtics relevant for the first time in almost 20 years. The real drama may have been the summer before, though, with Danny wheeling and dealing.

6. 2011 Bruins The B’s came back from an 0-2 deficit to hoist the Cup for the first time in nearly 40 years. I recognize that many Bruins fans would rank this one higher.

5. 2013 Red Sox The only competitive World Series the Red Sox have played in this century, it capped off an improbable run to a championship in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

4. 2016 Patriots THE FALCONS BLEW A 28-3 LEAD!

3. 2003 Patriots The Patriots never make it easy for their fans. [What I would give for a 30-point blowout next week!] The Patriots and Panthers scored a combined 37 points in the fourth quarter, and the Patriots won it (again) on an Adam Vinatieri field goal with time winding down.

2. 2001 Patriots The Patriots’ first Super Bowl championship, Boston’s first championship in 16 years, and the first championship of my lifetime. That would be tough to top, except…

1. 2004 Red Sox Curse reversed. Enough said.

What’s your number 1? Let us know on Twitter @The300sBoston and @The300sBigZ

Some Thoughts on the Baseball Hall Class of 2019

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The National Baseball Hall of Fame election results were announced last night and the Class of 2019 is now set. Here are my thoughts on the players who were elected, the players who weren’t, and the process in general:

    • Mariano Rivera getting elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility was no surprise, but Rivera becoming the first player ever to get elected unanimously to the Hall was a surprise to me. A pleasant surprise. I thought for sure some crusty old baseball writer would step in and stop it from happening. [More on the crusty old  baseball writers later.] Rivera’s Hall of Fame case was an open-and-shut case and it was great to see every voter get it right.
    • Edgar Martinez getting elected in his final appearance on the writers’ ballot was no surprise either. It took ten years on the ballot for him to get voted into the Hall of Fame, but his stock had been steadily rising over the last five years and he had momentum on his side. He wouldn’t have been on my ballot, but I’ve got no beef here. He was the greatest DH of all time when he retired.
    • Seeing Roy Halladay get elected was not a shock, but I didn’t expect to see him get 85.4% of the vote. I think the writers got this one right too, though. He was one of the best pitchers in the game for more than a decade, winning two Cy Young awards seven years apart (and one in each league).
    • Mike Mussina wouldn’t have appeared one my ballot. He was consistently good/very good for two decades, but never one of the handful of best pitchers in the game. It would seem that he got elected on his longevity and durability:

      With that information, I will withhold any further objections to his induction.

    • I was disappointed to see how far short Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds fell when the final voting results were released. For the record, I would vote for Clemens and Bonds. Watching the Baseball Hall of Fame Vote Tracker over the last few weeks, I was hopeful both would see jumps similar to what Edgar Martinez saw over the last few years.

      In the end, Clemens only jumped about 2% from last year, appearing on 59.5% of the ballots this year. Bonds only jumped about 3% this year, to 59.1%. It would appear that the crusty old baseball writers who prefer not to publicly release their ballots are to blame:

      Clemens and Bonds appear to be a package deal for most voters, one way or the other, and it’s getting harder to see them getting elected in the next three years. They don’t seem to have the same “momentum” Martinez had his last few years on the ballot.

    • While steroid accusations will probably keep Clemens and Bonds out of the Hall for good, politics and personality may just postpone Curt Schilling’s induction. I say that because his polling jumped about 10% this year to 60.9%. A force in October for 15 years, Schilling deserves a spot in Cooperstown. With comparable contemporary Mussina getting in this year, I think Schilling will eventually get in.
    • I don’t think Juan Pierre is a Hall of Famer, but I thought he deserved at least a few votes. He was one of 11 players on the ballot not to receive a single vote, and one of 16 players to receive less than 5% of the vote and fall off next year’s ballot. Pierre played in 162 games for five straight years in the mid-2000s and led his league in stolen bases three times (and caught stealing seven times).

Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer Just Dropped and Yes Spidey is Alive

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Okay first things first, this movie looks incredible, but it is such a bummer because it takes all of the suspense out of Avengers: Endgame. We all know what’s going to happen, but at least let us pretend to think differently. Having the actors for Black Panther, Spider-Man and others already signed on to do multiple sequels and then dropping the trailers for those movies while they’re still technically dead is a lame duck move. Kinda takes the venom (see what I did there?) out of this scene too.

But aside from all that, this movie looks awesome and Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio?

LETS GOO

Can Marvel do what Sony failed to do over and over again? Build a universe around the Sinister Six? I don’t know, but this is a hell of a start from the small sample size we’ve seen.

We also get some always welcomed Nick Fury in this movie, which I was not expecting.

Clearly this movie is going to have a much larger impact on the MCU as a whole, which makes sense since some key Avengers are definitely going to die in Endgame. We might be looking at Spidey taking on the mantle as one of the leaders of the Avengers moving forward and Nick Fury will help launch us into that next Phase of movies.

This spring and summer is going to be an adrenaline shot to the chest if you’re a fan of the MUC with Captain Marvel coming out on March 8th, then Avengers: Endgame on April 26th, and then followed up shortly thereafter with Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th. Buckle up.

Is Yesterday’s Patriots Win a Dead Cat Bounce?

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Image result for office space disagree gif

The Dolphins beating the Patriots with a Miami Miracle in Week 14 was a dead cat bounce. The Steelers beating the Patriots 17-10 in Week 15 was a dead cat bounce. The Vikings beating the Lions in Detroit in Week 16 was a dead cat bounce. That was not what we witnessed in Foxboro yesterday afternoon.

Of all that was said, written and Tweeted about the Patriots in the last 24 hours, this might be the most ridiculous.

What we witnessed in Foxboro yesterday was the systematic dismantling of a very good football team. The Patriots absolutely manhandled the Chargers. Tom Brady completed 34 of 44 pass attempts for 343 yards. Sony Michel rushed the ball 24 times for 129 yards and three touchdowns. Julian Edelman looked the best he’s looked all season and caught nine balls for 151 yards. James White caught 15 balls for 97 yards.

The Patriots defense held Philip Rivers to 25 of 51 on pass attempts. He did throw for 331 yards and three touchdowns, but much of that damage was done late in the fourth quarter when the game was already out of reach.

This is not to say that the Patriots will beat Kansas City on Sunday. It will be a very tough game on the road against a team that has already demonstrated that it can handle playoff pressure in the elements. But don’t tell me that the Chiefs are going to run the Patriots out of the building. That’s not going to happen. This will not be a repeat of September 29, 2014.

The Patriots may be underdogs on Sunday, but they’ve got a chip and a chair. Time and again, they’ve shown us that’s all they need.

 

Former Red Sox Third Baseman Will Middlebrooks Retires. Lets Revisit His Career

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Though in a much, much smaller sample size and not nearly as popular a player as No. 5 ever was, I could never shake the parallel between the two guy’s careers. Just like Nomar Garciaparra, Will Middlebrooks was a young, homegrown talent that raked when he got to Fenway as a rookie in 2012. Hit for power, hit for average, looked like a staple in your lineup for years to come. Until a fastball caught them both in the wrist, vastly altering the projection of their careers. Nomar rebounded and made a few more All-Star teams, but was never again the same player as the one who flirted with hitting .400 before the injury.

Middlebrooks effectively fell off a cliff after the broken wrist. Before the injury Middlebrooks was hitting .288 his rookie year with 15 home runs and 54 RBI in just 286 Plate Appearance. His emergence at third base was part of the reason the Red Sox traded fan favorite Kevin Youkilis just two months before.

Thankfully Middlebrooks locked down a ride or die woman in Jenny Dell because he was never the same player. In 2013 he hit 17 home runs, just 2 more than he had in his breakout rookie campaign with nearly 100 more Plate Appearances, and his average dropped 61 points. Unfortunately he never hit double digit home runs in a season again, plagued by injuries, as his Batting Average hovered around the Mendoza Line for the rest of his career.

It’s a damn shame because I remember watching him and seeing huge potential.

Either way, Will Middlebrooks will always be remembered as a key cog in the 2013 World Series winning team as well as party to one of the weirdest plays in World Series history.

Can’t take away that championship ring though. Congrats Will, enjoy retirement.

The Patriots Need a Plan at Offensive Coordinator

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As Mattes blogged yesterday, Josh McDaniels will be staying with the Patriots for the 2019 season. To use McDaniels’ own words, “the book is closed” on interviewing this year. Who knows why; whether or not he decided to just stay another year or whether one of the jobs he coveted, such as the opening with Cleveland and Baker Mayfield, was looking like it would go someone else like Freddie kitchens and McDaniels didn’t want to be seen as a losing horse. Backing out in that situation is never a bad move.

Either way, the Patriots can’t continue to play this year by year. It just doesn’t make sense to not have a plan for when McDaniels does inevitably leave. And unlike 99.9% of the the big questions regarding the Patriots future, this one falls in the “regardless of Tom Brady” category. Brady or no Brady, when McDaniels steps away the Pats need a plan.

The obvious first question to ponder is whether or not this is one of those things that Belichick already has schemed up in his head but has never disclosed, as shocking as that is. It’s not like anyone has really ever asked him, to my knowledge, if he has a plan past Josh McDaniels’ tenure at the healm of the offense. Maybe there’s someone in the college ranks Belichick likes. Maybe there’s a coach in the NFL, possibly a football lifer in a lower coordinator or some sort of “special assistant” position, that he’s given the wink and the nudge to for when McDaniels leaves. There’s a distinct possibility that someone on the Pats current staff has been tabbed as the heir apparent. The latter makes possibly the most sense as the Patriots are known to promote from within (HR APPROVED!). Come to think of it, it wouldn’t shock me if Steve Belichick himself was vying for the job. I mean it does seem like the three things that guy loves is lacrosse, getting stoned in the Gillette parking lot, and football; football being something that has climbed to the top of that list as time has gone by.

On the other side of all these questions is McDaniels himself and his decision to stay. You kind of have to wonder why, right? Why two years in a row does it seem like he has his choice of jobs but decides to stay in a Coordinator position? Maybe the most logical reason would be that the Patriots have secretly told him that he was next in line for Belichick’s job. The “if and when” of Belichick’s retirement has more rumors attached to it than possibly any other storyline in football, and the team has come out before I believe and said McDaniel’s isn’t necessarily tabbed to be their next head coach, but that very well could be all smoke and mirrors.

Then there’s the fact that McDaniels has been here since 2012 and before that from 2001-2008. He has a family and so maybe he just wants to stay rooted. I mean, if we assume his kids are about a decade away from college then there’s no reason for him to not wait until his early 50s to be a head coach again, rather than uproot them now. He’d still be fairly young for that role being not yet 43 now. Lastly, and something Red and I discussed as a possibility, is the fact that maybe Josh McDaniels is simply shell shocked from his last time being a head coach. While his stint in Denver was not a without positives, it was far from a swimming success as well. Maybe he just chooses to stay at a job he is wildly successful in at an organization where he knows all the pieces and the operation cold. O and his QB is Tom Brady. There’s that.

Regardless, I hope both McDaniels and the Patriots have a plan for the future as right now we only have a plan for 2019. And, let’s face it, there’s about eight months until the beginning of next season, so that plan could change. The bottom line is that the “next era” of the Patriots, which we all are too afraid to talk about, is not just when this team moves on from Brady or Belichick. It would also be launched in part when we have to replace McDaniels and the rejuvenation he has brought to Brady’s career and the offense as a whole.

-Joey B

P.S: Anyone get that “close the book” is a reference to the Mafia and how they add names to the list of “made men”? McDaniels is such a weirdo.

Counterpoint: Nick Saban is a Fraud

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ESPN.com – SANTA CLARA, Calif. — With stunning ease — and a freshman quarterback — Clemson toppled college football’s greatest dynasty again to become the first perfect playoff champion. Trevor Lawrence passed for 347 yards and three touchdowns and the second-ranked Tigers beat No. 1 Alabama 44-16 on Monday night in the College Football Playoff national championship game.

So I am actually going to lay out an argument here, and I implore you to stick with me.

Basically, I don’t think that just because you cannot successfully coach in the NFL, it does not mean you are a bad coach. However, I think if you are a complete and abject fucking failure in the NFL, it may be a red flag and something to keep an eye on. An analogy, for reference, is if you were to look at someone in the corporate world’s resume and after a steady climb they plateaued awhile back. They still achieve highly and work on important stuff in their current role, but never got to the next level. Why?

In the case of Nick Saban, there are no two ways about it, he was terrible as the coach of Miami. Not unlike that catchers mitt Pete Carroll with the Patriots, he could not understand the more subtle nuances of being a coach in the pros and it doomed the Dolphins while he was there. So he took his hair plugs back to the college ranks and Alabama, where he has run train on college football for the past decade or so.

So my argument is invalid right? If he’s had this much success in college he has to be a very high-level coach right? Wrong.

You see, during his time in college, Nick Saban, with his $5,000.00 suits and perfect diction has been an excellent recruiter. He woos people. He’s a good salesman. During his run of convincing half of the 5-star recruits in the country to come play for him at Alabama, he has had a pretty easy go of trampling his opponents in college football that simply fielded an inferior group of players, no offense to them. I mean, it’s basic probability when you break it down. Goliath beats David 9/10 times.

Unfortunately, Saban’s brute force luck has run out and now he has to contend with Dabo Swinney and a just-as-talented Clemson program. And what happens? They get run out of the fucking building. The team that is asked once a season if they could beat the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE’S BEST TEAM get’s seven shades of shit beaten out of them. Because as good of a recruiter as Saban is, he has proven to just not be that good of a coach. A poor executor who can’t make in-game adjustments. Because well, if you can adjust in game you don’t generally fail to score in the second half while your opponent drops 13 to go along with the 31 they dropped in the first half. You just don’t.

So there it is. You can trust Nick Saban to sell you a race car, just don’t ask him to race it for you. You can go through him to make it to the pros, just don’t always expect a National Championship. It might not happen. Not anymore.

If Josh McDaniels Goes to Cleveland Am I a Browns Fan Now?

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ProFootballTalk – As hyperbolic adverbs go, this one is right up there with “strenuously object.”

Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is “enthusiastically interested” in the Browns’ vacant head coaching job, according to Steve Doerschuk of the Canton Repository.

Josh McDaniels has patrolled the Pats sideline representing the offensive side of the ball for a combined ten seasons now and, minus his two season stint in Denver, has been a part of Patriot Nation since ’01. Let that sink in for a second. Josh McDaniels has played some part of all five Super Bowls. He may not be as much of a part of the soup that has made this Dynasty so great as say, Belichick and Brady, but he has been a necessary ingredient and since 2012 has brought the Patriots offense back to life, giving Tom Brady the second act he desperately craved and deserves. Maybe our fandom shouldn’t be required to travel with him wherever he goes next, but he deserves a tip of our cap and a nod should we bump into him between September and February.

With all of that said, we have a dilemma on our hands should he go to Cleveland partner with my best friend Baker Mayfield. If McDaniels landing spot is alongside the fire breathing Prince That was Promised, I may have to hand in my Patriots Loyalty Card. On one hand you have the coach, who I’ve spent enough time on today. On the other, you have a quarterback who not only led the Browns to their best season since 2011, but has enough electricity in his undersized (haaaaaaahahaha) body to power an entire city. And then tell said city to go fuck itself when it besmirches him. Baker Mayfield is a competitive lunatic and I love every second of it.

So what do I do here? What do I do if Josh McDaniels goes to the Browns? Do we just set up a Pats Nation Central shop in Cleveland? Do I become one of those asshats who says they have “two teams” and probably plays with My Little Pony dolls? Will Red hold a press conference where I will be sitting at a table and have two hats in front of me, one Browns and one Patriots, where I’ll announce where my allegiance now lays? I just don’t know. But here’s hoping we find out.

-Joey B

P.S – I’m obviously a Pats fan for life fuckheads. But Baker/McDaniels would be must watch T.V.

LeBron Does Know He Lost to the Warriors 3 Out of 4 Times in the NBA Finals Right? Right??

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I give LeBron credit for winning the NBA Finals in 2016 because the current era Golden State Warriors are one of the best teams of all time. But with that being said it took a Draymond Green suspension and one of the most cold blooded dagger threes of all-time from Kyrie Irving to get him there. He also lost to that same Warriors team in 2015, 2017, and 2018. So maybe releasing footage of yourself harping on how the Warriors fuck up all the time is not the best look. Self awareness has never been LeBron’s strong suit though.

This all comes just a couple of days after footage came out of LeBron crowning himself the greatest of all-time for winning the ’16 finals. Despite losing to that same team 3 out of 4 times.

I don’t want to always harp on LeBron, I really don’t, but he just sets himself up for it. Listen, LeBron has done a lot of great things:

He brought the city of Cleveland its first title in 50 years.

He was excellent in Trainwreck.

And he is one of the best players of all time, but despite an impressive 8 straight appearances in the championship round he is still 3-6 in the NBA Finals. So maybe, just maybe, one pretty impressive comeback against a really good team doesn’t propel you to GOAT status. If that were the case then Ray Allen could say the same thing for his Game 6 dagger 3 against the Spurs.

Come to think of it, if it weren’t for ice cold blood in the veins of Jesus Shuttlesworth and Kyrie, LeBron James would be 1-8 in the NBA Finals.

Unrelated note: Stumbled upon this incredible LeBron impersonation…