FRS

They Showed Me

I don’t know what has come over me. For the 2 springs I’ve lived here, I have outsourced the weeding and tidying up of the yards surrounding the house. This year I’m doing it myself. Donna was the yard person, and I’d just come in at the end with the whipper-snipper 1 and tidy the edges. Here in Portland, where the winter is nothing but rain, the weeds here are hardy, to say the least. I have spent a couple hours a day starting on Sunday, and I’ve sprayed weed killer over everything that is unsightly and have one half of one side yard done. I’ve yanked out all the dead stuff, and I put down weed-blocking fabric and mulch, so next year it should be easier. The second half is pretty easy because it is more mature; that should be one more day. In the other side yard the previous owners put down a layer of small gravel, which looked really nice, but they didn’t put down any weed block, so it is filled with hundreds of invasive sprouting things. I have got 25 or so thistle plants there. Some are as tall as 4′ high. That side will probably take me all next week…

The Sox did beat the Detroit Tigers today. It’s the first time this year they have won three in a row and swept a series. This weekend is a big test; they are home for a four-game series with the Tampa Bay Rays. Tampa is only a half game behind the Yankees in the division and are 8.5 games ahead of the Sox. The Rays are hot right now; they’ve won 6 in a row and 12 of their last 13 games.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 37.9%

 

On a Roll Now

The Red Sox have now won 2 games in a row and seem like they have righted the ship with the new manager and staff thing. Those wins bring their record all the way up to 15-21, and they are now a mere 10 games behind the dreaded Yankees in the division. Baseball Reference predicts their best record possible is 90-72. I say, “Ha,” they have one more game with Detroit tomorrow, and I’m predicting they lose, and their Wild Card chance will be right back down to 30% again.

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 31.7%

 

They’re One In A Million

After Tuesday’s loss to the Tampa Bay Rays the Red Sox’s probability to make the playoffs fell to 0.9%. It looked grim, but on Wednesday they beat the Rays and their probability “skyrocketed” to 1.7%! The joy was short lived as they managed to lose the next two games and their change to play in the baseball post season fell to 0.1% or one in thousand.

There are 8 games left in the 2024 season for them and they have to win all of them. That would be the easy part, the four teams in front of them would all have to lose at last 6 (that’s right six) of their last 8 games. One in a thousand sounds optimistic, more like one in a million.

Sure Didn’t Need That Break

The Red Sox had the best record in baseball from June 15th until July 14th with a 17-7 record. Then the 4 day All-Star break happened. “Second” half started Friday night and the Sox were in LA to play the Dodgers. They promptly lost all three games in spite of being ahead by several runs in two of them. Admittedly the Dodgers are a better ball club than the FRS, but they should have been able to win one of those three games.

Now they are off to play 3 games against the Colorado Rockies who are 36-64 and 23 games behind their division leaders, those same Dodgers. I hope the altitude doesn’t make them high2 and the Red Sox win at least 2 out of the three games.

That Didn’t Work Out So Well

I’ve been watching the FRS play baseball for a week now on MLB.TV, so yesterday when I tried to watch all I was offered was the audio. WTF. Turns out the game was on Apple TV+, who has worked out a deal with baseball to broadcast 2 Friday games every week.

Let me go and see if I can get a free trial just so I could watch the game. I already was a subscriber about a year ago, so I thought maybe if I use Donna’s name and a different email I could get one. Wrong, they are smarter than me I was denied. Might have worked had I used a different charge card…

Well, the lure of the game made me plunk down the one penny less than a 10 spot for a month of Apple TV+. My reward was after watching 5 wins in a row on MLB.TV, the Red Sox lost the Friday game 9-2 to the San Diego Padres.

The $9.99 is not a total loss though as now I can watch the third season of Slow Horses.

Just When I Thought I Was Out

They pulled me back in.

Earlier this month my BIL asked me how my Red Sox were doing and I really had no idea. I haven’t paid any attention for the last 3 or 4 years, curiosity peaked, I checked. In the AL East the Yankees were leading the division with the Baltimore Orioles a game back. The Red Sox along with the Rays and Blue Jays were battling for third place a whooping 15 games behind the MFY with all three hovering right around the .500 mark.

I looked ahead and last Saturday the Red Sox were going to be playing the Yankees with the game being Fox’s Saturday Game of the Week. When I tuned in, the game was between the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers. I guess because I’m west of the Mississippi I wouldn’t care about those two northeastern teams. So when an email showed up in my inbox on Sunday about my last chance to get MLB.TV at half price for the rest of the season, I signed up.

I would like to think that the fact that the FRS have won 4 straight was because that I started watching their games, but I know better. I’m sure they will soon settle back into that middling win one, lose one scheme of the first half of the season.

It Works

Two weeks ago I found out that the FRS were the free game of the day on MLBTV, so I thought I’d tune in. They were in last place in the division at 5 wins and 6 loses, but hey it’s still early in the season. I just looked today and currently the Red Sox are 13 & 13 and still in last place in the division, two games behind the Yankees and eight behind the division leading Tampa Bay Rays. Oh. well, wait’ll next year.

Plus I also wanted to see a game and check on how the whole pitch clock thing was working out. I’m not sure how the players like the clock, but according to a Bleacher Report article, MLB says it has knocked an average of 26 minutes from game times. Wow. The game I watched with the Angels still went almost 3 hours, but hey, it could have been nearly 3-1/2 hours.

I scanned back several games and found that several of their games have been just a few minutes over two and a half hours. This means that if I was still back on the east coast those 7:10 PM starts would be ending at a sensible half past ten. This pitch clock thing might have even prevented those games against their arch rivals the Yankees running to nearly midnight. And if I remember, I’ll see how long the games against New York when they play them on back to back weekends in early June.