Picked-up pieces while lending some perspective to this “greatest ever” Red Sox season . . .
■ Anybody else worried about Chris Sale? While the Sox were reaching all of their offensive milestones in Wednesday’s 19-3 rout of the putrid Orioles (Mookie stole his 30th! Xander knocked in his 100th! Whee!), the true takeaway from the day-night doubleheader was the state of Sale and the Sox bullpen.
Sale had a great two-thirds of a season, but the Sox go into the playoffs banking on a guy who pitched only 17 innings after July 27. His velocity is way down. Sale was in the low 90s in his final start Wednesday, and the Orioles cuffed him around for three runs on four hits, a walk, and two hit batsmen in 4⅔ uneven innings in which he threw 92 pitches.
Sale will be working on eight days’ rest when he gets the ball at Fenway for Game 1 of the ALDS Oct. 5. He said he’ll try to figure some things out in the bullpen between now and then. Sale has thrown 158 innings this season and has a history of fizzling in September.
The Red Sox have managed and micromanaged Sale’s pitch count/innings more than any pitcher in franchise history, but here we are a week away from the playoffs and they have no idea what to expect from their ace. Not good.
The men on the Red Sox pitching staff at this hour have made a whopping 19 postseason starts and have won none of them. That’s right, fans. Your guys are 0 for 19 as starters in the postseason. David Price is the clubhouse leader with no wins in nine starts, but Rick Porcello and Joe Kelly each have four starts without winning. Sale and Drew Pomeranz have one apiece. Price and Kelly have been credited with postseason wins as relievers.
Speaking of relievers, Matt Barnes and Craig Kimbrel gave up a combined seven earned runs while getting two outs against the 46-112 Orioles Wednesday night.
The high-flying Sox certainly took care of business against the bums of the American League, but they had losing records against three of the four teams they could face in the AL playoffs. Overall they went 17-19 vs. those teams.
The 2018 team gets to say it is the winningest regular-season team in Red Sox history. But even if they sweep the Yankees this weekend, they will not have the highest winning percentage in team history. The 1912 Red Sox went 105-47, a winning percentage of .691. Still the best.
The 1969 Orioles won 109 games, but Earl Weaver always regretted taking his foot off the gas in the final week. The O’s lost five of their final six and wound up losing the World Series to the Mets in five games. Hard to believe what has happened to a once-great organization.
■ Stats, Lies, and Videotape: Baseball Reference lists the majors’ top five bullpens by WAR as: 1. Red Sox; 2. Phillies; 3. Astros; 4. A’s; 5. Nationals. Says a lot about WAR. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
■ Bob Kraft issued one of his strong denials in June, saying rumors of a Rob Gronkowski trade were “hogwash.’’ The owner insisted, “That was never in the works; it’s just completely made up.’’ Now Gronk says, “Yeah, that happened.’’ Got to love it when the owner gets ratted out by one of his own players.
■ Got the Supreme Court on your brain? You should know that late justice Byron “Whizzer” White (nominated by JFK) was runner-up for the Heisman Trophy when he played halfback at Colorado. Bill Belichick’s dad, Steve, was White’s teammate with the Detroit Lions and served as a blocking back for the Whizzer for six games in 1941.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that justice Clarence Thomas was known as “Cooz” when he was a high school basketball player in Georgia in the 1960s.
■ The great Don Orsillo returns to Fenway Saturday as part of Fox’s coverage of Sox-Yankees. It’s Orsillo’s first time back in Fenway since the Sox fired him for no good reason in 2015.
■ The American League MVP race is over and has been over for a while. Not even the sun-starved Mike Trout/WAR nitwits can give the award to anybody other than Mookie Betts.
■ QUIZ: Price is often seen doing crossword puzzles as he sits in front of his locker before games. Tim Wakefield did the same thing. Name a Red Sox starting pitcher from the second half of the 1986 pennant-winning season who did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day (answer below).
■ When the Colts play here next Thursday, why don’t the Patriots make it official and retire Adam Vinatieri’s No. 4 jersey? The 45-year-old kicker won three Super Bowls with the Patriots and is the team’s No. 2 all-time scorer (1,158 points).
He made the greatest clutch kick in NFL history (Snow Bowl vs. Raiders, the final game in the history of Foxboro Stadium) and is only 34 points shy of passing Morten Andersen as the NFL’s all-time scoring leader.
■ Yankee shortstop Didi Gregorius becomes the latest ballplayer to hurt himself with a head-first slide. Managers should make it a fineable offense.
■ It keeps getting worse for former Patriots assistant Bill O’Brien in Houston. After the Texans — who were supposed to contend this year — dropped to 0-3 with a loss to the Giants, O’Brien said, “The play-calling has been terrible and we’ve got to look at that. I’ve got to do a better job of getting these guys into a rhythm.’’
Matt Patricia’s big win last Sunday gave former Belichick assistants a 10-14 record vs. the Hoodie as head coaches. O’Brien is 0-5 and may never recover from the pantsing he received in the Foxborough opener this season.
■ Mets PR whiz Jay Horwitz is hanging it up after nearly 40 years. Tyler Kepner of the New York Times penned an excellent profile of Horwitz, and included the detail that Horwitz has a hat size of 8¾. Mr. Met indeed. That puts Horwitz in the Hardball Big Head Hall of Fame alongside Giants manager Bruce Bochy, former Yankee outfielder Hideki Matsui, and former commissioner Fay Vincent.
■ Dennis Eckersley will be working the Cleveland-Houston ALDS series for TBS.
■ All are invited to Middlebury Lane in Beverly on Nov. 2 from 4-6 p.m. for the dedication of “Pete’s Park,” a field named in honor of former Boston College baseball captain and ALS research advocate Pete Frates, the founding father of the Ice Bucket Challenge.
■ The Patriots are 24th in USA Today’s latest NFL power rankings. New England is ranked behind the Jets (22nd).
■ Best of luck to fellow old guy and worthy competitor Steve Buckley, who is leaving the Boston Herald for “The Athletic” after a quarter-century at the venerable tabloid.
■ How’s this for random? In the late 1970s, when Jerry Remy was a young major leaguer and I was getting started in the newspaper business, Remy picked me up hitchhiking on Route 128.
■ Quiz answer: Tom Seaver. (You were thinking Roger Clemens or Oil Can Boyd?)