It’s a beer in the shower kind of morning.
Seriously, what is it with this baseball season? I know that you know exactly what I’m talking about. The tension is so thick that you could poke it with one of A-Rod’s used steroids needles. And its only mid-April. There’s five and a half months of regular season baseball left before the postseason begins.
This tension is being felt throughout baseball, not just in Red Sox Nation – though it’s certainly bad enough here. Since writing a post titled “What, we worry?” on April 10, which urged us to take early season baseball with a grain of salt, here is what’s happened with the Red Sox: they’ve gone 1-5, Dustin Pedroia and Koji Uehara got MRIs and we wondered if they would spend a significant amount of time on the disabled list; John Farrell got ejected after the team got screwed on two instant replay calls in New York; and last night, we saw Mike Napoli dislocate a finger on his left hand.
Ready to breathe yet? Or are you afraid of what might come next?
A day before publishing “What, we worry?”, the Red Sox celebrated a 4-2 victory over the Rangers. We weren’t even allowed to breathe during that game until David Ortiz hit a homer that gave the Red Sox the lead in the 8th inning. Then, after a quick sigh of relief, we saw Edward Mujica warming up in the bullpen instead of Koji. And we all collectively reached for our heart medication, if we’re lucky enough to have some.
As for the rest of baseball, John Farrell’s ejection highlighted two issues that are rapidly rising to their boiling points: the umpires suck and they’re blowing calls despite being able to use instant replay; and nobody knows what a catch is anymore. But if a player, coach, or manager dares to speak out publicly about these issues, Joe Torre (whose name may be legally changed to “Joseph Torre Goebbels” before this season is over) has said they will be fined and, perhaps, suspended. Torre made a point out of Farrell somehow not getting suspended when announcing that he will be fined.
The new definition of a catch goes beyond the Napoli/Cervelli replay that got Farrell ejected, where the debate centered around whether Napoli caught the ball when it hit his glove or when he closed his glove. Now we don’t even know what a catch is on a simple outfield fly ball because of the asinine new transfer rule.
David Schoenfield at ESPN has a good rundown of the new transfer rule and the problems it has already created. Dave Cameron at Fangraphs goes beyond the problems already created by the new transfer rule and theorizes that it’s now legal for an outfielder to catch a fly ball, run to the infield, “drop” the ball out of his glove to invalidate the catch, then toss the ball to a base where there’s a force out and maybe even tag out another runner to get a double play.
That, technically, could be a legal play now. Seriously.
So, to summarize: the Red Sox have already given us 10 million heart attacks, nobody knows what a catch is anymore, and it’s only April 16.
Stock up on whiskey now and make sure there’s a beer in the fridge for the morning, baseball fans. There’s snow on the ground and the temperature will barely scrape the 40’s today, but don’t be fooled: October is a long way off.
