Does "Hot" Exist?

One of the idiosyncrasies of baseball's long season is how much depends on when you play a team.  Are they banged up? On a roll? And what about your team? Hot or not?

Somebody with even more time on their hands than me should, someday, do a grand statistical analysis of how teams did when encountering "hot" or "not hot" teams, to see how that came out. They could come up with a gigantic algorithm to, well, predict baseball, previously thought to be impossible even by the greatest minds the game has produced.

The Red Sox right now are hot, which is one reason why they will sweep the Yanks handily in their own ballpark.

The Sox not only swept a pretty good Angels team, but took two of three from Seattle before that. Their pitching is perfectly aligned, and the only significant piece they're missing is the aging Dustin Pedroia, who has been out almost all season and much of last year anyway.

The Yanks' run production, by contrast, is in a month-long death spiral, and the team has significant injuries. Tanaka's hammies and Montgomery's likely career-ending TJ surgery are only the start of it.

It's hard to say exactly how banged up the team is, thanks to the Yanks' usual, paranoid secrecy that makes James Jesus Angleton seem like Jimmy Stewart by comparison. But Andujar, El Matador, is rumored to have a wrist injury, Gardy should definitely be on the DL already after not only hurting his leg but concussing himself against the wall in Philly, and while Judge has played well after jamming his thumb against the Mets, the big guy has hit only 3 homers since then and got another "rest" day in Philadelphia.

Bird's Limitless Potential has obviously not recovered from his last foot surgery, and while it may be addition-by-subtraction not to have to watch the sucking wound that is now Sanchez's game, the fact that Higgy will be behind the plate for a game this weekend gets us back to subtraction again.

Oh, and of course we will have to see Neil Walker get another start.

All that aside, though, hot or not, the fact remains that the Red Sox are simply a better ball club and a better organization.

First, it's a better balanced team.  The starting pitching is much, much deeper than the Yanks', which is critical now and will be especially critical in October.  I keep waiting for the bullpen, which I think is their big weak spot, to fall apart—but it doesn't.

All in all, the Sox score more runs than we do, 5.2-5.1; allow fewer runs, 3.67-3.76; commit fewer errors, 42-45; and steal more bases at a better rate, 60 in 73 attempts, as opposed to 33 in 45 attempts.

What's more, this is likely to be the case indefinitely.

Oh, I know that the Sox' minor-league cupboard is supposed to be bare, and Sports Illustrated, at least, thinks we have MLB's best combination of current roster and future prospects. But I believe that both those calculations are negated by Boston's superior front office, and superior coaching/management.

Dombrowski and the usual suspects up at Fenway have once again run rings around Coops, most of all by signing J.D. Martinez, a hitter light years better than Stanton. I have no idea if that's due to nature or juice, but on the field, Martinez is an all-around better bat, and when he wears out he will be gone, after his five-year contract ends.

We will still have Stanton for six more, insufferable years after that. I know, I know: I was all for the trade when it happened, and it's not like we gave up too much. But we could have developed or traded the kids, Devers and Guzman, and still dealt Castro for pitching. And...not been stuck with the  fifty-ton anchor contract of a highly streaky, one-dimensional player.

The Sox' ability to spin straw into gold also remains breathtaking. They outbid us for Moncada and then, when his development looked shaky at best, perceived that quickly enough to hand him off to the Pale Hose for the best pitcher in the league. Smart. And incidentally, anyone who thinks the Sox' farm system will not be far out ahead of ours again in about three years is sadly mistaken.

But Boston's superior front office is no revelation. What I find much more disheartening is our approach to instruction.

I don't know if it's our obeisance to the New Baseball—the idiotic, "Swing For the Fences But Don't Be Afraid to Take a Third Strike" approach we have adopted—or what. But the fact is that our players, especially our hitters, tend to quickly decline, while theirs get better.

The horrendous collapse of Gary Sanchez—and Jesus Montero before him—are only the most obvious examples. Didi is generally reverting to form, even Judge's numbers have slowly decreased, and Torres and Andujar are cooling off quicker than that cake with the green icing that Richard Harris left out in the MacArthur Park rain.

Contrast that to the progress made by Babe Benintendi and Mookie Betts. Even Jackie Bradley, Jr., has shown signs of life lately—just in time for us.

Fact is, our organization is sorely lacking in philosophy and instruction. We fill our players' heads with nonsense, and are utterly baffled when it comes to helping them adjust, once other teams have adjusted to them. What we're looking at is a great, lost chance for an incredible dynasty—sort of a general American theme these days.