2026 MLB thread - Play Ball!

[TrekStar]

Well the Redsox got off to a flying 1-5 start, not what we here in Beantown were expecting.

Home opener Friday against the Padres with ex St. Louie Redbirds pitcher Sonny Gray starting, maybe some home cooking will turn things around. The Braves are 4-2, I’ll take 4 wins every 6 games all year, just need to have Chris Sale stay healthy which is usually wishful thinking.

[MRP]

Yeah Sox off to a poor start. After opening day they looked listless and not locked in at all. Same story offensively as last year-too many strike outs and terrible results with runners in scoring position. The new acquisitions-Durbin (6 games 0 hits), Contaras, Gray and Suarez are all off to slow starts. Crochet was very good in his first start, not so much in his second. They are vulnerable in middle relief, which is a problem early when starters aren't fully stretched out, and they are neither hitting not playing defense well early on, so 1-5 it is. It's not panic time, it's early and the WBC made spring training weird and some guys clearly are still in spring training mode, but they need to start turning things around soon. Their division is too good for them to get buried early in the season and expect to be able to climb out of it to make the post-season. However, they have a very hard schedule until mid May, with only 2 series in the first 2 months against teams that aren't considered contender or that made the playoffs last year, so they can't afford to delay finding fixes too long, or they will be buried in the basement of their division. I still see them as an 85-90 win team, but it's a lot more work to get there now, and you need to be at the higher end of that range rather than the lower if you hope to make it to the post-season, even as a Wild Card. There's 4 teams in the East alone that are playoff contenders and at least 2 in each of the the other AL divisions, and there's always a surprise contender or two in that race that no one expected to be, so getting to the post season is not going to be easy.

-M

[Dan2Dan]

How is everyone doing one week in? ....Dan, I feel that Padres fans are in their own version of purgatory being in the same division as the Dodgers.

Alas: it's telling that, when a friend mentioned to me last night in passing that the Padres were 2-6, I thought to myself, "Ok, that's a little better than I thought, actually..." Then I did the quick math in my head, and that would result in a 42-120 season!

If there's any 'upside,' when the Padres have seasons like this, after Labor Day I can typically get good seats at a heavy discount on StubHub. So I suppose there's that to look forward to!

[MRP]

Alas: it's telling that, when a friend mentioned to me last night in passing that the Padres were 2-6, I thought to myself, "Ok, that's a little better than I thought, actually..." Then I did the quick math in my head, and that would result in a 42-120 season!

If there's any 'upside,' when the Padres have seasons like this, after Labor Day I can typically get good seats at a heavy discount on StubHub. So I suppose there's that to look forward to!

Red Sox Padres at Fenway this weekend, let's see if one of those two can turn things around after poor starts.

-M

[Dan2Dan]

Red Sox Padres at Fenway this weekend, let's see if one of those two can turn things around after poor starts.

-M

During the 1991 season, I went to several Red Sox games at Fenway. For a guy from San Diego, it was an awesome experience (juxtaposed against the Padres playing in an NFL stadium at the time): a bespoke, small baseball park, historic and famous, Red Sox were just 'ok' that year so the vibe was mellow, the park still had actual old, worn wooden benches in the 'bleacher' section. The bleacher tickets were, I think, $6 and were readily available walk-up at the time of the game(s). An Italian sausage on a roll from a street vendor (with peppers and onions) was, I think, $3, and little plastic cups of beer were $2. Even including the fees for the T, and with each of my friends and I having 3-4 of those beers during the game, my total cost would be $20 or less. Remains a really fond memory.

I've long assumed that that ticket avilability & chill vibe in the crowd & cost structure vanished forever once the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004....