This Week In Hot Takes

Our Man Shank is awarded fifth place in this week's Awful Announcing Hot Takes Sweepstakes:

5. Dan Shaughnessy calls a Red Sox win “the most demoralizing victory in baseball history”: Yes, the 8-7 win the Boston Red Sox recorded against the Miami Marlins Tuesday, with the winning run coming on a walkoff throwing error by Miami shortstop J.T. Riddle, wasn’t the world’s most impressive result. The win moved the Red Sox to 91-42 and dropped the Marlins to 53-80, so Boston wasn’t exactly playing a titanic opponent, and this saw the Red Sox blow leads in both the eighth and ninth inning. Marlins’ manager Don Mattingly said “Obviously, the ending was not very good” afterwards, and Boston Globe baseball columnist Nick Cafardo started his game story with “Usually after a walkoff win, you feel pretty good about the night’s work. But the Red Sox didn’t so much as win this one,” and used that story to raise questions about the Boston bullpen. That’s all understandable; some games are lost more than won, and even a win can be an opportunity to examine a team’s flaws. But Cafardo’s fellow Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy really brought the hyperbole when it came to discussing this on Twitter the next day:

I hope I am not alone in my belief that last night's Red Sox walkoff win was the most demoralizing victory in baseball history.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 29, 2018

That’s quite the absurd take. There are plenty of actually-demoralizing victories in baseball history, from ones where a team won while suffering an injury to a star player that wound up destroying their season (Pyrrhus knew a thing or two about that idea) from pennant race wins where a team won, but didn’t make progress or didn’t make the playoffs thanks to results elsewhere. And in a different light, this win could even be seen as a rallying moment for the Red Sox, one showing their determination to fight on despite blown leads and bullpen struggles. Criticism of their play is fair, especially with the winning run coming on that error, but calling this “the most demoralizing victory in baseball history” is a ridiculous argument.