Don't Count Them Out

Shank gives us an update on the Celtics and Bruins in the 'playoffs':

You’re never as good as you look when you win and you’re never as bad as you look when you lose.

Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver said this regularly back in the 1970s when the Orioles were usually very good. Earl’s wisdom is my takeaway from a weekend watching the Celtics and Bruins.

The Celtics are up. The Bruins are down.

The Celtics demolished the defending World Champion Toronto Raptors, 112-94, in the Orlando bubble Sunday afternoon. It was the first game of a best-of-seven conference semifinal and gave a legion of Green People hope that their team can advance to the conference finals and maybe make it to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010.

A decent column ensues from there. Can't wait for the sudden attitude change if, for example, the Bruins lose tonight.

Standing Small

Recent events compel Shank to criticize the 2020 Red Sox more than he usually does:

In a week of American protest and crisis, the Red Sox stood small

The quaint notion that what has happened in Kenosha and elsewhere this week are mere protests is world class sophistry. These are riots by any reasonable / logical definition. Look at this guy's thread and tell me otherwise. Andy Ngo's by far and away the number one chronicler of these riots that Shank and other media rumpswabs try to pass off as protests. False premises like this need to be taken out back and tossed in the dumpster.

The Red Sox are not only a horrible baseball team, they are also ever-divided. And really hard to like.

After playing a game Wednesday — the day the NBA shut down and three major league games were postponed — the Sox had a team vote Thursday and agreed to stand behind Jackie Bradley Jr., who had told his teammates he wasn’t going to play Thursday. In the early hours after the decision to boycott was announced, Sox outfielder Kevin Pillar and reliever Ryan Brasier made their true feelings known.

Participating in a Zoom news conference, Pillar said, “It was not an easy decision for a lot of us . . . We all have different beliefs. We don’t agree on everything . . . I don’t think right now, as a country, we should be necessarily identifying individual groups of people that need to be uplifted . . . ’'

Worth noting - the presence of these ellipses suggest / confirm that Shank (or the guy he copied it from) is doing what's known in the recording business as sampling; in other words using parts and sections potentially taken out of context and other pertinent and inconvenient facts removed for maximum negative impact. That said, I see nothing incendiary about those two semi-sentences. Clumsy for sure, but that's it.

Not to be outdone:

A few hours after Pillar spoke, Brasier retweeted a video mocking Doc Rivers’s emotional response to the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, Wis. It’s truly hateful and appalling stuff. See if you can find it. Search Twitter for Hodgetwins — conservative comedians with almost 600,000 followers. Brasier evidently is a big fan. Pinky Higgins would be so proud. Color me haunted.

Brasier’s retweet was discovered Friday by NBC Sports Boston’s John Tomase. Brasier did not respond to Tomase’s request for comment, but he deleted the retweet from his timeline. Ron Roenicke said that Brasier reached out to Bradley and the Sox manager to explain his actions. Wonder what Brasier would say to Rivers, whose father was a cop.

I'm sort of two minds with this guy and what he did - on the one hand, getting in trouble for a retweet seems incredibly petty. On the other hand (and the one I'm going with) is that Brasier's always seemed like a knucklehead to me and this merely provides confirmation. Doc Rivers is a class guy par excellence and that was a no-thought classless thing to do.

No, I did not miss the Pinky Higgins reference / name drop -of course not! I'm not a baseball historian / aficionado like my co-blogger, but the guy sounds like a real winner (please note the sarcasm, folks!). You'll see some other name drops later on that you're going to love...

I spoke with Sox baseball boss Chaim Bloom after midnight Friday.

“I talked to Ryan about this today,’' said Bloom. “He was very apologetic and regretted the timing, and the message that the timing sent. He took down one of those tweets and spent time having a lot of conversations in our clubhouse with people he felt he needed to have conversations with. He was upset and regretful about the entire thing . . . This wasn’t something that we felt warranted discipline. He made a mistake, but once he did I think he took a lot of the right steps to try to make amends.’'

This is so Boston Red Sox. In a week of American protest and crisis, the Sox stood small while so many around them demonstrated dignity and unity. While America paused to take a long look in the mirror, the Red Sox provided division and continuation of a culture that has long plagued the Boston baseball franchise.

Again, these aren't protests anymore; they are riots, complete with bullhorns, looting, fire and physical assault, and they haven't been 'protests' for quite a while to the degree they ever were. Siding with rioters and calling it 'dignity and unity' seems to have things like priorities seriously inverted. Fortunately these riots are largely confined to ten or fifteen downtown areas of certain major American cities controlled by Democrats lock stock and barrel for a period on average equivalent to my age.

“You bring any group of this many people together, you’re bound to have people with different views and different thoughts,’' said Bloom. “Peaceful protests are about changing minds. If we can’t look at progress that gets made towards a goal in a room of people with very different opinions — if we can’t look at that and see progress, then we’re undermining our own goals.’'

“We don’t demand that everyone have the same political opinion,’' added Sox CEO Sam Kennedy.

Good. This is America. You are not obligated to agree with everyone else, and a big league ball club doesn’t release a player for being a dumbbell.

Everyone got that? Now watch this:

But why can’t Pillar and Brasier keep their different views behind closed doors? This was an opportunity to back a teammate without pushing one’s own agenda. Most other teams presented as unified. Would a little unity from the Red Sox be too much to ask?

Pillar was asked a question and presented his own viewpoint, albeit roughly. Braiser? He's a knob and not getting a pass on that - a lot of times shut the fuck up is the better part of valor. That said, Shank just contradicted himself in consecutive sentences, and not for the first time.

I truly wish these 2020 Red Sox could play in front of fans at Fenway. It would expose them to the boos they so richly deserve. And not just because they are 10-22. They remind me of the loathsome Joe Kerrigan Red Sox of 2001. Mike Lansing. Carl Everett. You remember those guys, right?

An awesome blast from the past! Behold, the Bing results from typing in 'curly haired boyfriend' - this post is now writing itself!

These Sox certainly honor the ball club’s time-tested legacy of “25 players, 25 cabs.” They have only one Black player, just as they did when they were baseball’s last team to integrate 60 years ago. And they can’t seem to agree on anything.

Remember last year when the defending world champs were summoned to be honored at the White House? All the white guys went to Washington. With the exception of J.D. Martinez and Sandy Leon, all the Sox persons of color stayed home.

That's because it has become a politicized event, aided and abetted by media members like Shank.

Opening night at Fenway, 2020? All the visiting Orioles took a knee during a pregame presentation dedicated to Black Lives Matter. Six Red Sox kneeled — Bradley, Michael Chavis, Alex Verdugo, and three coaches who are men of color. Everybody else stood.

Now we have the last-place Sox stacking loss after loss like a pile of cord wood, then going public with clubhouse division during a week of protest and reflection by every team in every sport.

After Friday afternoon’s unfortunate flurry, Bradley, Brasier, and the rest of the Red Sox participated in a pregame ceremony at Fenway commemorating Jackie Robinson’s first day in baseball. When all players stood at attention, I couldn’t help but wonder what Ryan Brasier was thinking.

I alluded to this point two posts ago, but it bears repeating and a bit more expansion - there's a big difference between overt, direct acts of racism like barring people from businesses, pro sports teams and the like (which I see little to no evidence of in modern American society today) and in the case of Jacob Blake in Kenosha (which apparently triggered this latest pro sports boycotting this week), claiming solidarity with a black man wielding a knife and roaming around menacing other people and when white cops intervene lots of people freak out and call the cops every fucking name in the book. These two things could not be any more different from each other but here we are with some degree of American citizens accusing law enforcement and those who support them of the most vile and wicked motives and behaviour for the act of doing their jobs.

I'm quite sure we don't need to 'reflect' on the notion that thugs are allowed to rampage certain American cities and call the cops racists for doing their jobs.

Boston Globe Death Watch - XI

I'd call this 'arranging the deck chairs on the Titantic'.

Boston Globe employees were told Wednesday that employees should continue to work remotely through the end of the year, although they may choose to come in to the office for no more than two days a week after Labor Day. What follows is the top of the memo from the Boston Globe Media Partners executive team, which I obtained from a trusted source.

Hello all,

On behalf of the Executive Leadership Team and Safety Committee, we want to provide some important updates and clarification on opening the Boston Exchange Place / 53 State Street office, as well as the Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. offices. We have talked before about how the Boston office would reopen after Labor Day to serve as an optional amenity for people who needed a break working from home, and that it would still be limited to not more than two days per week. We want to emphasize that while we greatly miss being together, not only are you not expected to return work in person, but we do not want or need for you to come in.

We are arranging the office to be safe for people who want to use it on a limited basis, but the preference is that you continue to work from home. We have been monitoring the pandemic and will continue to respond based on state guidelines, but in the meantime, we are extending this phase of limited, optional-only use of the office through the end of the year.

To be clear, we want the Boston offices to be as empty as possible for the remainder of 2020. While we realize that there could be an expectation that managers may want you to show up in person, or that you may miss out on an opportunity if you are not in the office, we want to dispel that notion by emphasizing that managers do not and must not expect you to return to the office for the remainder of the year. If you have concerns or questions about this, please talk to your manager or reach out to your HR partner to discuss.

UPDATE AT 2:12 PM - You see, it's much easier to fire people this way!

The 'Shut Up And Dribble' Column

I don't know about you but I'd rather watch sports without politics being added on. In recent times, this has become difficult if not impossible. Witness the latest iteration of the sports protest:

I’m getting “shut up and dribble” emails these days.

I'm not exactly sure why Shank should be getting these kind of e-mails; maybe better to send them to the players not shutting up and not dribbling? Again, with these e-mails to Shank (I'll say it - if they exist) - you're sending them to the wrong guy. But whatever:

This is what happens when professional sports figures speak up and act regarding issues of social justice and racial inequality:

“My wife and I decided to watch a Sox game on a Saturday night. We waited until 7:10 to start viewing to avoid any political action. We feel sports should be an escape and fun. Sports is for sports. I do not care what their religious, political, or ethnicity is. Bringing signs into the ball park is wrong. Do whatever they want outside, not inside. I do not need to sit for hours watching millionaire athletes protesting. I will try the NFL on opening day but starting at 1:10 p.m.”

My general reaction - 'fine, I'll do or watch something else'. At this point I don't freak out about it or complain too much anymore; I just change the channel.

The Celtics and Toronto Raptors are scheduled to begin their conference semifinal Thursday night in the Orlando bubble, but players from both teams spent part of Tuesday and Wednesday discussing a boycott of Game 1 to bring attention to the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer and subsequent protests and violence in the streets of Kenosha, Wis.

That's all that Shank writes about the latest police incident involving white cops and a black man. This is wise, as additional information and details are coming out about the incident, with that last link (best I can find right now whilst doing a post) coming out an hour or two after Shank's column. These additional facts and details may or may not change one's opinion about the matter.

Celtics stars Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart have been out front on racial inequality issues throughout America’s long hot summer. It’s in the best tradition of the Boston Celtics.

“Shut up and dribble” folks likely will never accept any spillover of real-life issues into professional sports, but let me remind fans of the Celtics that issues of race and equality have walked hand-in-hand with the franchise since Red Auerbach came to Causeway Street in 1950.

Red was the first NBA executive to draft a Black player, Duquesne forward Chuck Cooper in 1950. Six years later, Auerbach exploited racism in the St. Louis Hawks front office, trading two white players for the Hawks’ No. 1 draft pick. Red used the pick on Bill Russell. He knew St. Louis had no interest in building its franchise around a Black center.

Shank goes on with some sad but interesting tidbits about previous Celtics teams joining in on boycotts, and it's worth a read.

I'd like to make the following point / distinction: What Shank talks about are things that directly affect the players and the team, and what current and other NBA players are now boycotting based on what happened to someone they don't know based entirely on the fact that white cops and a black man were involved. They will argue 'systemic racism' and 'police brutality' (or how Shank generically says 'social justice' and 'racial inequality'), but considering what is known so far, I find those
accusations spurious at best. Should the cops simply let knife-wielding men roam around menacing other people in order to avoid being labeled racists and thugs? Sad to see that being a question at all.

Just What The Boston Globe Needs - Another Shank

Bruce Allen has some fun with the Boring Broadsheet:

Must love baseball and be willing to pledge fealty to John Henry. The ideal candidate will exhibit skill in disdaining and trolling readers, football knowledge not required. https://t.co/jQjEYN4SKD

— Bruce Allen (@bruceallen) August 25, 2020

Sorry, Bruce - that position's already taken!

The Once In A Blue Moon Column

Imagine your surprise at finding Shank's latest column actually has a positive, upbeat vibe to it?

How do you feel about a Distance Championship Parade in October? With virtual Duckboats? Are you ready for a million-strong Zoom rally with Zdeno Chara or Jayson Tatum tossing a bucket of Gatorade at Mayor Marty Walsh from 6 feet away?

Close your eyes and imagine Jack Edwards in NESN’s Watertown studio, waxing poetic about the Bruins’ 2020 Stanley Cup champions. Try to imagine Scal standing alone on Causeway Street, waving Celtics Banner No. 18 and insisting Tatum is better than Larry Bird or Bill Russell.

Our winter sports teams are white-hot here in late August (no one has ever written that sentence before), and Boston woke up Monday morning with that old championship feeling.

Not to go Full Rochie on you here, but events over the weekend have me in a happy place regarding the fortunes of the Bruins and Celtics. It might never feel better than it feels right now, so why not enjoy the speculation and the daily playoff action?

I fully expect this attitude to change with a few losses by either team.

Lockdown Dan

I guess it's not much of a surprise to see that strains of health puritanism would make it to the Boston Globe's sports section, as Shank believes the BC Eagles shouldn't play football this fall:

The list of bad ideas introduced to Boston sports fans through the years is long and winding. The Red Sox once tried to sell us Jack Clark. Then Bullpen by Committee. Now they’re all about Payroll Flexibility. TD Garden officials thought it would be a swell idea to reconfigure seating in the lower bowl of the arena last year. Oh, and remember the campaign to bring the 2024 Olympics to Boston?

Now we have the crazy notion that the Boston College Eagles are planning to play their ACC football schedule this fall while our region tries to get back on its feet in the middle of a global pandemic.

For the record, the Wuhan coronavirus is now considered an epidemic, which is a disease less prevalent in a population than it is in a pandemic. I'm certain the CDC downgraded the virus to this epidemic status a month ago, but they don't seem very willing to advertise it explicitly (and easily findable) on their website. In any event, one of the tricks I don't appreciate the media playing is this exact sort of bullshit. By continuing to call it a pandemic they keep doing the media's Prime Directive, which is scaring the shit out of people.

What in the name of Buddy Garrity is going on around here? Who do we think we are — Clemson, S.C.? Odessa, Texas? Tuscaloosa, Ala.?

Seriously. I understand folks who live in football hotbeds going for this. But Boston, a place where absolutely nobody knows your name if you are associated with college football? Boston, a hub of science, medicine, high-tech, and deep thinking? We are going to have big-time college football here on autumn Saturdays in 2020?

So, if it's not popular we shouldn't do it? Like me not reading your newspaper?

We knew Harvard and Yale weren’t going to play this year. Same with the Patriot League, the NESCAC, and all the quaint little schools that play small-time college football. Those were easy calls. Even Division 1 pretenders UMass and UConn had the good sense to pack away the shoulder pads for the fall. Massachusetts high school football is also closed for the season.

But BC is planning to play North Carolina, Pitt, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and Louisville in an empty Alumni Stadium. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that BC is going forward to protect its share of ACC TV money. The Eagles’ slice of the ACC pie is in the neighborhood of $30 million annually.

So, you overlooked that league affiliation thingy back there, didn't 'cha?

I won't bore you with the rest of it but he repeats the notion a few times - we're in Massachusetts, not Georgia or Florida and thus they shouldn't be playing. How dumb of an argument is that? By the way, that's the primary argument and health concerns are of a secondary importance. Just look at this bullshit conclusion:

We are Boston. We are about science and knowledge.

This is insanity. And it’s dangerous.

What is insane and dangerous is continued efforts to lock people down and restrict their freedom of association (or movement, at a physical level) and it all that entails in the name of a virus that is slightly more infectious and roughly as non-lethal as many of the others I've lived through. The widespread lockdowns and declaration of sizeable portions of the economy as 'non-essential' and thus forced to close shop is a) unprecedented in my lifetime, b) does have harmful side effects and c) will always be seen by me as a galaxy-class fuckup by those in charge of these measures, most of them fucking Democrats.

But let me instead talk about the players. It's bad enough there will be online courses (they simply aren't the same thing) but for all of them, they are also there to play football and if / when a few of them make it to the NFL or CFL, all the better. My buddy Eddie swears up and down that the experience of hanging in a college locker room getting ready for and playing college sports is like nothing else, and I don't doubt it for a second. Shank's position deprives them of this opportunity. To hell with that - let's get back to our normal lives, the sooner the better.

Guilt By Association

Shank's been on a scumbag tour de force the past few weeks, hasn't he?

“We Build the Wall” board member Curt Schilling with the indicted Steve Bannon pic.twitter.com/ulgDnGLDbS

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 20, 2020

The implication's clear - Schilling's a bad guy because he posed for a picture with someone who was indicted in the past 24 hours. I read the first seven pages of that indictment (link is here) and found that part of the document to be fairly hyperbolic.

To use Shank's 'logic', then, he's as reprehensible as Schilling is made out to be because Sam Shaughnessy was arrested for drunken disorderly, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Is that how the game's played now?

DHL Dan CIX - The Next Guy Outta Town?

The leadoff subject for Shank's latest Picked Up Pieces column is Xander Boagerts and whether he's going to stay with the Red Sox:

A sweep for Boston, but here’s hoping Xander Bogaerts doesn’t get the Mookie Betts treatment

Pretty good Wednesday. The Bruins closed out the Hurricanes, 2-1, to advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Celtics spanked the Sixers, 128-101, to take a 2-0 lead in their first-round series. And the lowly Red Sox snapped a nine-game losing streak with a 6-3 win at home against the Phillies.

Some picked up pieces from three games in front of the flat screen . . .

▪ Mookie Betts. Now Xander Bogaerts? Say it ain’t so, Red Sox.

The estimable Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic floated the trade rumor this week, noting that the period between now and Aug. 31 represents Boston’s last chance to move Bogaerts without the shortstop’s approval. Bogaerts will reach seven years of service Sept. 6, which means he can veto any deal after this trading deadline passes.

Bogaerts is signed to a team-friendly six-year, $120 million contract, but has an opt-out after 2022. If things don’t improve on Jersey Street, abandoning the Red Sox might be an attractive alternative to any good player who’s still here in 2022.

Sox CEO Sam Kennedy and baseball boss Chaim Bloom say no Sox player is untouchable. Kennedy is quick to remind us of the Nomar Garciaparra bombshell from 2004.

And we're quick to remind you about Shank's involvement in that whole shitshow.

The rest of the column is what you'd expect - lots of subjects covered in minute form, plenty of grousing, etc.

Shank Hardest Hit

So much for his next Patriots column:

JUST IN: Court rules secret videos can’t be used in Kraft massage case https://t.co/CI9q6Wevvc

— Boston 25 News (@boston25) August 19, 2020

Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

It's been nearly a week since we've last heard from the local curmudgeon - let's check in to see how his Monday went, shall we?

Pass the remote.

Monday offered a sports smorgasbord for New England fans. Celtics playoffs. Bruins playoffs. Red Sox-Yankees (hold your laughter). All in a single night in August.

The sum total? Two playoff wins for the Hub’s winter teams and another worthless evening for Boston’s boys of bummer at Yankee Stadium. The Celtics beat the Sixers, 109-101. The Bruins scored four third-period goals to beat the Hurricanes, 4-3. The last-place Red Sox dropped to 6-17, suffering a 6-3 beatdown in the Bronx, their eighth straight defeat.

Our late-summer TV feast tapped off just after 6:30 p.m. when the third-seeded Celtics beat the sixth-seeded Philadelphia 76ers, 109-101, in Game 1 of their first-round best-of-seven series in the bubble in Orlando. Jayson Tatum led the Celtics with 32 points and 13 rebounds. Jaylen Brown scored 29.

From there it's the usual Shank column templates - pine for Boston / Philly matchups from the 60's and '80's, complain about lots of stuff (especially the Red Sox), refer to J.D. Martinez as 'the new Adrian Gonzalez and misspell Celtics coach Brad Stevens name three times (that was spotted by a commenter and since corrected).

Milking It, By Dan Shaughnessy - A Continuing Series

Shank manages to write a positive New England Patriots story, if only to congratulate Dont'a Hightower and the start of his and Morgan Hart's family:

FOXBOROUGH — Dont’a Hightower wanted to inspire his fiancée Morgan Hart as she labored in the 17th hour to deliver their first child. She was exhausted, but the nurse said it was time to push.

He started chanting, “28-3, 28-3.” Adding, “Never give up.”

The standout Patriots linebacker laughs as he recalls his delivery-room audible. It’s New England lore to recite the score of Super Bowl LI, in which the Patriots trailed the Atlanta Falcons, 28-3, with a little more than two minutes left in the third quarter. They rallied to win, 34-28, in overtime in the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.

Let the record show that Grayson Hightower heard about it in the womb from his father.

Hart, Hightower’s sweetheart since their days at the University of Alabama, says the “28-3″ mantra gave her strength.

An animus free column by Shank about the Patriots (even if it's focused on one awesome player) should be savored like a fine wine.

That first part's really overboard with the 28-3 angle, but it's an otherwise decent column.

DHL Dan CVIII - Wish Upon A Star

Shank would like you to know the obvious: :

Hoping former MVP Cam Newton is more Kevin Garnett than Bob McAdoo, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while mailing a birthday card to the great Bob Cousy, who turns 92 Sunday . . .

Just want to emphasize the 'mailed in' notion, since it seems like a confessional.

▪ Patriots quarterback Cam Newton is one of a long list of former league MVPs who came to Boston to resume or finish their careers. The list includes (among others) Kevin Garnett, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, Shaquille O’Neal, Jaromir Jagr, Dennis Eckersley, Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco, Andre Dawson, Don Baylor, Orlando Cepeda, Elston Howard, Lou Boudreau, Jimmie Foxx, and Lefty Grove. How many of you remember that 1989 National League MVP Kevin Mitchell played 27 games for the 1996 Red Sox? Newton was MVP of the NFL five years ago. He’s 31 now and comes to the Patriots after subpar seasons owed to injuries. Patriots fans would love it if Newton turns out to be another Garnett. KG was 31 when he came to the Celtics four years after his MVP season with the Timberwolves and he was still a dominant player. Garnett led the Celtics to a championship in his first season here. Baylor was American League MVP when he drove in 139 runs for the Angels in 1979. Seven years later, at the age of 36, Baylor was still good for 31 homers and 94 RBIs with the pennant-winning Red Sox. A lot of former MVPs had forgettable stints in Boston. Jagr was 14 years past his MVP prime when he played 33 games for the 2012-2013 Bruins. Henderson was near the end when he played for the Red Sox in 2002. McAdoo was only 27 when he came to Boston in 1979 and his 20-game stint with the last-place Celtics was completely forgettable. McAdoo is best remembered here as the key piece in a trade with Detroit that ultimately delivered Robert Parish and Kevin McHale to the Celtics.

Given the recent ferocity of his criticisms of the Red Sox, it won't take anything more than a two game losing streak for Shank to start Cam Newton's run out of town. The rest of the column is the usual hodgepodge mix of Red Sox criticism and other laundry list complaints.

Boston Globe Death Watch - X

Things are getting desperate at the good ship Boston Globe:

Reporters, editors, photographers, & other staffers of the @BostonGlobe will hold a socially distant #FairnessAtFenway rally at Fenway Park on Aug. 9 to demand that Red Sox & Globe owner John Henry provide a fair contract to the nearly 300 employees in the Boston Newspaper Guild. pic.twitter.com/GiIF6cFaFZ

— Boston Newspaper Guild (@BostonNewsGuild) August 7, 2020

The One Where Shank Selects His Newest Whipping Post

That would be J.D. Martinez, who to be fair is playing on a bad team right now. Allow Shank to cut loose:

J.D. Martinez. This guy. In case you missed it, J.D. is not his usual slugger self thus far this season. He’s on pace to finish the Red Sox’ 60-game slate with a .244 batting average, zero homers, and 15 RBIs. Martinez has not driven home a run since Opening Day, two weeks ago. He has 13 strikeouts, only four walks, and a puny OPS of .720. Oh, and he also has an excuse. No video. Seriously. Players can’t review their in-game at-bats on video this season, and this has J.D. out of sorts. Because of both the pandemic and the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, there are new protocols in place, and Martinez is lost without the ability to retreat to the video room and break down his swing in between plate appearances. He is Roy Hobbs without Wonderboy. He is Wade Boggs without chicken. He is Nomar Garciaparra without batting gloves to tug on.