Shanks Hot Take Of The Week

Every Friday, Awful Announcing gives out its awards for the five hottest takes of the week. Although we've covered it already, it's worth noting Shank's fifth-place entry one more time:

5. Dan Shaughnessy says the Red Sox need to…play like a good team: The Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Obviousness In The Field Of Obviousness goes to Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe, who, after the Red Sox’ Game 2 loss to the Yankees Saturday evened the ALCS, wrote a column that produced an amazing tweet from the Globe account:

The #RedSox need to play like the team that won 108 games this season when they take on the Yankees tonight, says @Dan_Shaughnessy. https://t.co/Xm1lfEWdqU pic.twitter.com/H1lh9SbRSF

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) October 8, 2018

“Good team should play like good team.” That’s some #analysis for you there, and it explains why Shaughnessy gets paid so much. Oh, and that wasn’t just an unrepresentative tweet. The whole “Red Sox need to be tougher to beat the Yankees” column is exactly what you’d expect:

NEW YORK — The Red Sox are playing scared.

They need to put on their big boy pants and start playing like the team that won 108 games this season.

They need to start playing like the team that effectively ended the American League East race in early August by sweeping the Yankees four straight at Fenway Park.

They need to start playing with the swagger and idiocy of the 2004 Red Sox, who beat the Bronx Bombers four straight times after falling behind, 3-0, in the ALCS.

“Big boy pants,” even. (Should “big boy pants” be hyphenated? I feel like it should; it’s a compound adjective describing the pants. But I’ve also put more thought into that than Shaughnessy put into this whole column, so.) And you just know that Shaughnessy was pulling a different kind of Monty Burns move after the Red Sox did, in fact, play like a good team in the next two games.

Also worth noting - Shank's now in ninth place for the year in AA's Hot Take rankings:

Jason Whitlock – Hall of Fame
Stephen A. Smith – 211
Skip Bayless – 191
Phil Mushnick – 157
Colin Cowherd – 74
Rob Parker – 44
Doug Gottlieb – 41
Shannon Sharpe – 35
Dan Shaughnessy – 26
Ray Lewis – 25

Keep up the 'good work'!

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.

Shank Wins An Award!

Well, it's an award of dubious merit - Awful Announcing's Hottest Take of the Week:

1. Dan Shaughnessy blames Red Sox issues on Yawkey Way renaming and David Price’s love of Fortnite: Crotchety Boston Globe columnist Shaughnessy pulled a two-for this week in finding unusual suspects for the Red Sox’s problems, first going after them for petitioning the city to rename Yawkey Way (a controversial name given former Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey’s history on keeping his team segregated) and then saying pitcher David Price’s love of video games led to his hand injury:

His Reputation Precedes Him

Among other things, we've been documenting Shank's positive, constructive relations with professional athletes for over a decade, and have occasionally opined on our own local sports media from time to time to note their positive, constructive relations with professional athletes. So it should surprise no one when discussing the latter, the former gets a proforma mention:

If it’s Boston, it must mean a feud between a player and a member of the media. It’s gone on for years whether it was Ted Williams vs. the media, Carl Yastrzemski vs. the media, Bill Belichick vs. the media or Dan Shaughnessy vs. every player he’s covered. The latest edition of this feud has Boston Celtics point guard Isaiah Thomas vs. Comcast SportsNet New England host Gary Tanguay.

Isiah Thomas made this year's All-Star team, and Tanguay says he's not good enough to be a 'foundation player'? I realize you need at least three solid players to establish a championship level team, but saying this Isiah Thomas would not be one of them strikes this blogger as quite wrong, or stupid. That's the same level of stupid as Shank calling Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval "the most reviled local tandem" in local professional sports. In other words, QED.