DHL Dan CCLXX - The Baseball Playoff Column

After the Boston Red Sox wrapped up a playoff slot this season (that next to nobody was able to watch because John Henry wants to nickle and dime us to death by putting these Friday games on Apple+), Shank takes a look at recent (non) Red Sox playoff runs:

Why not the Red Sox this October, and other thoughts ahead of the baseball playoffs

Picked up pieces while waiting for the baseball playoffs to begin . . .

Time to exhale, Red Sox Nation. The Sox are going to the playoffs again. Finally. The Alex Cora Athletic Club (ACAC?) made it official late Friday at Fenway, coming from behind to beat the Tigers, 4-3, in a pulsating walkoff win — probably Boston’s best baseball game since 2021.

Time to dig out that Instagram photo of Red Sox principal owner John Henry, who also owns the Globe, sitting in front of his fireplace smoking a stogie after signing free agent Alex Bregman in February. It’s Auerbach-esque, providing a hazy whiff of winning ways that marked Fenway Sports Group in its first 18 summers (2002-2019) of ownership.

Those “so-good, so-good” championship campaigns went away in recent years as the big-market Sox pivoted toward baseball’s big middle, finishing last three times after firing Dave Dombrowski and trading/salary-dumping Mookie Betts. Chaim Bloom was hired and fired, and Henry and Co. were booed at a mid-winter fan event. There was one outlier season in 2021 — 92 wins and an appearance in the ALCS — but it never felt like the good old days.

It’s better now.

It's better for now...