No matter what happens by the time Friday morning rolls around, please do not take this week for granted.
Right from the jump: don’t interpret this as me advocating that we should be totally fine with simply
a cup of coffee in the Wild Card round. I feel like I’ve said this many-a-times in the typical Monday Morning Brushback articles here at OTM, but the Boston Red Sox organization can and should shoot for standards higher than simply being where we are right now—on Monday, September 29, 2025.
But simultaneously, during this one day of limbo — after just going through a 162-game roller coaster of emotions that has put us where we are, but before we start an entire mini-season where none of that prior drama really matters anymore — it’s worth pointing out how much better this state of being is than what we’ve grown accustomed to since 2021.
Take what was published back on October 3 of 2022 on this website (not to dunk on Stephen Thompson [we love Stephen, don’t we folks] it’s just interesting to look back), in reference to a minus-14 run differential over the past week in Boston baseball at the time.
After beating up on the Orioles for a couple of days, the Red Sox met their match in Toronto. They scored three runs over three games and got shut out two days in a row. This is some real going out with a whimper as they fall to a season-worst 22.5 games out of first place.
This, right now, is better.
How about what our beloved Mike Carlucci wrote in his Open Thread post on this very day two years ago (and one day before the day of my wedding—happy almost anniversary, my love!)?
Happy Weekend. The Red Sox continue to be an embarrassment while the Baltimore Orioles of all teams celebrate. “It’s going to be awesome.” Playoffs and a winning record have been eliminated from the Bloom Error of Red Sox baseball, and now also simply finishing at .500 is out the window. Is Chaim Bloom the worst executive in baseball? Maybe!
This, right now, is better.
Do you recall that the 2024 Red Sox season ended 365 days ago? Our own Jake Reiser had the write up leading up to that game, and he put it in a now-prophetic way.
Well, this is it. The end to an incredibly large roller coaster of a season for the 2024 Boston Red Sox. While the door of the season closes, a ton of doors fly right open…As cathartic as it feels to finally end this season, the fun certainly doesn’t end today.
Even when you consider how well that last clause ended: this, right now, is better.
This is a baseball town first and foremost, man. When this team gets cookin’, this city has a different buzz to it. It also has a certain buzz when they are assuredly NOT cookin’, but I doubt I need to remind you about that. The Pats, C’s, and B’s do not get as much buzz combined when they’re sucking in comparison to when the Sox are sucking. Anyone can get this town talking when they’re good — it’s this club gets the hot takes when they’re bad.
All of that is to say that these are the days we live for. We go through the shit of a lousy few years for these moments. We answer for the sins of this team when asked “The Sox suck, huh?” by friends who don’t watch all 162 or by co-workers who know us as “The Baseball Person™️” in the office when they’re just trying to make some friendly small talk (am I projecting? I hope I’m not projecting; I would like to think that some of you can relate!) so that we can lick our chops ahead of a series like this one coming up in New York against the Yankees. How lucky are we that we have an opportunity to punch our biggest rivals square in the mouth when it counts the most? We would’ve killed for a week like this any of the past three years. Hell, these are days that we would’ve killed for at any time gone by.
Even if this doesn’t work out—which, even statistically speaking at 1/12 odds, is the most likely outcome—there are positives to take away from 2025. Read those OTM excerpts from 2022, 2023, and 2024 again and try to tell me otherwise. Is 2025 a resounding success if we get bounced this week? Of course not, but you can’t tell me that we aren’t trending in the right direction. This team qualified for the playoffs in a tight AL race while missing their best hitter alongside other contributors—there are reasons to be excited about what lies ahead of us.
This, right now, is better—and that’s the case even if we lose.
The competitive side that lies within me hates writing that out, but the pragmatic side understands that as our reality. I’ll be crushed if we get bounced at any point, especially if it’s against these pricks. I’ll be very upset, and it’ll be a very dangerous work atmosphere for the people who knows me as “The Baseball Person™️” for about 48 hours.
But in my heart of hearts: I know that this, right now, is better. We just saw what an alternative can be—a rudderless outlook where we’re asking ourselves “what if” every other day. We have a tangibly better situation now.
This, right now, is better.
So don’t take these next few days for granted. Watch the game at work. Hell, sneak out if you can. Skip a class if you’re in college and if it’s a large seminar-type of class (you can get away with it, believe me). Call that Sox fan in your life that you haven’t spoken to in a while to either celebrate or commiserate. Call that Yankees fan in your life, no matter when you last spoke to them, to either brag or curse their bloodline henceforth. Days like the ones that lie before us when we wake up tomorrow are never promised. Treat them accordingly.
If anything, I hope I’m being too dramatic on account of overselling this 2025 playoff run in Boston. If things pan out, maybe someone else on the OTM team will be taking a quote from this blog in a year or two, highlighting how different—and better—things are by the time those postseason runs come around.
This, right now, is better—but that doesn’t mean that they won’t get even better in the future.
