The road starts now. My beloved Boston Red Sox are AL East Champions. This team has gone through more turmoil this year than the FBI trying to find the infamous gangster Whitey Bulger for 30 years. 

The starting pitching was a gigantic mess for 3/4’s of the year. Our first year zillionaire David Price who signed a 217 million dollar contract was up and down for easily the first half of the season. You’d think that your one ace would put forth tremendous outings each start but that wasn’t the case with Mr. Price. He’s had his share of awful outings and the fact that he has a track history of not performing well in the post season scares me. It scares me a lot. 

Joe Kelly was supposed to be a front line starter this year and he found himself getting sent back to the minors 3 times. Stephen Wright made the All-Star team and was baseball’s best pitcher for a third of the season until John Farrell had him pinch run and busted his shoulder sliding. We haven’t seen him hit the bump for over 2 months and have no clue if he is officially done this season. The list goes on with this rotation as there have been plenty of ups and downs. The night we clinch, Craig fucking Kimbrel can’t even record an out. 

On the bright side Price turned his 2nd half of the season around as he ended up finishing with 17 wins. Rick Porcello is a 20 plus game winner and the last to do that was Josh Beckett in 2007. Mark my words, if Porcello doesn’t win the Cy Young award this year I will burn all my Red Sox bobbleheads. He’s been the most dominate pitcher for the past 7 months and have kept the Sox atop the American League East. 

This offense is beyond disgusting. The Sox have close to 6 hitters in our lineup hitting over .300 and there’s legitimately 2 MVP candidates in Ortiz and Mookie Betts. The year Big Papi has had as his farewell tour comes to a close is incredible. Why even retire? Mookie Betts should win the MVP though. This fucking dude is the new face of the franchise. A strong arm in the outfield, the range he covers, his speed on the base paths and his Homerun and RBI numbers are off the fucking charts. Many people who don’t follow the Sox don’t understand the concept that he put up the majority of these insane numbers as the leadoff hitter for most of the year! 

John Farrell has caused much frustration this season for the Sox. The moves and calls he makes are indescribable. Pulling pitchers from the game, pinch running starting pitchers, starting a shit ton of different lineups has made the Boston faithful scratch their heads. I hope he sticks to the script of what works going forward. 

Is this a World Series caliber baseball team? Yes. Are there questions surrounding this team and obvious weaknesses to exploit? Yes. Are we are sure fire lock to make it to the World Series? No. Many things have to happen in order to get to the title. What scares me most is when we face 1 or 2 front line legit starters in the playoffs will our hitting shit the bed? I hope to christ we don’t. It’s definitely possible but with this potent lineup we can do some major damage. Our pitchers need to keep cool and do what they’ve done the last month of the season when we won 11 straight games in a row. As of now we are the AL East Champs and deservingly so. This division was a major pain in the ass. Toronto and Baltimore have given us such a run the past 2 months it’s mind boggling. The Yankees cleared half of their team off the roster and new studs have stepped in and gave all teams in the division headaches. The cream of the crop always rises to the top and that’s what the Red Sox have done. Hopefully, the next Red Sox blog will be celebrating entrance into the World Series.