As bad as the team has played recently, the coverage of these games might be worse.
As it became increasingly obvious that the Red Sox were on their way to yet another loss in last night’s lackluster game, I became increasingly annoyed. Not just because of the sleepy bats and the uninspiring play on the field, but also because of the prolific poppycock spewing from the NESN broadcast.
Look, I realize we’re dealing with a team-owned network and there’s constant pressure there to bend the truth and diffuse compelling storylines, but what we’ve gotten the last handful of days is venturing into the territory of journalistic malpractice. Or more specifically, the lack of what we’ve gotten.
Red Sox fans are angry, and there’s no shortage of reasons why. They’re angry about the Devers trade, they’re angry about not making the playoffs since 2021, they’re angry about the endless string of .500 baseball, they’re angry about the dreadful lineups the team is trotting out there on a daily basis, and they’re angry about the overall lack of spending from ownership. I see this anger everywhere: Among friends and family, on social media, at the ballpark, and in the comments section here at Over The Monster.
Well, almost everywhere — Because the one place I don’t see this rage being conveyed is on the team’s actual broadcast. While fans await the fire and brimstone analysis that reflects the current frustration, NESN is busy smearing the sunshine of the Fenway experience in everybody’s face and saving their harshest criticisms and darkest clouds for the umpiring crew, which I find absurd!
The disconnect between the tone of these broadcasts and the actual state of affairs is so wide and wild you could fit an ocean between it. Just a complete and total failure to comprehensively cover what’s going on!
And I’m not even talking about the fact the knives may be out behind the scenes if you read into some of the details in the Jeff Passan article from last week, I’m simply talking about the immense vexation that’s clearly captured not just the mood of the fanbase, but also the guys in the clubhouse. There’s real, genuine chagrin happening in there as well, and you can see it in the frustration on their faces and the breakdown in their body language. To their credit, the give a damn meter remains encouragingly high, and they seem to be a tight-knit group, but they can’t come through for each other and find a way to get the job done on the field every day. That’s a compelling story. Cover it!
But instead, we get the latest affront to journalism that was the middle innings of last night’s game. Really, something like this could be any game, but we’ll use this example because it’s the latest thing the sent me through the roof.
Connor Wong comes to the plate with men on first and second in the bottom of the fifth inning in what would turn out to be the highest leverage at-bat of the game, and unsurprisingly, he didn’t come through. What was surprising however is how much NESN went out of their way to not cover the fact that Connor Wong sucks, Connor Wong’s at-bat sucked, the decision to allow him to bat there might have sucked, and the fact that he’s still on this roster sucks.
While at the plate, Wong saw one pitch in the strike zone. He swung at the first offering to immediately put himself in a hole despite it never being a strike, and he got himself out three pitches later on a check swing that was correctly called by home plate umpire Shane Livensparger on a ball that was out of the zone. So what analysis did we get on that play? Apparently, Livensparger should have checked with the first base umpire to make that call instead of ringing up Wong himself.
Are you effing kidding me? I found that so insulting! The story of that moment is either how terrible Connor Wong was in that at-bat, or how terrible every decision the team has made (both micro and macro) to get in a position where Connor Wong is taking that at-bat. The guy’s hit into five double plays on the season and still has ZERO extra base hits. He’s also 0-24 with runners in scoring position, and still has just one RBI all year. What are we doing chirping about the umpire in that situation? It’s frankly pathetic.
Then, as the game continued to spiral out of control, the toxic positivity only grew more insufferable. We got to hear about the Fenway green uniforms, the woodland creature that apparently has made itself at home in Dave O’Brien’s garden, and of course how green the grass is at Fenway Park. They must have really sensed how angry people were getting watching this team of late because they brought out the big nostalgic guns talking about how Jerry Remy used to say that people had a “Wizard of Oz” moment when they first came to Fenway and saw the green grass. Personally, the only Wizard of Oz moment this team is reminding me of right now is the tornado scene where everything is getting destroyed.
There was also this weird obsession of how the Rays might pass the Yankees before the night was over, even as both conditions needed to meet that requirement weren’t materializing. It was almost as if they were trying to throw Red Sox fans a bone by saying “Hey look, the big, bad Yankees might not be in first place anymore, and those scrappy, small market Rays we’re trying to emulate are making it work.”
By itself, this product is irksome enough, but when you add in that’s it’s on the worst app ever created and costs $30 per month to glitch and only work on certain devices, it’s downright galling. It seriously makes me want to move out of New England so I can watch the road feed for these games instead of being subjected to this torture.
This team needs to start reeling off some wins soon because there’s only so much gaslighting I can take.