Tweets I Didn’t Tweet: Red Sox/Astros ALCS Game 5

Alright, so we’re back with a new improved version of Tweets I Didn’t Tweet. For those of you who may be stumbling on my first blog in this format (so both of you), I’m not a fan of Twitter but I’m also a narcissistic hedonist who gets his rocks off by shamelessly spewing his opinions on sports and pop culture through the vehicle of WordPress.

As you can see, I’ve divided my unsent tweets by inning to give people a slight idea of what the hell I’m talking about. Let’s get into it…

1st Inning

• David Price is somewhat of a genius. He’s convinced me that it’s perfectly acceptable to earn 30 million a year and produce close to nothing in the postseason. It’s honestly hilarious how far the expectation bar has dropped and I can’t hate on him for that. If he gives up 4 over roughly 5 innings, I’ll be ecstatic…
• JD Martinez is just methodical at the plate. Guy knows the strike zone like nobody else in baseball and that’s the type of shit that runs big game arms off the mound in October. High pitch at bats is what this team needs against a horse like Verlander.
• Unreal how much of an afterthought this has been (and most of that credit goes to Pearce, who’s been admirable to say the least) but Mitch Moreland coming back is HUGE. People forget this guy was an all star this year, as well as a former Gold Glove recipient.
• Price has good command and he’s getting those calls on the outside. Everything’s telling me she should implode against a guy like Verlander in this type of situation, which tells me he’s teetering on the verge of a gem…

2nd Inning

• JBJ’s been a breath of fresh air this series but he’s also been the beneficiary of Rob Manfred’s home cooking. Hell of an at bat but that’s the second time he’s struck out in two days and ended up on first base; this time to load the bases with two outs and Mookie up. Major League Baseball wants Dodgers/Sox so badly and I’m not complaining.
• Price is still cruising through two. I keep forgetting we pay him so much but whatever. John Henry could lose all his money in shady, offshore human trafficking investments and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if we get hardware out of it. Go morality!
• Very unfortunate but Verlander’s getting the squeeze (SAD!). Low curveball that should’ve been called a strike gets a pass to extend the at-bat and on the very next pitch, JD hits a no-doubter. By the way, that marks another run with 2 outs in the inning. Frustration city if you’re wearing orange.
• Naturally, Bregman ends the inning with another inconceivable stop and throw from third. As a Sox fan, I know I’m supposed to harbor some sense of animosity towards him over the whole Instagram fiasco but I also have a brain and refuse to get triggered over ill-advised social media behavior. I could care less, the guy can flat out play.

3rd Inning

• Price with another strikeout on Bregman. Not much else to say aside from that he’s making curiously quick work out of Houston right now. In the words of John Wayne during some shitty Western my grandfather would fall asleep to while babysitting: “It’s quiet… too quiet.”

4th inning

• As Price blows a “high” fastball by Altuve—so roughly 4 ft off the ground—for his fifth strikeout, I can assuredly say this is the most confident body language out of him I’ve seen in a while. He then follows that up by blowing three by Correa. Who is this guy?

5th Inning

• David Price is sailing. Sits down another set of batters. The last out even required him to charge and make a one bounce throw to first base. Everyone and their mother has spent the last three months criticizing the David Price contract but the Sox front office didn’t hear no bell.
• Foul ball rattles off the wall near the ballgirl and I couldn’t help but notice an overwhelming amount of older gentlemen wearing baseball gloves in the stands, which begs one question: If it exists, what’s the age cutoff on wearing a glove to a baseball game? I think once you hit 14 or so, you gotta leave that shit in the garage. The whole point of catching a fly ball is that so people in your section can whisper things like “oh shit, that dude must’ve got D3 looks” or something. Nobody in the history of fan catches has ever looked badass with a glove. That’s what your $13 plastic cup of Sam Adams is for.

6th Inning

• I don’t want to say I’m a genius so I’ll just type it instead. Yesterday, I said that baby-faced son of a bitch Devers should’ve played over Núñez to start the series and obviously he waits on an outside fastball and pushes it over the wall in left for 3 runs. Joestradamus is a forced to be reckoned with.
• After the run support from Devers, I finally mustered up the courage to check the score of the Thursday night Football game. The TNF matchups have actually been pretty enjoyable this year; however, Broncos/Cardinals might be the most upsetting game the NFL has slated in years. I’d rather give myself a colonoscopy with a rusty screwdriver than watch Case Keenum desperately attempt to justify a 36-million dollar contract for four hours.

Sometime around 1 AM

• I just woke up and scrambled for my iPhone, which is currently on 2% battery. Just enough to coordinate a quick Google search to find out if I’ll be depressed for the next 48 hours or not.

And this is the problem. I’m an adult, and as an adult, I have shit to do early in the morning. I have to wake around 6AM, which means I don’t have the luxury of lounging around like some asshole for 6 hours, chasing beers with Fruit 2 O’s between pitching changes in a 4-run game going into the 8^th inning.

The MLB needs to fix this because I’m sure I’m not the only baseball fan with this problem. You have the ALCS and NLCS—two of your game’s best products of the year—being played while over half the country is either asleep or wiping their search history clean after an impromptu Pornhub fling.

It’s not fair, and as someone who’s paid my dues as a fan throughout the season, it’s a slap in the face. I’ve slowly transitioned into a bigger fan of the Patriots thanks to two decades of spellbinding dominance but my first loves has, and always will be, baseball. Don’t deprive me of that because you want “ratings.”

And that’s what REALLY pisses me off. Although I’m not some high-end network executive, I’m pretty sure you can’t be posting MONSTER ratings in these times lots. I understand these games end at a relatively reasonable time on the Pacific end of things, but who gives a fuck when the markets are Houston and Boston? Leave those 8-9 PM first pitches to the west coast. There’s no reason why I should miss out on October Baseball three times a week due to sheer exhaustion.

From what I’ve read, the reason these games are on networks like TBS or FS1 is because the local networks don’t want to risk a game legging out a 5-hour time slot that drips past their local news coverage. It screws everything up for these networks that have live programming near that midnight time slot. Not only do they need to prepare for the prospect of an overtime game, but also the fact that conventional baseball moves at a snail’s pace.

Keep in mind the Sox have an incredibly good chance of playing the Dodgers in the big one. If this is the case, we’ll have two teams in polar opposite locations, which is a scheduling nightmare that I’ll allow some slack for but not in the case I spoke of above. In this case, you had two teams competing from relatively manageable time zones and you chose to neglect the convenience of two gigantic core markets in favor of national appeal. Hopefully you got your ratings and I can happily say you got mine—it’s just my eyes were closed half the time.

This, along with other things, is why I’m starting to believe baseball is cannibalizing itself. Outside of the general pace of play issues, Manfred & co. are deepthroating the business end of shotgun with these media restrictions. The fact you can’t share a diving catch or late-game homer without the FBI taking a battering ram to your apartment door is bad enough, but when you deprive me the prospect of that altogether by putting me to sleep before I can log into Twitter is when things become inexcusable.

– Joey Boats (@joey_boats)