MLB Bullets salutes the Red Sox

Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox on winning the World Series is five games. My two weeks of pretending to be a lifelong Dodgers fan has ended in disappointment. I think it is pretty clear why the Dodgers lost: the Red Sox were simply the better team.

• So yeah, the Red Sox won the World Series. I’m writing this just as the game ended, so links to recaps and analysis of Game 5 and the Series as a whole is going to have to wait until Wednesday.
• Steve Pearce, of all people, was named MVP. And with three home runs in 12 at-bats, he deserved it, which just shows how wacky postseason baseball is. Pearce is only the second player ever traded at midseason to be named World Series MVP.
• Jon Heyman does have 14 reasons why the Red Sox are champions.
• Most of the analysis is likely going to focus on Game 4, however. The Dodgers had a 4-0 lead in the seventh inning and a chance to even the Series at two games each. Instead, the Red Sox scored nine runs after starter Rich Hill left the game and Boston ended up beating the Dodgers 9-6.
• Zach Kram recaps Game 4 and calls it a game of mistakes and missed opportunities for the Dodgers.
• Fair or not, the goat (and not the GOAT) for the Dodgers faithful is turning out to be manager Dave Roberts, who pulled Hill with one out in the seventh. The LA crowd booed Roberts before Game 5.
• Roberts explained why he pulled Hill, saying that Hill had told Roberts to “keep an eye on me.”
• Hill explained those comments and that he never asked or wanted to be taken out of the game.
• Tim Keown agrees that Roberts goofed when he pulled Hill but that we don’t know what would have happened if he’d have left Hill in.
• Grant Brisbee takes a similar take. He admits that Roberts made a mistake, but he wasn’t the only one on the Dodgers and that everything looks a lot easier with hindsight.
• The other big event in Game 4 was Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale’s profane dugout speech to his teammates. Several of the Red Sox credited it for getting the team pumped up and turning Game 4 around.
• Jeff Passan examines Sale’s speech and says that it was pretty much chicken soup for a cold: Maybe it didn’t help the Red Sox win, but it didn’t hurt. Certainly Boston had 1 hit and no runs before Sale’s speech and seven hits and nine runs after it.
• Game 3 went on for 7½ hours and 18 innings and Tim Brown has a piece on the unsung heroes of that game: The umpires who worked the entire game without sitting down once.
• Don’t worry. Commissioner Rob Manfred has no plans to shorten extra inning games. Meaning they won’t start the 10th inning with a man on second like they do in the minors.
• Mike Bates looks at how baseball has changed the rules in the past and what forced them to make the move.
• Zach Kram recaps that wild Game 3 which, thanks to the Red Sox comeback in Game 4 and their winning the World Series in Game 5, won’t be known as the “Ian Kinsler Game.”
• Michael Baumann notes that despite Nathan Eovaldi being the losing pitcher in Game 3, it was a superhuman performance that will go down in Red Sox history (in a positive sense).
• By the way, this is why you don’t post a picture of a ticket of the game you’re going to on social media.
• Despite the loss, Los Angeles had a historic first on Sunday as for the first time ever, Los Angeles achieved a “super sports equinox,” which means a team from MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS all played at home in the same market on the same day.
• On to the offseason. Agent Brodie Van Wagenen is the new general manager of the New York Mets. This will either be a brilliant hire or another “LOLMets” maneuver. I know which one I’m betting on.
• The Players’ Association and several other agents are not happy that Van Wagenen is making the move from agent to front office executive, citing a conflict of interest.
• Former White Sox manager Jerry Manuel has a radical idea to get more African-American kids interested in playing baseball. Actually, it’s a very old idea. Manuel thinks baseball should form a barnstorming team made up entirely of African-American ballplayers to play a series of games in the off-season. Manuel thinks MLB has done a lot to make the game more accessible to African-American kids, but that the biggest hurdle right now is a belief that baseball just isn’t a sport that black athletes play anymore.
• In order to convince the IRS that they deserve a huge tax break, MLB is trying to convince them that they aren’t in the business of athletics. That will go a long way towards fighting the idea that “baseball players aren’t athletes.”
• And MLB is trying to shut down a tell-all book written by one of their former lead investigators.
• Mariners pitcher Edwin Diaz and Brewers pitcher Josh Hader were named Relievers of the Year.
• Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich and Red Sox outfielder/DH J.D. Martinez were named the winners of the Hank Aaron Award, given annually to the best hitter in the game.
• Speaking of Hammerin’ Hank, Aaron said that there is no way he could have hit today’s pitching when he was young. Honestly, if Aaron had grown up facing these guys, he would have learned, adapted and been a Hall of Famer anyway. But if we invent a time machine and bring him forward from 1957 and tell him to hit Chris Sale and Clayton Kershaw? Yeah, no way. He’s right. He’d struggle with Double-A pitching.
• I’m not 100% sure who this is (I can guess) and I don’t really care enough or I’d look it up, but Harry Styles wore a sweet replica of a sequined, glitter Dodgers uniform that Elton John wore at a concert at Dodger Stadium in 1975. Even Sir Elton liked it, although I’m sure the hardcore Braves fan in him squirmed a bit at the memories of the Dodgers outfit he wore in the ‘70s. Especially after the playoffs this year.
• Red Sox fan Matt Damon and Dodgers fan Jimmy Kimmel both wore matching “I’m with stupid” t-shirts to Game 5.
• Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts is a hero in more ways than one. After Game 2 of the World Series, Betts anonymously gave away the leftovers from his post-game meal to homeless people living on the streets of Boston. Except that someone recognized him because he’s Mookie Betts. And he had so much food because he ordered Dominican food from David Ortiz who thought he was feeding the entire clubhouse and not just his family at home.
• And finally, the Dodgers World Series drought goes on for another year. Yes, there are longer droughts in baseball, but a team like the Dodgers expects to win more recently than 30 years ago. Do you want to know how long ago 1988 was? James Wagner explains how the ball that Kirk Gibson hit the walkoff home run in game one of the World Series has been lost to time. MLB obsessively tracks this stuff today, but back then someone took that ball home and no one knows who or what happened to it. People have claimed to have it, but no one has proof.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.