We're No. 3!

 

Only 18 more days until college football, eleven if you're USC. The Dawgs host Oklahoma this year and have road games at Alabama and Ole Miss, and QB Gunner Stockton is expected to come into his own this season. 

Finally, something new to talk about other than baseball and stranded Arctic sailors.  

Red Sox 11, Diamondbacks 1

 

The team that can't seem to beat teams with losing records - the A's, the Jays, the Pirates - apparently has no problems with teams with winning records - the Rays, the Dodgers, and now the Diamondbacks. The team that once couldn't win in their home park now seems unbeatable in Fenway. Go figure.

Last night, the mighty Boston Red Sox (67-58) walloped the Arizona D'backs, 11-1. Gasper was in at DH in place of the ailing Yoshida and hit a solo homer in the seventh. Contreras homered, too, and every Boston batter had at least one RBI - Abreu and Gasper each had two. Bello went 4⅔ innings with three K's and one run, and the bullpen - Weissert, Moran, and Wyatt Olds in his major-league debut - gave up only one hit in three shutout innings. Olds went three up and three down, including two strikeouts in an impressive first appearence. 

See? That's how you do it. Feels good to win, doesn't it?

To add a touch of intrigue to the proceedings, D'back All-Star second baseman Ketel Marte was a no show for the game. No one knows why. 

Ranger Suarez (4-3, 3.25) is going to try to make it two straight tonight. Suarez, a former Cardinals National Leaguer, has struggled with Arizona over the years, with a career 1-4 record against them and a 6.91 ERA, the highest of any team he's faced more than twice. He'll be opposed by Arizona's Merrill Kelly (8-10, 5.11), who has a 2-1 record over the Red Sox and a 2.66 ERA. Back in August 2024, Kelly gave up two home runs in Fenway, but those were to Casas and Devers and, well, they're not going to help us now.

Pirates 8, Red Sox 3

 

Of, for fuck's sake. It's the Pirates, the 61-65 Pirates. You can't win a series against them?

Part of the problem with this year's mercurial Red Sox season is no one can explain exactly what went right to cause them to go on their epic 27-3 run, so no one knows what to fix now that they're 2-7 since their last nine-game win streak ended. We don't know what's wrong now if we don't know what was right then.

But I'll tell you one thing that's not right: Patrick Sandoval. He gave up seven runs in the first three innings of yesterday's game In the third inning, he gave up three singles and one double for two runs before getting his first out. Then he gave up two more singles and a walk for two more runs, before getting a batter to hit into a sac fly for the second out, but also allowing a fifth run.   

Before returning to active duty on July 9, Sandoval was out since June 2024 with an injury. He returned to the game a little rusty and two years older, and maybe - I'm just tossing out ideas here - maybe he's not the pitcher he was before his injury and shouldn't be starting for the Red Sox down the final stretch of the season. Let him work on his pitches and timing for the rest of this season somewhere in the minors, and then call him up nest year if and when he's back in the groove. 

And the offense! What offense? The first six batters in the order has only one hit in 22 at bats (.045), and the only scoring yesterday came from the bottom third of the order - Duran, Seigler, and Wong. And Wong, the last batter, hit a three-run homer, accounting for 100% of Boston's scoring yesterday.

Absolutely pathetic.

The Red Sox (66-58) limp home from last week's road trip with a 2-5 record against two teams currently in last place in their divisions. They start a six-game home stand tonight, but their record at Fenway this season, despite the success of The Streak, is only 29-31.

They'll have their hands full in the first series against the Arizona Diamondbacks (66-59). Tonight, Boston will start rookie reliever Alec Gamboa (0-0. 1.59), but that's probably just a decoy to get Brayan Bello (4-6, 4.84) into the game without melting down in the first inning, as he's prone to do. Bello pitched against Arizona in a September 7 game last year, with three runs on four hits and two Ks in six innings.  The D-backs will start rookie Mitch Bratt (1-1, 3.74) for his first game against the Sox.

It's Over

 

The Yeva has been docked in Nome, Alaska since the 13th of August, and Ella Hibbert finally announced today that Russia's Northern Sea Route Administration had told her to end her attempt at crossing the Northeast Passage this year due to an unusually heavy amount of ice blocking the entrance to the Chuhchi Sea. She is therefore abandoning her plan to complete her Arctic circumnavigation this year, but vows to try again next year. 

Her permit for the NSR states that she must remain in “ice free waters” during her passage, unlike Canada's Northwest Passage, where one is allowed to find paths through the ice fields. Presumably, the permits for Matt Rutherford and Tamara Klink (if she had one) had the same or similar stipulation.

Tamara made it about halfway to Wrangell Island (the olive-colored blob at the very top of the map north of the red-colored ice field) before being ordered to turn back. Unfortunately, that means she had to pass through the thickest portion of the ice field again although open water was accessible just a little further to the west. She's been having an absolutely harrowing experience returning, fighting sleep deprivation and worsening weather conditions, and has complained of hallucinations and ice damage to the boat, the Sardinha. Her updates have become confused and garbled, often self-contradictory from one sentence to the next. To be honest, I'm worried about her, but take some comfort that she's currently rounding Cape Dezhnev, entering the Bering Strait and out of the Chukchi ice field. It gets better, Tamara. Hang in there.

I'm also suspicious of Russia's motives. Sure, there's ice in the Chukchi and no one wants to have to make a rescue in easternmost Siberia even in August, but I wonder if they have other reasons for closing the Northern Sea Route. They're at war against Ukraine, which has been using unconventional strategies including drone warfare to overcome Russia's conventional military superiority, and who needs some random sailboats along your northern coast doing god knows what under those conditions? Also, with Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and Yemen taking hostile actions in the Red Sea, I wouldn't be surprised that Russia wants to assert it's sovereignty and control over passage over the NSR and not show the world that young women can sail right through in solo sailboats. Better to allow only large, corporate cargo ships accompanied by nuclear-powered Russian icebreaking vessels to show the world that they're in charge up there.

Red Sox 4, Pirates 0

 

Relief! Not the pitching, but the comforting sensation that, yes, this team is capable of beating a last-place team, at least some of the time. 

Last night, Wilyer Abreu homered 432 feet into deep right center in the second inning. Then, after seven suspenseful innings of holding onto that 1-0 lead, Andruw Monasterio finally hit a two-RBI double in the ninth for some insurance and Jahmai Jones brought Monasterio home on a single.

Sonny Gray pitched like the professional that he is, going a full seven shutout innings  with six Ks and only five hits. Erik Miller took care of the Pirates in the eighth, three up and three down, and Aroldis Chapman even managed to make it through the ninth without any unnecessary drama, three up, three down, including two strikeouts. 

The biggest news from the game may be that Masataka Yoshida apparently hurt himself while running to second base on a double in the third. He was taken out of the game with a noticeable limp, and it was announced that he was dealing with left hamstring tightness. The Red Sox will likely put him on the IL and make some changes to their roster.

Meanwhile, the baseball gods appear to regret some of the misfortune they sent the Red Sox way, as they caused Tampa Bay to lose two straight to the last place Orioles, and the Yankees to lose three in a row, the last two to those pesky Jays. So Boston, although 4-6 in their last ten, is now 8½ back from the Rays and two back from New York. The Sox have a 5½-game cushion in the Wild Card standings with 39 games left to play.

The first of those games starts this afternoon when smokin' Patrick Sandoval (1-1, 3.30) takes the mound in the rubber game against Pittsburgh. Catcher Adley Rutschman (.071) is in the game as the DH in place of Yoshida. The Pirates will give reliever Lake Bachar, recently acquired from Miami, his first start as a Pirate - he started four games for the Marlins this season against 34 relief appearances, and has pitched in relief three times for Pittsburgh this season. 

In case you're interested, Boston has a long history of defeating pirates. Boston crews who were captured and forced into service by pirates often waited for an opportunity to rebel, occasionally managing to overpower their captors and sail the ships directly into Boston Harbor to face justice. Captured pirates were typically taken to sites like Bird Island for execution and their bodies placed on display as a warning to other mariners. In 1726, three hundred years ago, the minister Cotton Mather attempted to save the soul of the captured pirate William Fly, although Fly remained defiant right up to the gallows. In other words, Boston doesn't take any shit from pirates.

Pirates 8, Red Sox 4

 

It's not just the losing, although the losing is plenty bad in and of itself, but it's losing to last-place teams like the A's and the Blue Jays and now the Pirates.

The first week of August, the Red Sox went 6-0 against the first-place Dodgers and White Sox, and then the second week they went 1-5 against those aforementioned last-place teams. During the first week of August, the Sox scored 54 runs. During the second week, they scored 25.  

Last night, big Jake Bennett have up four runs on five hits, including one HR, in four innings.  The usually reliable Boston bullpen gave up four more runs, including another homer. Offensively, Nick Sogard got a pair of RBIs and Yoshida made things look kind of interesting with a two-run single in the top of the ninth, but other than that, the offense continues to look lifeless.

So here's the deal, this shit's gotta stop and gotta stop now. Tonight, the Red Sox are playing their ace and starting Sonny Gray (14-3, 2.79). Gray was let down by the lack of Boston scoring in his last start, a 2-1 loss to the Jays, but struck out eight White Sox batters on August 5  On the other side, the Pirates are starting Jared Jones (2-4, 5.03). In his last two starts, Jones gave up eight hits, three runs and two homers against the Brewers and then a career-high eight runs against the Mets, not lasting more than four innings in either game. 

But as we've seen this second week of August, it doesn't matter who's on the mound if the Red Sox aren't hitting. We need some hits and some run production and we need it now. So by the power invested in me by Caesar Augustus, patron saint of this hothouse month, I hereby command the Boston batters to launch baseballs out of PNC Park and into the Allegheny starting tonight. Hit them out of the park and over the Roberto Clemente Bridge, even all the way to the Andy Warhol and Rachel Carson Bridges. Just hit, baby. 

Danger in the Arctic

In a recent update, Tamara Klink announced that after eight days of cruising around the Chukchi Sea trying to find a passage among the floes of sea ice, she was told to turn back due to the ice conditions in the Russian Arctic. 

The sea-ice map above shows that the polar ice cap has shifted away from Scandinavia and the Kara Sea and toward the north coasts of Alaska and easternmost Siberia. Matt Rutherford had managed to cross over Scandinavia and practically tapped on the ice cap north of Svalbard, and has gotten across the Kara Sea as far as the choke point surrounding the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. The map above shows a large body of ice south (i.e., to the right) of the islands, which is probably why Rutherford tried to sail north around the islands before being told by the Russians to turn back. 

Klink is stymied by the ice north of easternmost Siberia (i.e., the top of the icefield shown above). She is returning to the Bering Strait but temperatures are dropping and strong winds are approaching and she currently finds herself trapped by the ice. There are no harbors or anchorages in that part of Siberia and as she gets closer to the coast, the pieces of ice get tighter as she tries her best to leave the area. To make matters even worse, the other night, as she tied her boat off against some ice in order to get a little sleep, she saw a bear on the iceberg and had to quickly retreat. 

Klink is a savvy and experienced Arctic explorer, and we send her our best wishes as she figures out a way to escape the trap she's in quickly and safely.

Red Sox 7, Blue Jays 0

 

We're back, baby! We're back, we're going to the World Series, and we're winning the motherfucker!

Yesterday afternoon, the mighty Boston Red Sox shook off their five-game losing streak and defeated the Toronto Blue Jays, 7-0, behind eight masterful innings by Payton Tolle and a grand-slam home run by Caleb Durbin. (Side note: despite the Georgia heat and humidity yesterday, I went out for a 6½-mile walk, and as soon as I got back into the house, all hot and dripping with sweat, I tuned into the Red Sox game on the radio just in time to catch Durbin's hit on the first play I heard. Great timing, but this isn't about me.) Willson Contreras hit an RBI double in the first inning, and after Tolle's eighth inning grand salami, Masataka Yoshida scored a one-run RBI and Durbin singled for his fifth RBI of the day. 

Durbin went eight, two-hit, scoreless innings on only 91 pitches. He threw 61 strikes, even if he only recorded four K's in the game. He was one inning away from throwing a Maddux and I'm frankly a little surprised that Chad Tracy didn't keep him in the game for the ninth to give the bullpen another day's rest and let Durbin earn his reward.

But most importantly, the Sox ended that ugly five-game skid they've been riding. They're now 28-8 (.778) in their last 36 games, and 33-10 since the start of last June's four-game sweep of the Yankees (.767).    

However, due to their historically bad start to the season, Boston is still only 65-56 (.537) on the year and in third place in the AL East, 9½ back from Tampa Bay, who at 74-46, currently hold the best record in MLB. Fortunately for the Red Sox, their path to the World Series doesn't go through winning the division but through the Wild Card standings, where that have a comfortable five-game cushion for the second playoff spot.   

Their path to the World Series doesn't go through winning the division, but every night before bed I get down on my knees and pray to Cthulu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster that they at least beat the Yankees in the final standings (but this isn't about me). New York lost last night and as of this morning, the Sox are three games behind the Yankees in the standings. 

It's on to Pittsburgh, the crown jewel of the Allegheny Valley, to play the Pirates (59-64), the last-place team in the NL Central. FWIW, I had season tickets to the Pirates back in 1993, but whatever (long story, and this isn't about me). Although Boston has six more wins and eight fewer losses than Pittsburgh, the Pirates actually lead the Red Sox in every major offensive statistic (team batting average, runs scored, home runs, on-base percentage, slugging, and stolen bases). However, the Red Sox enjoy a team ERA advantage (3.48 vs. 4.32) as well as fewer walks, home runs allowed, WHIP, and BAA. Defensively, the Pirates lead only in number of strikeouts (1,137 versus 1,034).

Tonight, Big Jake Bennett (7-5, 3.17) starts the first game of the series for his debut against the Pirates, while Pitt will put Bubba Chandler (5-8, 4.26), the pride of Lawrenceville, Georgia, on the mound to face the Red Sox for his first time. 

The Red Sox are hungry to atone for their losing streak and to regain some of the ground they lost during that stretch, while the last-place Pirates know that once again there's no post-season for them this year, so Boston has the edge on the intangibles like momentum, enthusiasm, and motivation.

Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 4

 

Again? A fifth straight loss? Imma gonna be honest with you - watching the 27-3 run through July and early August was more fun that watching this five-game losing skid. I mean, technically, they're now 27-8, which doesn't sound too bad, but it doesn't feel the way it sounds. It feels like two separate streaks - 27-3 and 0-5. 

 

The game was tied, 1-1, until Boston reliever Tyron Guerrero allowed five runs in the bottom of the eighth. But there for a minute, it looked like some of that old 27-3 magic might have come back when the Red Sox scored three runs in the top of the ninth, had the speedy Jarren Duran on third, and the potential tying run, Nick Sogard, at the plate. But Soggy hit into a groundout, and that was that for the comeback.  Better luck tomorrow, boyos. 

The Blue Jays currently enjoy a 9-3 season record over the Red Sox (64-56) this season. Disgusting. However, Boston is still six games ahead of the fourth-place Jays, six back from the Yankees, and ten back from first place Tampa Bay. But the Red Sox' path to the playoffs doesn't go through the division championship, and they still enjoy a 4½-game cushion in the Wild Card standings.

This afternoon (3:07 pm), Payton Tolle (7-6, 3.20) starts against veteran journeyman Max Scherzer (1-4, 7.25). The Red Sox, who've been making every Toronto pitcher look like the second coming of Cy Young in this series, are 3-1 against Scherzer, and back on September 24 of last year, rocked him for ten hits, including a Yoshida home run, to win 7-1. 

C'mon guys, you've beat Scherzer before and you can beat him again. I mean, you can't spell "Beantown" without a W. 

Bureau of Curious Behaviors

 

I have no idea what they're doing up there in the Arctic. I hope everyone is alright.

First, we have Ella Hibbert and the Yeva appearing to be sailing back to Alaska after harboring overnight in Siberia. Today and yesterday, she's been sailing east across the Bering Strait apparently straight toward Nome. Is she having equipment problems and needs something that can't be shipped to her in Russia in a timely manner? Is it a health issue? We don't know because she hasn't posted an update since August 2 before she left Saint Paul Island and all we can do it follow her route.

Update: After posting this, I found a post by some other person saying that when Hibbert was in the port of Providenia in Russia, she needed to replenish her fuel supply but attempts to contact anyone there were unsuccessful. Perhaps she's now headed to Nome to fuel up before taking on the Northeast Passage. 

Then there's Matt Rutherford and the Chimera, still way up north at the 80th parallel in the Kara Sea, but for some reason now turned around and heading west instead of east. He had been fairly consistent with at least daily updates to his media feed, but has been silent the past two days with no explanation as to why he's reversed course.

And who knows what the hell Tamara Klink and the Sardinga 2 are up to in the Chukchi Sea. Searching for a path through sea ice? Reacting to changing wind directions? Lost? Just playing around? Her most recent Instagram update was yesterday but was recorded back when she first left Nome last week.

So, yeah, I'm confused. Everybody seems to be going in the wrong direction. But I'm neither a sailor nor an Arctic explorer, so what do I know?

Update 2: Rutherford just announced this evening that the Northern Sea Route Association within the Russian Government, which controls the Northeast Passage over Siberia, has decided that the ice conditions are too hazardous to permit any recreational vessels to pass through. In other words, access denied, and he has turned back to sail the 5,000 miles to his home in Annapolis, Maryland. Bummer.

That may also be why Ella Hibbert is now a mere dozen or so miles outside of Nome, Alaska. She may have not found the fuel she was looking for in Providenia, but she may also have been told to "turn back."

Update 3: Tamara Klink just posted that she indeed had been looking for a path through the sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, but seeing nothing but ice around here and on the satellite map, she's heading back to the Bering Strait. 

Long story short, for a season that looked like it might have had as many as three solo sailboats passing through the Northeast Passage, it now appears that there won't be any. Bummer.

Blue Jays 5, Red Sox 4

 

Veteran catcher Adley Rutschman made his Red Sox debut last night. Boston lost, 5-3.

It was Boston's fourth straight loss, but it wasn't Rutschman's fault. He caught a fairly good game, and very nearly hit a Dylan Cease fastball out of the park (it went foul by only a few feet). He finished 1-3 on the night, with a single, a strikeout, and two walks.   

The frustrating thing about last night's loss was the Sox succeeded in knocking pitching ace Dylan Cease out of the game with 104 pitches after five innings. They got five hits off of him, including an Abreu and a Rafaela home run, and the Sox led, 3-1, by the end of Cease's stint on the mound. But with the hard part of the night's work out of the way, they gave up two runs in the bottom of the fifth and Boston wasn't able to score against the Jay's bullpen, while the usually reliable Red Sox' bullpen gave up two more runs.     

Four straight losses after a 27-3 run. This most improbable of seasons continues to be unpredictable.

To make matters worse, now Tampa Bay is red hot, winning nine of their last ten games, and Boston (64-55) trails the Rays by nine games in the AL East. Friendly reminder that the AL East is a rough neighborhood, and third-place Boston's .538 average would put them in first in either the AL Central or AL West. 

But the Red Sox path to the World Series doesn't run through the division championship but through the Wild Card race, where they have a 4½ game margin and trail New York for the top berth by three games.

Ranger Suarez (4-3, 3.32) will start the third game if this four-game series tonight. On July 25, he pitched four shutout innings against the Jays with six Ks, and is a career 2-0 against the Jays in three starts. He'll be up against former Angel José Soriano (9-6, 3.24). He gave up two home runs to Boston in relief back in 2024, including one to Jarren Duran, and in a June 4 start last year, the Sox rocked him for seven runs on eight hits in only 3⅔ innings. 

But past results are no indication of future performance, or so we're told, and it remains to be seen if the Red Sox are going to allow themselves to lose a second straight series and set themselves up to possibly be swept for the first time since June 18, when the Jays swept them in Fenway.

Bering, Chukchi & Kara

 

Bering Sea: Ella Hibbert and the Yeva are back at sea. After leaving Saint Paul Island last week, she sailed due north into Komsomolskaya Bay on the south side of Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point in Russia. I incorrectly presumed she was there to check in with the authorities at the administrative center of Providensky before sailing further through Russian territorial waters, but it appears that she never docked in the harbor, just anchored for the night in the middle of the bay. It seems more likely she was just looking for a safe harbor to grab some rest away from the ice and arctic winds before proceeding rather than showing her papers, but we can only guess because she hasn't been updating her social media. In any event, she left the Bay this morning and is currently rounding Cape Dezhnev on her way to cross the Arctic Circle and enter the Chukchi Sea.

Chukchi Sea: Tamara Klink and the Sardinha 2 are already up in the Chukchi, but what she's doing up there is anyone's guess. Unlike Hibbert, she has been posting updates to social media, but generally about a week after the fact. She was still posting updates about her sea voyage from Homer, Alaska to Nome even after she had been in Nome for a week. and if you only followed her on Instagram and not the Sardinha's tracking page, you'd think that she was still in Nome. However, since leaving Nome, she's crossed the Arctic Circle headed for either the Northwest Passage over Alaska and Canada or the Northeast Passage over Russia and Scandinavia. She initially headed northwest over Russia, but generally stayed a good 100 miles plus beyond the coast of Siberia, as if trying to stay out of Russian waters, although at one point she was a mere dozen or so miles off the coast of Cape Dez. But since Sunday, she's been headed even further north and then northeast, either heading back toward Alaska and the Northwest Passage or else setting herself up to sail around the north side of Wrangel Island, giving the mainland a wide berth. 

Kara Sea: Meanwhile, as Hibbert is sailing west and Klink is sailing north/northeast, Matt Rutherford is sailing through the Northeast Passage in the opposite direction. He's currently in the Kara Sea heading due north in order to pass above Komsomolets, the northernmost island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. He's already sailed north over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, but passing the Severnaya will take him all the way up to the 81st latitude or beyond. He's already up at 80° 38' N and still heading due north. Earlier this month, he set a personal record at 81° 14' N while crossing over Norway's Svalbard Islands, but he should break that record above Komsomolets. I need to point out that there's a big, wide Vilkitsky Strait between the archipelago and the Siberian mainland down around the 77th parallel. According to Google AI, it's possible but extremely difficult to sail through the heavily restricted Vilkitsky, which connects the Kara and Laptev Seas. The passage is normally locked in thick ice fields and requires specialized ice-class vessels or nuclear icebreaker escorts, but even that's apparently too easy for Rutherford, the total madman.  It will be interesting to see if Hibbert and possibly Klink sails north of the archipelago like Rutherford, or south through the Strait.