As tired as I am of the Twitter and water cooler questions — Was 2023 just a fluke? An outlier? A magic trick? — forgive me if I have no interest in ranking World Series journeys. Short of cheating the game on the way to a title, if you want to stack the paths to and from a championship from best to worst, I’ll happily accept whatever brings up the rear. It’s a freaking championship. Yes, please.
Dial back to eight-years-younger you: What if the bargain, after the Blue Jays swept Texas out of the 2016 postseason, was that the Rangers would have losing records in seven out of the next eight years, but in that one exception season they would win a World Series?
Would you take it?
You in?
Oh, and as part of that bargain, you lose Cole Ragans and he promptly turns into an All-Star-level starting pitcher. Gone are Thomas Saggese, Tekoah Roby, and Luisangel Acuna, too.
Still in?
Yes. Hell, yes. Right??
That’s not to say what is going down right now is any fun. Sports are cruel.
Why is this happening? I never miss a Bruce Bochy pregame chat or postgame interview as long as I’m near a radio, but I almost feel guilty listening the postgamers lately. You can hear the weariness in his voice, having to deliver a new variation of an answer to the same near-nightly question:
We just aren’t finding ways to come up with the timely hit.
But why is that?
Hitter by hitter, let’s take a (baseless) stab at what it looks like could be going on.