It was a wonderful evening right here in Brooklyn on Wednesday, and though I couldn’t make it to Citi Subject in time for Mets-Nationals, I made a decision to go for an extended stroll after which cease at an area sports activities bar to learn and watch some baseball. Naturally, the Mets had been on one of many TVs behind the bar, whereas the opposite was reserved for the Yankees, who had been set to play the Royals a short while later. That was a bummer for the 2 Pink Sox followers sitting subsequent to me, Mike and Kathleen, however they had been resourceful. The bar has free wifi, so Mike pulled up Boston’s recreation towards the Rays on his cellphone. He and Kathleen didn’t know each other, however they acknowledged one another as fellow Sox followers from the weekend prior, after they had been each on the identical bar to observe Yankees-Pink Sox. He moved over to the stool between Kathleen and I, in order that she and her companion Harry may additionally watch the sport. The 4 of us began speaking, and it seems Harry and I went to the identical highschool, although he graduated 4 years forward of me. Small world!
Anyway, someday between Marcelo Mayer’s first and second house run of the sport, Kathleen mentioned to me, “The most effective factor about Pink Sox followers is we concurrently love and hate the Sox, and we like to hate them, too.” I carry this up as a result of I considered her description of Boston followers as I sat all the way down to reply the primary query on this week’s mailbag.
We’ll get to that in a second, however earlier than we do, I’d prefer to remind all of you that whereas anybody can submit a query, this mailbag is unique to FanGraphs Members. For those who aren’t but a Member and want to hold studying, you may join a Membership right here. It’s one of the best ways to each expertise the positioning and help our employees, and it comes with a bunch of different nice advantages. Additionally, when you’d prefer to ask a query for subsequent week’s mailbag, ship me an electronic mail at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
