The Pecan Park Eagle

“NUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The Pecan Park Eagle isn’t trying to beat a dead horse here. This one is still snorting, even though it’s now laying on its side, foaming at the mouth, and whimpering in ways that cause its once fire-breathing nostrils to vibrate in sounds of gurgling agony. – It’s simply a fact. The 111-loss from 2013 Houston Astros are on the brink of finishing with a better record in 2014 than the 2013 Champions of the World Series and all of organized baseball, the Boston Red Sox. In the history of major league baseball, it could result for the BoSox as the most graphically worst collapse from the stick ball throne since the beginning of baseball or time itself, depending upon which of these earmarks came first.

The 1914 to 1915 Philadelphia Athletics experienced the worst percentage downgrade for a league champion in a single season, but they were not the defending  World Series champions, having lost to the 1914 miracle team, the Boston Braves, that year before crashing to 8th and last place in the American League in 1915. In the melee of that collapse, the A’s went from a winning percentage of .651 in 1914 to a low of .283 in 1915. That “first to worst” finish added up to a winning percentage loss of .368 points. The 2014 last place Cleveland Naps lost 102 games that season, finishing 48.5 games behind the league-champion Red Sox. The very next  year, those essentially the same Clevelanders finished in 7th place –  a full 14 games ahead of the former champion Bostonians who now resided in the AL’s  last place in 2015.

The famous one-year Philadelphia fold from 1914-15 has been covered with a literary blanket over the years as the crash that came from A’s owner/manager Connie Mack selling off his “Million Dollar Infield” after the 1914 World Series loss for the sake of balancing his operational budget.

So, as we said yesterday, the Red Sox will not escape the infamy that will come from losing closely to the Astros in 2015 by saving a tie or close better record. They still will face accountability for their disappointing finish in the same 2014 neighborhood of the rebuilding Astros – no matter how they exactly complete the season by comparison. Was this New England failure the result of ripe playing stars who were allowed to go elsewhere in 2015 because of the club’s unwillingness to compete with the 2015 teams that signed them? – And how much did aging of the over-ripe players who remained in Boston kick into the fall?

A better record for the Astros in relation to the Red Sox in 2015 simply seals the deal for some kind of successfully diagnosed  big change in Boston’s roster or their way of doing things in 2015. – Otherwise, “2013” could grow to mean over time in the 21st century the roughly same thing that “1918” meant to Boston fans in the 20th century, starting with their fall from a World Series victory in 1918 to a 6th place finish in 1919 and the start of a championship drought that would come to be recognized by Boston fans as a “curse” for the next 86 years.

Of course, there is one bright side for Red Sox fans in late 2014. The Red Sox don’t have another Babe Ruth to give away to the Yankees over the course of the next year, or so. The least the Red Sox can do now is – try to keep from becoming the first World Series champion to finish behind a club that just finished its third straight year as a 100 plus games loser and also a club with the worst record in baseball in 2013 with 111 losses.

Beating out the Astros for best season record won’t spare the Red Sox players from their current doldrums, but it may help player, management, ownership, and fan pride a little. After all, who wants to be the former champs who lost out to one one of the biggest loser dynasties in baseball history?

Have a pleasant Hump Day, Astros and Red Sox fans!

SCORES OF GAMES PLAYED TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014:

TEXAS 2 – HOUSTON 1.

TAMPA BAY 6 – BOSTON 2.

SCHEDULE OF GAME FOR WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2014:

HOUSTON @ TEXAS

TAMPA BAY @ BOSTON

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THE PECAN PARK EAGLE DAILY MLB 2014 BATTING CROWN EYE:

NOTES, 9/24 AM: Wednesday morning. – Jose Altuve had a “0 for 4″ game Tuesday on top of the “1 for 4” numbers he put up on Monday. That “1 for 8” in the first two games @ Texas has dropped his average to .343 with four road games left in the season. At Comerica Park in Detroit, meanwhile, Victor Martinez of the Tigers went “0 for 2” against he White Sox to drop his second best average in the big leagues to .335. Altuve’s outs last night included and a looping infield pop to short and three can of corn fly balls.

Stuff happens.

Moving closer to the end of the season, nothing is settled in the race for the batting title. Altuve’s .011 margin of this past weekend has now shrunk three points to .008.  Hopefully, from our Astros fans perspective, Jose Altuve will have a good getaway day in the final Rangers game today, Wednesday, before the club gets on the plane for New York and the final three games of this season against the Mets. Thursday will be an off-day for the Astros.

The Eagle Eye on Jose Altuve’s pursuit of the 2014 American League and MLB batting average championships will continue daily through the balance of the season. For now, it’s a two-man race between Altuve and Victor Martinez of the Detroit Tigers. Should that change, so will our reporting format. – Bill McCurdy