FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: June 14, 2025

It was a ravishing night time right here in Brooklyn on Wednesday, and though I couldn’t make it to Citi Discipline 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 have been on one of many TVs behind the bar, whereas the opposite was reserved for the Yankees, who have been set to play the Royals a short time later. That was a bummer for the 2 Purple Sox followers sitting subsequent to me, Mike and Kathleen, however they have been resourceful. The bar has free wifi, so Mike pulled up Boston’s sport towards the Rays on his telephone. He and Kathleen didn’t know each other, however they acknowledged one another as fellow Sox followers from the weekend prior, once they have been each on the identical bar to look at Yankees-Purple Sox. He moved over to the stool between Kathleen and I, in order that she and her companion Harry might 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 perfect factor about Purple Sox followers is we concurrently love and hate the Sox, and we like to hate them, too.” I convey this up as a result of I thought of her description of Boston followers as I sat right 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 wish to remind all of you that whereas anybody can submit a query, this mailbag is unique to FanGraphs Members. If you happen to aren’t but a Member and wish to hold studying, you possibly can join a Membership right here. It’s the easiest way to each expertise the positioning and help our employees, and it comes with a bunch of different nice advantages. Additionally, in the event you’d wish to ask a query for subsequent week’s mailbag, ship me an e mail at mailbag@fangraphs.com.