The Boston Sunday Sports Section
“My wife tells me one day, ‘I think you love baseball more than me.’ I say, ‘Well, I guess that’s true, but hey, I love you more than football and hockey.'” — Tommy Lasorda
Roman Anthony singled on the first pitch he saw in 2026.
One at-bat does not mean much in a 162-game season. But Opening Day is about feeling, not data, and the feeling coming out of Cincinnati on a summer-like afternoon was exactly what this franchise has been missing for a while now: genuine, unforced optimism. Roman Anthony — 21 years old, 71 career games, ninth-best selling jersey in all of baseball — stepped in against Andrew Abbott and put the ball in play immediately. Lou Merloni said it best: Time to Go!!!!!
Meanwhile, on Wednesday night at TD Garden, Patriots All-Pro cornerback Christian Gonzalez was courtside for Celtics-Thunder, appeared on the jumbotron, and flashed the money gesture to the crowd. Everyone in the building understood immediately. The Patriots have until May 1 to exercise his fifth-year option. Pay the man.
This is what Boston sports are at their best. Athletes who genuinely want to be here. Who show up for each other. The Celtics beat OKC — the best team in the NBA — on Wednesday night. The Bruins took points from division-leading Buffalo in overtime. The Red Sox opened the season with one of their most promising young cores in years and a shutout win. And the Patriots, for the first time since Tom Brady left, are a destination for free agents again.
Marcelo Mayer has the job. Now he has to keep it.
Opening Day is here, and for the first time in years, there’s a genuinely interesting question at second base — one that isn’t just “who is that?”
Marcelo Mayer has the job. He’s 22 years old, the fourth overall pick in 2021, and the player the organization has been quietly pointing toward for three years. Alex Cora pushed him hard all spring to take the position seriously. By every indication, he responded.
He didn’t start on Opening Day — the Reds threw left-hander Andrew Abbott, and Cora went with Isiah Kiner-Falefa. That’s exactly the kind of cautious early-career platoon move that Ballpark Buzz flagged as a risk heading into the season. Mayer did, though, come off the bench and contributed two key hits versus righty relievers.
IKF was the eighth different Opening Day starting second baseman in eight years. Ideally, in 2027, Mayer becomes the ninth. And then in 2028, the streak ends.
Second base is known as the keystone. For the Red Sox, it has been more Keystone Cops. Since 2020, 26 different players have played at least five games at second base for the Red Sox. Twenty-six. The list is coyote ugly. Jonathan Araúz, Jack López, Jamie Westbrook, Mickey Gasper, Connor Wong — who profiles considerably better as a catcher — and one name you likely haven’t forgotten, Jeter Downs, but only because he arrived as part of the Mookie Betts trade along with Connor Wong and Alex Verdugo — who, it should be noted, arrived in Boston right on schedule as part of that deal, which was somewhat out of character.
The root of all of it traces to one moment: Manny Machado’s dirty slide into Dustin Pedroia in 2017. Pedroia was never right again. The Red Sox have been searching ever since.
Ballpark Buzz correctly identifies the two biggest questions on Mayer: can he stay healthy (his best professional season was 91 games), and can he hit left-handed pitching (he struggled against lefties in his brief MLB exposure last year). Both need answers in 2026. Whether the platoon-happy Cora allows him to answer the second one is its own question.
As for the rotation debate that consumed spring training, the No. 5 starter question is mostly noise. The 2025 Dodgers used 16 different starters before the All-Star Break and won the World Series. What matters is who’s healthy and who’s pitching in October. Garrett Crochet is an ace. That matters far more.
Full breakdown of the second base carousel since 2020, the health questions, and the lefty-hitting problem Mayer needs to solve. Smart, well-researched, worth your time.
The definitive breakdown of the second base problem and whether Mayer is the answer. Free on Substack.
The full 26-man roster breakdown with position-by-position analysis heading into Cincinnati. Free.
▶ Alex Cora on Why Everybody Loves Roman Anthony — YouTube
They punched the best team in basketball right in the mouth.
Wednesday’s win over OKC was the kind of win that matters — the Thunder are 57-16, the best record in the NBA, and Boston punched them right in the mouth. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown each posted 19-plus points, 8-plus rebounds, and 7-plus assists — the last time two Celtics did that in the same game was Larry Bird and Dennis Johnson in 1984. Jaylen Brown on Tatum afterward: “Tonight was a great game by Jayson. This is just the start.”
The Celtics went up by 14 on a Payton Pritchard three with just over five minutes left. When OKC clawed back to within seven, it was Brown who was the closer down the stretch. The role players — Luka Garza and Baylor Scheierman — stepped up, undoubtedly better for having gotten more minutes in Tatum’s absence. The Celtics are a better team with Jayson Tatum than without him. But having to play without Tatum for five months forced others to step up to the point that Brown was getting MVP chants every time he stepped to the free-throw line.
Tatum is back from his Achilles injury and getting better every game. The coaching staff is being appropriately cautious with three weeks of regular season left — exactly the right call. Playoff seeding matters less than where he is physically. Watch his minutes and his explosiveness over the next few weeks. That’s the real data.
Adam Taylor’s five takeaways from the win over OKC. Free on Substack.
The best national piece on Wednesday’s game. Projection systems love a Celtics-Thunder Finals. This is why.
▶ Celtics vs. Thunder full game highlights — YouTube
The destination has changed. Vrabel, Maye, and a culture that’s already showing up in the small details.
Two years ago, Calvin Ridley used the Patriots as leverage to get a better deal somewhere else. Brandon Aiyuk refused a trade to New England outright. The Patriots couldn’t give their money away.
This month, Eliot Wolf said every free agent who walks through the door says the same two things: I want to play for Vrabel, and I want to play with Drake Maye.
The reason the shift happened so fast isn’t complicated. Vrabel sets a standard. Standards only hold when the best players in the building embody them. Belichick had Brady. Brady made preparation the expectation for everyone around him. Maye is doing something similar — not “Maye is Brady,” but the mechanism is the same and it’s showing up in small ways already. Romeo Doubs walked in to sign his four-year deal and couldn’t put down his team-issued iPad. Eliot Wolf had to pull him away from studying formations to get a signature. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a building where the culture communicates what’s expected before anyone says a word.
The free agency class reflects the same deliberate thinking. Romeo Doubs at wide receiver. Alijah Vera-Tucker at guard. Kevin Byard at safety. Dre’Mont Jones on the edge. All floor-raisers — smart, targeted moves that fix known problems and preserve draft flexibility. The edge rush depth — which lost both K’Lavon Chaisson and Anfernee Jennings — remains the honest question heading into April 23rd. The A.J. Brown trade rumors haven’t died. The Patriots are reportedly still the only team on his wish list. That’s what destination status looks like in practice.
Position-by-position breakdown of every move. The honest accounting of what improved and what still needs answering on April 23rd. Free.
The best Patriots beat writer in the business on why the destination shift is real and what’s driving it. Verify free in incognito.
▶ Mike Giardi on the Patriots receiver situation — A.J. Brown, Romeo Doubs, and the draft — YouTube
“Any team can beat any team.” Five words. The Bruins’ entire argument.
The Bruins are 40-24-8, sitting fourth in the Atlantic Division and holding the first wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference. They won two points in overtime at Buffalo on Wednesday night — coming back from a two-goal swing in 33 seconds in the third period to tie it, then Pavel Zacha won it in overtime — and David Pastrnak spoke to TNT cameras afterward: “Any team can beat any team.”
That’s the whole Bruins argument in five words. And as Evan Marinofsky points out on his Friday Bruins Beat podcast, the Bruins might actually be a good playoff team — if they make it in.
Pastrnak has points in 11 straight games — seven goals and 18 points in that stretch. When your best player is that locked in heading into the final stretch of the regular season, the seeding becomes secondary. This team beat Carolina twice this year — Carolina is 45-20, the best record in the Eastern Conference. They beat Dallas 6-2 in December. When the Bruins are playing their best hockey, they can beat anybody.
No wildcard team has won the Stanley Cup under the current format — but the 2017 Nashville Predators and 2023 Florida Panthers both made the Finals as wildcards. The Panthers the year before that went to Game 7. Getting in the door is the whole game in hockey. Survive the first round and you’re two wins from the conference finals.
This week matters urgently. The Buffalo win put the Bruins’ playoff odds above seventy percent. Columbus on Sunday, Dallas on Tuesday. Four points are available in the next three days. Every one of them counts. No room to breathe and little margin for error.
The best free Bruins community on the internet. Where the real fans are talking. Free.
▶ Why The Bruins May Actually Be A Good Playoff Team — Bruins Beat with Evan Marinofsky
The Algorithm Won
This week’s Long Game was sparked by Joon Lee’s video “The Algorithm Won” for More Perfect Union — watch it embedded below. What follows is my own take on the same question.
There is a version of John Henry that Red Sox fans love. He arrived in 2002 carrying a commodities trader’s brain and a genuine fan’s heart, looked at a sport running on gut instinct and old money, and saw inefficiency everywhere. He hired smart people. He let them be smart. He won four World Series titles in fifteen years. For a franchise that had won zero in the previous eighty-six years, that felt like salvation.
That version of John Henry is real. So is the other one.
Joon Lee — who grew up thirty minutes from Fenway, covered the Red Sox professionally, and knows this story from both sides of the press credential — made a video this week with More Perfect Union that is the clearest explanation yet of what happened between those two versions. It traces the arc from the commodities trader who revolutionized baseball to the financial entity that traded Mookie Betts, acquired Liverpool, welcomed private equity, and let Alex Bregman walk to Chicago. It is thirty minutes that will reframe everything you thought you understood about why this franchise keeps frustrating you despite every advantage.
The short version: the model worked so well that it evolved past winning.
It stopped being: how do we win? It became: how do we optimize? Those sound like the same question. They are not. Winning means Mookie Betts in right field for the next decade. Optimizing means Mookie Betts is a depreciating asset whose surplus value peaks before his contract does. Winning means paying Alex Bregman what he’s worth to keep your clubhouse leader. Optimizing means the Cubs’ money is better than your money and the spreadsheet says let him walk.
What gets lost in the macro argument is the human cost. Joon Lee’s video spends real time with Red Sox fans — not analysts, not journalists, just people who grew up with this team — and what comes through is something harder to quantify than EBITDA. They’re not angry exactly. They’re disengaged. One fan says he’d still spend the money on tickets. It’s not about the money. It’s about whether he should invest his heart.
The numbers make this concrete. John Henry’s group paid roughly $700 million for the Red Sox in 2002. Today the franchise is valued at $5.25 billion per Forbes. And the San Diego Padres — a mid-market team that sold for $800 million in 2012 — are currently projected to sell for more than $3.5 billion, per Ken Rosenthal and Dennis Lin of The Athletic, which would shatter the MLB record. If the Padres are worth $3.5 billion, you already know what the Red Sox are worth. The thing that makes these franchises worth billions is that fans have given them a piece of themselves. That emotional investment is not a soft, sentimental thing. It is literally the asset.
Ownership may be optimizing perfectly. The question is what they’re optimizing for — and whether the fans who built the asset will still be there when the math is done.
▶ The Algorithm Won — Joon Lee / More Perfect Union — 17 minutes
Stat: @alexspeier · Packaged by @BOSSportsGordo · Reposted by Buster Olney
One place. Every game. Every network. No hunting.
| Sun. 3/29 | Mon. 3/30 | Tue. 3/31 | Wed. 4/1 | Thu. 4/2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⚾ Red Sox | 1:40 PM at CIN NESN |
8:10 PM at HOU NESN |
8:10 PM at HOU NESN |
8:10 PM at HOU NESN |
— |
| 🏒 Bruins | 5:00 PM at CBJ NESN |
— | 7:00 PM vs. DAL NESN+ |
— | 7:00 PM at FLA NESN |
| 🏀 Celtics | 6:00 PM at CHA NBCSB |
7:30 PM at ATL NBCSB |
— | 7:30 PM at MIA ESPN |
— |
| 🏈 Patriots | No games. NFL Draft: April 23 — four weeks away. Watch for A.J. Brown trade news. | ||||
🔑 Red Sox: Does Mayer start Sunday against a righty? That’s the real Opening Day.
🔑 Bruins: Four points in three days. Every one of them is the season.
🔑 Celtics: Watch Tatum’s minutes and explosiveness. That’s the real number right now.
🔑 Patriots: NFL Draft April 23. A.J. Brown watch continues.