All right, welcome back to breaking balls.

I want to share a part of the conversation I had with someone recently because I was talking to the person, they said, you know, the real problem with the Red Sox over the years of late has been decision making.

And the point being is that rather than saying money, because that's an easy one,

it's about the decision-making with the Red Sox, and maybe some of that is driven by money,

but the decision-making has been at the core of their problems. And at this point, this is a little

convoluted, so I'm going to ask you all to bear with me here for a second, because I want to

turn the clock back a little bit and just imagine how history might have been different. Had the Red convoluted. So I'm going to ask you all to bear with me here for a second because I want to turn

the clock back a little bit and just imagine how history might have been different. Had the Red Sox

just made a simple move several years ago that could have solved many of their problems.

Okay. So here's the point. In 2021, the Red Sox were in the race and high in Bloom, then the general

manager traded for Kyle Schwabre at the trading deadline.

Schwerber was with Washington at the time, and Schwerber also had a hamstring injury that

prevented him from joining the Red Sox or playing for the Red Sox for another couple of weeks.

They got him at the end of July.

He didn't play until about the middle of August.

But when he joined the team and they shoehorned him into first base, which he was really not equipped to play, had never played it before.

There was a famous error he made in the postseason while playing first base and, you know, and then execute her to play in the next game and get a standing ovation from the crowd, if you remember.

But in any case, the bottom line is Schwabber hit for the Red Sox. In the six weeks during the regular season that he played for the team, he had a 957 OPS. The postseason wasn't quite as good, but he did hit three home runs. The OPS was a little over 700. It wasn't great, but Schwabber was a good fit for the ball club.

He then hit free agency. He ended up signing with the Philadelphia Phillies for four years and $79 million.

Okay, you need to remember these numbers. Seventy nine million dollars.

He went to the Philadelphia Phillies for four years.

In Philadelphia, he became one of the premier power hitters in the game and grew as a power hitter is what I should say. He was a good power hitter before then, but really exploded into

...