Three Things I Have Recently Gotten Wrong

Sports, politics, the Internet -- you know, the usual stuff.

Photo by Tasha Lyn on Unsplash

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World endeavors to provide trenchant, timely analysis about the state of the world. But as I have noted previously, what you are reading is a form of contingent writing. I analyze what I think will happen, I put it out there in the universe…. and I am often wrong. I make mistakes, I screw up, I fail to see what was coming.

This column is about three mistakes I have recently made and what, if anything, those mistakes mean.

First, I was wrong about who Trump would pick to be his vice presidential nominee. Trump announced his choice of celebrity author, former investment banker, and freshman Ohio senator J.D. Vance on Monday. The Washington Post’s Meryl Kornfield and Marianne LeVine provide the requisite straight news coverage:

Donald Trump has chosen Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate, selecting a rising star in the Republican Party and previously outspoken Trump critic who in recent years has closely aligned himself with the former president.

Trump announced his pick Monday on Truth Social. “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote. He praised Vance’s education credentials and business experience.

If elected in November, Vance, 39, would be one of the youngest vice presidents in history. He is a relative political newcomer, winning his Senate seat in 2022 after rising to prominence as an author who wrote a best-selling memoir.

While I never wrote about it here on Drezner’s World, I felt pretty sure that Trump would choose North Dakota governor Doug Burgum for entirely selfish reasons. As a national non-entity, Burgum was the closest approximation to a Mike Pence clone out there for Trump. The 45th president is not a guy who likes to share the limelight, and Burgum would have easily faded into the background. This would have enabled Trump to delay his role as kingmaker for longer than naming someone like Vance, who will be the de facto nominee for 2028 if Trump wins. Paradoxically, the stronger Trump’s VP choice, the sooner Trump himself would become a lame duck. So, I figured he would pick Burgum and then conduct a reality-show competition in 2028 to anoint his successor.

As it turns out, I was close to being right, according to NBC News’ Henry J. Gomez and Matt Dixon:

With the clock ticking to the Republican National Convention last week, Donald Trump met privately to discuss his running mate search with two of his closest advisers: his sons. 

The conversation quickly turned tense when the former president indicated that he was leaning toward Doug Burgum, until recently the largely unknown governor of North Dakota — but someone whose low-maintenance, no-drama personality would never threaten to outshine Trump.

That’s when Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump chimed in.

“Don Jr. and Eric went bats--- crazy: ‘Why would you do something so stupid? He offers us nothing,’” a longtime Republican operative familiar with the discussion told NBC News.

“They were basically all like ‘JD, JD, JD,’” the operative said.

So, in the end, I was wrong. In choosing Vance, Trump picked someone who genuinely believes the BS that Trump has been hawking for years now on the virtues of protectionism and populism. Furthermore, Vance made it clear back in February that he would have done Trump’s bidding on January 6th as opposed to Mike Pence. In other words, Trump is going all in on the populist ideology that got him to this point.

Second, I was wrong about a phishing attempt. Sunday night my Twitter account got hacked. I think it was because I received a very credible email suggesting someone had logged into my account from Tyumen, Russia and that I should change my password. The result was that the hackers got control of my account, turned it private, empowered two-factor authentication to lock me out and then claimed to be selling MacBooks on the cheap for charity.

Thanks to some well-connected friends I was able to get back my account on Monday. It was disconcerting to realize, however, that more than 70 followers DMed the hackers, and some went so far as to attempt to send them money.

Most banks caught the scam, and hopefully no one actually lost their funds. Props to the many followers who reported the incident to Twitter, and who tried to mess with the hackers — one imaginative follower gave the hackers the address and phone number of the White House.

Anyway, I was wrong to think that email was legit and will try to be more careful in the future.

Finally, and most happily, I was wrong about the enshittification of the Boston Red Sox. At the beginning of spring training, the Red Sox had not made a ton of moves despite parlous depth in the starting rotation. I noted, “the 2023 version of this team finished in last place, and they obviously needed some quality pitching real bad. And yet they have basically treaded water in that department…. It is difficult not to conclude that the Fenway Sports Group is enshittifying the Boston Red Sox in order to increase profits. I would be willing to pay John Henry some money for him to prove me wrong.”

Well, I guess I owe Henry some money, because I was wrong. At the All Star break, the Red Sox sit eleven games over .500, only 4 1/2 games out of the lead in the American League East. They hold the best record in baseball since May 19th at 31-18. If the season ended today they would be playoff bound as a wild card team. Fangraphs gives them a better than 50-50 chance of being in the postseason come October. They have accomplished all of this despite serious injuries to their lineup and starting rotation.

The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey notes the myriad ways the Red Sox have exceeded expectations:

Much has been made of the team’s improved pitching under chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and pitching coach Andrew Bailey. There have been bumps — and injuries — but by and large this group has outperformed expectations.

Red Sox pitchers ended the first half with a 3.61 ERA, the fifth best in baseball, and the rotation also sits fifth in the majors with a 3.56 ERA….

This Red Sox club is unlike any in recent memory, in large part because of its team speed. With Jarren Duran, David Hamilton and Ceddanne Rafaela in the lineup regularly, not only are they stealing bases, but their threat to do so has also put pressure on opposing pitchers and in turn helped the rest of the lineup….

Hitting coach Pete Fatse preached a nine-on-one approach from the start of the season with each batter doing something to keep the line moving. In the first few months, it didn’t look great, but the Red Sox have found consistency at the plate. They rank in the AL’s top five in doubles (170, second), triples (24, tied second), homers (110, fifth), average (.254, third) and OPS (.745, fifth)….

If there were a Manager of the Year award for the first half, Cora would likely get strong consideration.

The Red Sox hovered at .500 for much of the first half, staying afloat as young players found their footing and injured ones returned. It was a jigsaw puzzle in many ways, but Cora’s trust in his rookies has paid off and he has generally pushed the right buttons to get the most out of the team.

McCaffrey also questioned whether the Red Sox can sustain this level of excellence without reinforcements at the trading deadline. At a minimum, they need another starting pitcher and some right-handed hitting.

For the past few years at this point in the season the Red Sox have been near the Wild Card but chose to be sellers instead, which has been rather frustrating for fans. Earlier this month Fangraph’s Dan Szymborski made the case for the Red Sox to make some moves at the trade deadline:

The first and most important reason for the Red Sox to move on from their gentle retooling cycle is that they have more to gain in playoff probability than most teams by making a few good trades. Teams right on the cusp get the most benefit from adding talent, and that’s where the Red Sox reside. Helping their case is that they may not need to win as many games to sneak into the playoffs this season as was required in recent years. The final AL Wild Card team won 89 games in 2023 and 86 games in ’22, and it would needed 90 wins in ’21, the last year before the playoffs expanded to 12 teams; this year, ZiPS projects the average AL winner of the last wild card spot will have 85.5 wins. This means that, without making any trades, the Red Sox could go 39-37 the rest of the way and still have a 50% shot to snag the last AL wild card….

Moreover, the Sox aren’t just incentivized to be aggressive at the deadline; they also have the ability to do this. In the last update last year, we ranked the Red Sox farm system as second in baseball, Keith Law ranked it eighth at The Athletic, and ZiPS ranked it highly. Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America were grumpier, placing Boston’s system at no. 13. Regardless of which version you agree with, the Red Sox have a farm system that’s at least slightly better than average, a maybe one of the best in baseball. Either way, Boston has the prospect capital to improve its big league roster without sacrificing its success in future seasons….

One of my favorite things to do at games is to completely avoid the press box and just wander around talking baseball with fans, especially ones who are clearly rooting for the visiting team. There was a lot of unhappiness after the Mookie Betts trade, but the overall impression that I get these days isn’t necessarily rage against the ownership, but a dull apathy toward the organization. In a lot of ways, this kind of grim acceptance is harder to turn around than white hot anger.

How much more apathy will be created if the Red Sox, for the third season in a row, simply twiddle their thumbs at the thought of contention? The Kyle Schwarber trade in 2021, their only big acquisition that year at the deadline, should be the type of thing that a big market club like the Red Sox repeats every summer.

Agreed. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World hopes the Red Sox look at the massive number of Rule 5 eligible prospects next year and trade some of them for useful major leaguers.

The important takeaway is that I have been wrong multiple times in the past few weeks. My goals for the rest of 2024? Well, as a Red Sox fan, watching this video every day for the rest of the year will be a fun task:

More generally, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World will aim to be slightly less wrong for the rest of 2024.