SB Nation Reacts: Confidence Polls

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Red Sox fans, sign up HERE to join Reacts.

We are now well past the halfway point of this shortened season for most teams and less than a month before the regular season concludes and the postseason begins. The big event of the last week was, of course, the trade deadline, which gave Chaim Bloom his first real chance to shine since being hired in the middle of last offseason. It wasn’t a particularly eventful deadline for him in terms of quality being traded away, but there was a fair amount of quantity. The way fans view the future of the franchise after that deadline is the focus of today’s Reacts post.

Fan Confidence heading in the right direction

Over the last couple of weeks — before and after the deadline — we asked fans for their confidence in the direction of the franchise. Clearly things are bad right now, but eyes are intently on the future for now. It seems that the trade deadline helped with that. When we took the poll on August 20, just 21 percent of Red Sox fans felt confident in the direction of the franchise. When we re-took it after the deadline, though, it jumped up to 50 percent.

That is a massive jump. Granted, there was basically nowhere to go but up from where they started, but this is still an encouraging jump. It makes sense, too, because the team did have a solid deadline. They didn’t grab any big-time pieces of the future, to be fair, but they got some solid players in Connor Seabold, Hudson Potts and Jeisson Rosario, as well as a couple players to be named later who we don’t know yet. I think what was more important was who they didn’t trade, though. Confidence wouldn’t have been as high if they had traded, for example, Xander Bogaerts.

How has the season gone?

Do we really need to explain that? Although I’m not sure about those people who expected this. It was certainly fair to expect this team to be bad, but literally the worst in baseball? I don’t recall anyone predicting that.

Biggest Deadline Move

It was a busy deadline around baseball, but there weren’t a ton of marquee deals made. That said, the Clevinger deal was certainly a big one and has to be the headliner. I think my favorite move was the Marlins trading for Starling Marte, though. Also, don’t sleep on the Tommy La Stella addition for the Athletics.