A Very Simple Game Red Sox Blog

Best and Worst Moves of the Decade

2009-12-29T10:30:00.001-05:00

BEST MOVES (in no particular order)

Signing David Ortiz: One of the Twins’ worst moves of the decade became one of our best. Big Papi was a huge presence in the middle of the lineup and the smiling face of the franchise. Without his clutch hitting in the 2004 ALCS we don’t come back to win that series or even make it to the World Series.

Signing Manny Ramirez: As Dan Duquette said at the time, “I’ve just signed Jimmy Foxx in his prime.” Manny certainly earned his money, averaging 36 home runs and 114 RBIs a season while he was here, winning a batting title, a home run title and a World Series MVP. “Manny being Manny” was also a fun diversion for a while, until it got out of control, which led to…

Trading Manny Ramirez: Manny pouted his way out of town to LA where they built a season’s worth of marketing around “Mannywood” before finding out that Manny would be suspended for illegal drug use.

The Hanley Ramirez-Josh Beckett/Mike Lowell Trade: This was one of those trades that benefited both clubs. Hanley Ramirez has turned into a superstar, five-tool player for the Marlins. Beckett and Lowell were instrumental in winning the 2007 World Series.

Yawkey Trust sells the team: During the 68 years that Tom Yawkey, Jean Yawkey or the Yawkey Trust owned the Red Sox, the team made four appearances in the World Series, lost them all in seven games, had a couple of near-misses, and became known for racial intolerance when all the other teams were becoming more inclusive of black and Latin American players. Maybe it wasn’t the Curse of the Bambino, maybe it was the Curse of the Yawkeys.

Pedro: Even though he arrived in 1998, two years before the start of the decade, he was a joy to watch and has to be on this list. Pedro was only here for seven seasons, but he was the dominant pitcher in the American League for that time. Averaged 17-5/2.52 pitching in the toughest division in baseball. Come to think of it, letting him go was also a good move in the long run. His four years with the Mets produced only 32 wins, with 15 of them in his first season.

Terry Francona: Nobody knew him when he arrived in town, but Tito has turned into the perfect manager for a veteran team. Lets them play without getting in the way, covers for their stupidities, is able to integrate the younger players into the team. His record speaks for itself: He’s only the second manager in team history to lead the club for six or more consecutive seasons. The other one is Hall-of-Famer Joe Cronin.

WORST MOVES (in no particular order)

Letting Orlando Cabrera go: A steady fielder and a steady hitter, but that wasn’t good enough for the Sox, which led to…

Edgar Renteria: Couldn’t hack it in Boston offensively or defensively, which led to…

Julio Lugo: Couldn’t hack it in Boston offensively or defensively.

Pete Schourek: It seemed like every game I went to in 2000 he pitched and lost. Not surprising since he was 4-15 with a 4.97 ERA in 54 games over 2000 and 2001.

The Joe Kerrigan Era: Take a good pitching coach, make him the manager and only bad things can happen. The team was in freefall when Jimy Williams was let go in 2001 and Kerrigan only made it worse, which led to…

The Grady Little Era, and we all know how that ended up, with one of the worst moves in baseball history.

The Freddy Sanchez – Jeff Suppan trade: Sanchez went on to win a batting title with Pittsburgh and become a steady .299 career hitter. Suppan was supposed to be the great trade deadline pickup of 2003. Instead, he was 3-4 with an ERA over 5 and a half. He was gone to St. Louis the next year, and the Sox belted him around in the World Series.

Halfway to Opening Day!

2009-12-27T16:58:00.001-05:00

And so this is Christmas (or a few days after), and what have we done?

In the case of the Red Sox, a lot and not very much. A lot of churning the roster, but not a lot of improvement. Here’s a take on the first half of the postseason.

They did sign John Lackey, which gives them a valuable and very good pitcher to serve as the No. 3 starter. When you essentially have three No. 1 starters in Beckett, Lester and Lackey, it gives you a good chance to at least win two out of three games in a series when those three are pitching. It’s when you get into the back end of the rotation that things could go very good or very bad. Clay Buchholz seemed to find a groove over the last six weeks of the season, and if that carries over, he is as solid a number four starter as most teams have. Then we get to number five. Who knows what either Dice-K or Tim Wakefield are going to produce in 2010. Wakefield was one of the best pitchers during the first half of 2009, then got hurt and disappeared for the second half. Matsuzaka was AWOL all year, and there is no evidence that he is going to be anything like the super-lucky 18-game winner that he was in 2008, or even the 15-game winner he was in 2007.

Bullpens always have a lot of movement both during the season and in the winter, but the core of the Sox bullpen is still around. Papelbon was last seen melting down against the Angels. Manny Delcarmen was last seen melting down any time the score was close. Okajima maintained his reliability, and Ramon Ramirez was reasonably steady, steady enough, in fact, that they traded to get another Ramon Ramirez. The supporting players will fall into place as they always do, but a reliable setup guy to pitch the eighth inning would be helpful. Maybe it can be Daniel Bard, who looked so good when he first came up, only to appear to tire down the stretch.

Offensively, the Red Sox are hoping at this point that the defense and pitching will win games. The top of the lineup is pretty good, with Ellsbury/Pedroia/Martinez/Youkilis, but Youk has never been a classic cleanup hitter (35+ HR) and, at age 31, will never become one. What happens after that is another guessing game. David Ortiz regained his form after his lost two months, and had pretty good power and RBI season after that, but again, who knows what to expect. New acquisition Mike Cameron strikes out a lot and is even older than Ortiz or Mike Lowell,;Jeremy Hermida is average at best. JD Drew is JD Drew and is probably due for another injury round about now. We missed Marco Scutaro’s career year by one season, and the black hole at shortstop will probably gobble him up.

The fact that Jason Bay’s agent has come back to the Sox is nothing but a negotiating ploy designed to get the Yankees interested in throwing wads of their unlimited cash at him. He doesn’t really want to be here. The Yankees are not done yet. Bay or Holliday will end up in left field there.

And speaking of the Yankees, their payroll plus luxury tax total was $246 million. People said that with the new Yankee Stadium they would be able to support a $300 million payroll and they’re getting close. Isn’t it time to put all of baseball on a level playing field? Even the other big-market clubs can’t come close.

What will the rest of the off-season produce? Well, a first baseman or a third baseman would be nice. Mike Lowell is not an answer on either side of the infield, especially with his thumb surgery. If he comes back from that without any bat speed, he will be totally useless. That likely means Adrian Gonzalez, since they appear to be done free agent shopping which would preclude signing Adrian Beltre. As for Gonzalez, I would not give San Diego Jacoby Ellsbury, but I would give up Buchholz, maybe Bard, and a raft of prospects, except for Casey Kelly. Gonzalez is 27, in his prime and hit 40 home runs in a huge ballpark, and giving up Ryan Westmoreland, Michael Bowden and one or two others to get him would solidify the position for years to come. True, you might be giving up a future star, but you’re getting a present star.

So, we’re a week away from 2010, and lot can still happen, but we’re only seven weeks away from Truck Day, the day when all our hopes for the new season go south, if they already haven’t.

Short Stops at Shortstop

2009-11-28T07:47:00.004-05:00

Shortstop has been a problem position for the Red Sox the way drummer has been a problem position for Spinal Tap. They just can't keep anybody around. Since trading Nomar in 2004, the team has used Pokey Reese, Orlando Cabrera, Edgar Renteria, Alex Cora, Alex Gonzalez, Julio Lugo, Royce Claytopn, Gil Velazquez, Jed Lowrie, Nick Green and Alex Gonzalez again.

Theo has never cheaped out on a shortstop before, signing Edgar Renteria and Julio Lugo to long and lucrative contracts, before having to dump tem because the couldn't play in Boston.

But now, Theo chooses to nickel and dime Alex Gonzalez and a shortstop that could play here, and play here well, is off to Toronto. The option now appears to be Marco Scutaro, who was the Blue Jays shortstop and who will never duplicate his .282/12/60 2009 season. So theguy we want goes to Toronto and the guy they didn't want comes here.

First botched move of the winter.

The next step is the pursuit of Roy Halladay, who has been one of the best pitchers of the last decade, averaging 17 wins and pitching well over 200 innings a year. With an average of six complete games a year, he is a throwback to the time when pitchers went into a game expecting to pitch all nine innings. The Sox philosophy has always been the opposite of that. They make sure that their pitchers don't rthrow too many innings. They even go so far in the minor leagues as taking a pitcher out in the middle fo an inning when he is throwing a shutout because he has reached his pitch count. The Sox minor league pitchers don't have any idea what it is like to pitch into the seventh inning because they never do that. You would think they would look at HAlladay as someone who has thrown too many innings and whose arm is about to fall off. Plus, he'a a free agent after next season and we all know what a sorry record the Sox have in keeping their free agents.

That's why, if the Sox are about to empty the farm sustem in a trade, they should go after Felix Hernandez or Adrian Gonzalez. Hernanzed emerged in Seattle last year as one of the top pitchers in the game at age 23, second in the Cy Young voting. He was 19-5 and is compared to Pedro Martinez. Gonzalez could solidify the middle of the batting orfer. With protection around him like Victor Martinez and Kevin Youkilis, and playing in a smaller park, he should be able to improve on his 37 home run, 122 RBI lifetime averages.

Not to say that Halladay would not be a good pickup. But when you are giving up prospects, you hve to think a bit more long-term, and that is what Hernandez and Gonzalez give you - more in the long term.

And then there is left field. Jason Bay turned down $60 million from the Red Sox to become a free agent, and the whole affair has a real familar feel to it. "Just going out to try the free agent market" means this is being orchestrated by Brian Cashman, who tells free agents to pretend to play the market even though the deal is already made and the pinstriped jersey is waiting for them. And I don't mean the Phillies, Marlins, Twins or Astros pinstriped jersey.

That's OK, maybe Matt Holliday is a better fit here anyway. At least he doesn't strike out as much. Interesting that on baseball-reference.com's similarity scores, Holliday's #2 similar player is Jason Bay and Bay's #8 is Matt Holliday. Bay's #7 similar player is Trot Nixon, which throws some doubt into the whole "similar player" thing because I don't see Bay and Nixon as similar players at all, either statistically or in how they play the game. But Holliday's agent is Scott Boras.

With Cashman and Boras pulling the strings, this whole thing may turn out badly for the Sox, who mat end up with some second rate left fielder. I wonder what Troy O'Leary is up to now.

Free Agent Fiascos

2009-11-21T10:04:00.001-05:00

On November 1, 1976, Major League Baseball held its first free-agent draft. That sounds like an oxymoron. How can it be both? Well, the owners were in panic mode after the Curt Flood/Andy Messersmith/Dave McNally/Catfish Hunter decisions combined to shred the reserve clause and it became obvious that free agency was going to be real, and a real problem.

So the owners decided to try to control the process by having a draft. Each team could choose negotiating rights to five free agents, and each free agent could be “drafted” by no more than five teams. So, for example, if Bobby Grich was “drafted” by the Pirates, Twins, Orioles, Cardinals and Royals, he was off the market and could only negotiate with those clubs. Free, but not so free. All the clubs participated except the Dodgers, who basically announced that they were too good and too historically minded to participate in such crass commercialism. Also too cheap.

Anyway, one of the Red Sox draftees was pitcher Bill Campbell of the Twins and, just five days later, the deal was announced. It was a pretty good deal for Boston, as Campbell was 13-9, 2.96 in 1977 with 31 saves. That was the best season of the four he spent here, getting only 20 more saves in the next three seasons.

Since then, the Red Sox have been one of the most active teams on the free agent markets, with some successes (Manny Ramirez for most of the contract) and a lot of misses (Jack Clark and Matt Young, who pitched a no-hitter and lost).

But one thing that has been constant through the years has been the team’s inability to sign its own free agents and keep them in Boston.

This goes back to the 1980-81 offseason, when the Sox failed to offer contracts to Fred Lynn and Rick Burleson, allowing them to sign with the Angels, then sent Carlton Fisk his contract a day later than the deadline. He was declared a free agent and signed with the White Sox.

The list of their own free agents that the Sox have not signed includes Bruce Hurst, who went to the Padres. How times have changed. The Padres once could sign free agents. Then there was Wade Boggs, who left to go to the Yankees, Roger Clemens (in the twilight of his career), Mo Vaughn, Tom Gordon, Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, Johnny Damon (there are those Yankees again).

Which brings us to today, as we watch Jason Bay hit the free agency with what appears to be predictable results. The Sox negotiated with Bay all season and could not come to an agreement. Last week, Bay rejected a $60 million, four-year offer. If that deal was on the table in June, I’d bet it would have been accepted. But, at that time the Sox were only offering a three-year deal.

So now Bay is out there looking at offers. His agent says that there has been a lot of activity. Possibly, but how many teams can pony up $15 mil a year? Maybe Bay doesn’t want to stay here. For that matter, maybe the Sox don’t want him back and would prefer Matt Holliday, who is more of a pure cleanup hitter and struck out 40 fewer times than Bay. But Holliday is a Scott Boras client, which complicates any negotiation.

However it works out, there are some holes to fill on this team, including the long-standing black hole at shortstop. It would be nice to get the left field situation straightened out.

Separating Rumor from More Rumor

2009-11-15T10:17:00.000-05:00

It’s that time of year when the rumors are flying faster than birds heading south for the winter. And if you believe all of them, you probably believe all the crap that spews from Scott Boras’s mouth.

Everything the guy says is designed to make you believe that some third-string catcher is equal to Carlton Fisk. This time, his naked hyperbolethon is trying to build Johnny Damon into something he isn’t, maybe hoping the Red Sox will sign him again. Boras made the statement that it’s because of Johnny Damon that Derek Jeter had a career year. JD was so good that teams had to pitch to DJ because they so feared JD.

OK, Damon had a good year, but maybe it was because he was hitting behind Jeter. So maybe Damon won’t get the “same as Jeter” contract that Boras wants. But somebody will bite on Damon. There’s always someone who will buy the Boras lines and overpay for folks like Boras clients JD Drew and Dice-K. Let’s just hope that someone doesn’t do it again and bring back Damon to play left field.

I’ve got to admit I don’t know that much about Matt Holliday. He’s been a National Leaguer his whole career and the only extended view we had of him was in the ’07 World Series when he was 5 for 17 and got picked off first at a crucial point in the fourth game. But his 162-game average of .318/29/112 compares to .280/33/107 for Jason Bay. Holliday strikes out less (115 vs. 157) and is two years younger. Up until now, I thought that the best option was getting Bay back, but now I think Holliday might be the better option. Except that he’s a Boras client. Which means that there will be a lot of public negotiations with the Sox and Holliday will end up with the Yankees, who will swoop in at the last minute. Meanwhile Bay goes to Seattle and we end up with Johnny Damon.

Just the kind of ploy that works out great for Boras. His buddy Brian Cashman ends up with Holliday. He’s stripped the Red Sox of Bay. He’s hoodwinked Theo again. And Damon ends up overpaid based on a one-year resurgence, after which he will become old and injury-prone again.

And then there is Adrian Gonzalez, who is two years younger than Holliday. His 162-game average is .281/32/98, which makes him the statistical equivalent of Bay. But those numbers are in a huge ballpark in San Diego. If the Sox can trade for Gonzalez and sign either Bay or Holliday, that will provide some punch that was missing from the middle of the lineup last year.

But at this point it’s all rumor.

Lighting the Hot Stove

2009-11-08T09:43:00.000-05:00

Quote form Curt Schilling on WEEI:

"Oh, let's all cheer up because A-Rod's come full circle now. He's got his ring, he's complete, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Listen, they’re used to it, and they have to accept the fact that no one outside New York is even remotely happy today. OK, the Yankees won. Move on. When does spring training start? When do we sign free agents?”

Couldn’t agree more, so let’s turn the page and move on.

Lets start the off-season with Jeremy Hermedia. Back in August, I did a column on “average players.” According to Baseball-reference.com, the major league average batting average is .263, the average number of home runs a hit by a player is 16, and the average RBIs is 68. I found that the most average player in baseball was JD Drew’s brother Stephen, the Arizona shortstop. Through the 2009 season, his 162-game averages are .270/16/70. Well, that’s close, but our new outfielder, Hermedia, is closer at .265/18/66. Congratulations, Theo, you have traded for not just an average player, but THE average player. If he’s going to be a fourth outfielder, probably a good pickup, especially since we gave up nothing to get him. But if Jason Bay heads for the Yankees or wherever (and every indication so far is that the Sox don’t want to give him what he wants), Hermedia doesn’t cut it as a regular left fielder.

Too bad they didn’t wait a couple of days on Hermedia. Coco Crisp was released by the Royals!

So, what is the initial 2010 outlook? The Sox have a good base to start with, mainly players from the farm system. Youk, Pedroia and Ellsbury are into the prime of their careers and have shown what they can do. Ellsbury and Pedroia give the Sox a good start to the lineup and an ability to get on base. Youkilis is miscast as a cleanup hitter because he does not hit for genuine power, and probably never will be much more than a high-20s home run hitter. He is, however, a classic number 3 hitter. But so is Victor Martinez. They don’t have a true cleanup hitter. There aren’t many of those out there, and the farm system hasn’t produced a power hitter since Mo Vaughn, so they may have to consider trading for Adrian Gonzalez. Even if Bay comes back, they don’t seem to consider him a cleanup hitter despite leading the team in home runs and RBIs, and Matt Holliday is not one either.

The other issue is the older players playing like older players. While the Yankees older players all had not just good seasons, but career seasons (I wonder what’s in the water in the new stadium…HGH perhaps?), the Sox older players just got older. Lowell and Ortiz each have one more year left on their contracts and Varitek will likely exercise his $3 million option. Basically the team’s hands are tied. This might be a season like the Yankees had in 2008, where you have to take a year to blow out the roster and reload.

On the pitching side, things look better. With Beckett, Lester and Buccholz, the top of the rotation is OK. Wakefield falls into the Lowell/Ortiz/Varitek category. They could use a fifth starter and I’m not sure Michael Bowden is it. Hopefully, they will go out and get a pitcher without arm problems or issues. Erik Bedard, Jon Garland and Brett Myers are free agents, as is Randy Wolf if the club wants to go for a Type-A free agent (draft choice compensation required).

In the bullpen, it may be time to part with Manny Delcarmen. It’s nice to have a hometown player on the team, but his apparent inability to pitch in clutch situations is disturbing. Maybe going away from home will help. Bard looks ready to be the 8^th inning guy, and maybe the closer if they decide to put together a blockbuster trade for someone like Felix Hernandez and move Papelbon. One more arm would be helpful, perhaps someone like Kelvim Escobar, who is only 33, although it seems like he’s been around a lot longer.

The GM meetings are coming up this week, so next season is about to start. It’s going to be an interesting three months until it’s time to load up the truck.

Notes from the Evil Empire

2009-10-31T11:54:00.003-04:00

I asked a friend who is a lifelong Yankee fan for his take on the Series going into game 3. Here it is:

A-Roid and CC seem to have reverted to their past postseason selves. Strangely, NY is an 8-5 favorite to win it all, even with 3 of the remaining games in Philadelphia. Yanks are a slight favorite tonight, which I assume is based on Hamels' lackluster record in 2009. Still, I think he will be tough tonight, especially on the lefties like Damon, Matsui and Cano. The pitchers get to bat tonight, which could be in Philly's favor.

Even though the Game 3 winner of a 1-1 series goes on to win the title most of the time, that may not be the case in 2009. This has the makings of a long series, which we have not seen since 2002 (7 games) and 2003 (6).

I don't agree with those who think Pedro Martinez should have been yanked after six innings, even though he had made a lot of pitches. They removed him in the earlier series after he pitched a two-hit masterpiece, and ended up losing the game. I'm an old-school guy who thinks starters should go as long as possible, even a full nine innings, especially when the DH is in play.

Evidently, Sabathia has demanded to pitch Game 4, which he might get to do if NY loses Saturday. Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it! I suppose he's a better alternative than anyone else. If it goes the distance, we should see CC vs Hamels in Game 7 on Thursday, unless of course it's snowed out or pre-empted by an American Idol reunion show!

The Series Moves to Philly

2009-10-31T09:57:00.001-04:00

Can you believe it’s four weeks since the regular season ended and we’re still playing baseball? I think pitchers and catchers report next week. If it goes much longer, Santa Claus will be out and the Philly fans can boo him again.

The amazing thing about the first two World Series games is the starting pitching on both sides, which has been pretty much lights out except for giving up home runs, and not too many of those. Pedro got the loss in game two because his bullpen failed him, and he was also left in too long. Should have come out after six. Charlie Manuel, meet Grady Little.

At this point I think New York has the advantage, even with the next three games in Philadelphia, because of their pitching. I give Pettite the advantage tonight with his experience and Hamels having a so-so season, going 10-11 for a team that won 93 games. And then in game four, the Phillies go to their number four starter, Joe Blanton, against Sabathia on short rest. Remember that CC went on threedays’ rest for the entire second half of 2008 at Milwaukee, as the Brewers were intent on running him into the ground, knowing that he would be gone to the Yankees after the season. Then he reached the playoffs and didn’t make it out of the fourth inning against this Phillies team. And although he pitched well in game one, he did look tired once the middle innings rolled around. All of which is to say that it’s not a lock for New York with that pitching matchup, but for all their money, the Yankees do not have a fourth starter.

For years, bad teams in all sports have tried to turn themselves around by hiring successful assistants from winning teams who will, no doubt, replicate the success of the boss. More often than not, it doesn’t work. The Patriots did it several times in the 1960s and 1970s resulting in such disasters as Clive Rush, who was a Tom Landry assistant at Dallas. The Bruins tried it a couple of years ago, with disastrous results, bringing in Dave Lewis, a former Scotty Bowman assistant at Detroit. Several Bill Belichick (a Bill Parcells protégé) assistants have gone elsewhere with mixed results. Charlie Weis seems to have found his footing after several so-so years at Notre Dame and Josh McDaniels is certainly an early success at Denver. On the other hand, going to Cleveland is the kiss of death. Romeo Crennel was so successful there that he’s now a pitchman for beer, and Eric Mangini, fired at the J-E-T-S, is now struggling with the Browns.

Well, the assistant-plucking has hit the Red Sox hard this off-season. Theo’s top assistant, Jed Hoyer, is now the GM at San Diego. Let’s see how he does with the second-lowest payroll in baseball.

In Houston, where the ballpark has a locomotive in it, the train wreck that is the Astros hired Brad Mills, Tito’s bench coach, to be the new manager, replacing former Sox first baseman Cecil Cooper. The Astros were in the World Series only four years ago, but that team is history, its best players gone to retirement and the Dodgers. It could be a long, slow climb for Mills.

Speaking of the Dodgers and train wrecks, when the Sox were for sale, how many of us were hoping that Frank McCourt would buy the team and build a new ballpark on one of his parking lots in Southie? Well, let’s be glad he didn’t. With his marriage breaking up very publicly and very badly, the Dodgers are going to suffer and may end up being sold. The reason the Padres hit the skids was the owner’s divorce. One of baseball’s crown-jewel franchises in Los Angeles deserves better than that.

The Series Finally Arrives

2009-10-27T07:09:00.001-04:00

Does this season seem a lot longer than other seasons? Well, consider that the 2004 World Series ended on October 27. The 2009 World Series starts on October 28.

Yes, five years ago today, under a red moon, the Red Sox reversed the curse.

It also seems longer because we have to keep talking about the Yankees and their quest for….what number was it? I forget. Oh yeah, 27.

So, let us be brief when talking about the 2009 Yankees. There is enough written about them anyway, and just imagine how many books will be out this winter. (Born to Sit on the Bench, the Brett Gardner Story) First of all, isn’t it amazing that so many of the 30+-year-olds on the Yankees basically had career years while so many of the Red Sox 30+-year-olds crashed and burned in 2009. Must be the water in New York. Or maybe it’s something IN the water. Human Gro…..nah, couldn’t be. No true Yankee would take performance-enhancing drugs, would they?

The Yankees were second in the American League in team batting, first in home runs, RBIs, hits and runs scored. Sort of cleaned up there. Pitching-wise they were third in team ERA. When you spend half-a-billion dollars to buy players you should expect numbers like that.

The Phillies are making their second consecutive trip to the Series this year, so they bring experience to the table. Confronted with pitching problems, they went out and got Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez, who combined to go 12-5 down the stretch. By the end of the year their team ERA was 4.16, which was 6^th in the National League. They may start Lee and Martinez in games one and two, both former American Leaguers (and Cy Young winners) who are familiar with pitching to the deeper American League lineups. Then it’s on to Joe Blanton (12-8) and Cole Hamels, who inexplicably only won ten games this season.

Playing in a very small ballpark their home run numbers are high, but Yankee Stadium leads the majors in home runs (when you spend one-and-a-half billion dollars of the taxpayer’s money to build it, your ballpark should lead the majors in home runs), so the ballpark should not be a factor. The Phils hit 224 home runs, (20 fewer than the Yankees), scored 820 runs (95 fewer than the Yankees), had 1439 hits (165 fewer than the Yankees) and had a .258 team batting average (15 percentage points less than the Yankees).

This one looks like a no-brainer.

The Yankees hit a lot more home runs, scored a lot more runs, had a lot more hits and a much higher batting average. Hitting advantage: Yankees.

The Yankees team ERA was higher, but American League ERAs are always higher. Yankee pitchers gave up 93 fewer hits and struck out 107 more against stronger lineups. Plus, the Phillies closer, Brad Lidge, failed miserably in 2009, going 0-8 with a 7.21 ERA (and we thought Papelbon had a bad year), while Mariano Rivera was Mariano Rivera. Pitching advantage: Yankees.

I hate to say it, but Yankees in five games. I hope I’m wrong.

A Look Back

2009-10-16T21:17:00.003-04:00

Well, we’ve had a few days to reflect on the 2009 season, and it’s time to give out the grades. As we did at midseason, everybody is graded as either exceeding, meeting, or coming in below expectations.

STARTING PITCHING

Josh Beckett: Started weak, had a strong mid-season and ended weak. You look up and he’s 17-6, 3.86 and you ask how he did that. At the beginning of the year we were asking which Josh Beckett we would get, 2008 or 2007. It turned out we got both. Meets expectations.

Jon Lester: Almost an identical year to Beckett in terms of weak/strong/weak to end up 15-8, 3.41 with 225 strikeouts in 203 innings. We expected a lot, he delivered a lot. Meets expectations.

Tim Wakefield: An all-star first half in which he led the league with 11 wins, but the usual injuries cost him the second half of the season, which is a shame. When healthy, he gave the Sox exactly what they needed: A guy that could go out there and keep them in the game. Meets expectations.

Clay Buchholz: Finally got his chance after Penny and Smoltz both washed out, and in half a season he produced 7 wins. Seems to be finally living up to the potential and is already penciled in as the #3 starter in 2010. Exceeds expectations.

Daisuke Matsuzaka: It was more important to him to look good for the WBC than for the team that is paying him $10 mil a year, and that’s inexcusable. Blew out his arm training for a meaningless exhibition series and was basically useless. Below expectations.

John Smoltz: Was expected to be the John Smoltz of old. Instead was the John Wasdin of old. Below expectations.

Brad Penny: Got off to a good start, sort of, but with 160 hits in 130 innings, he could never get out of the fifth inning. Below expectations.

RELIEF PITCHING

Hideki Okajima: All in all, another quality year from the quiet lefthander, with six wins and 53 strikeouts in 61 innings. Meets expectations.

Takashi Saito: Coming off an arm injury at age 39, Saito had an ERA of 2.43 and 52 strikeouts in 50 innings. Meets my expectations, but not Theo’s, who has released him in hopes of getting Saito back at a cheaper price.

Manny Delcarmen: Since Delcarmen is the only native Bostonian on the team, we all want him to succeed. He just still can’t seem to pitch in clutch situations or with men on base which is, after all, the main job of a reliever. Maybe he needs to get away from home. Below expectations.

Ramon Ramirez: Led the team with 70 relief appearances. Not a strikeout pitcher, walks a lot of #8 and #9 types of hitters, and doesn’t inspire confidence. But the numbers were decent, 7-4 2.84 so I guess he meets expectations.

Daniel Bard: I saw him strike out the side on nine pitches at Pawtucket, so expectations were high. I’d say 41 hits in 49 innings and an eye-popping 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings pitched exceeds expectations for any rookie thrown into a pennant race.

Jonathan Papelbon: It seemed like every game he pitched was a disaster waiting to happen. And in Game Three the disaster finally happened. Bad timing. He did have 38 saves, which is what he is supposed to do. But did every save have to be a roller coaster ride? Meets expectations

All the others: With a bunch of ERAs around 8 or 9, they can pretty much go back to Pawtucket or wherever they came from. Incomplete.

CATCHING

Jason Varitek: Not much was expected. He hit .220 last year and went down closer to the Mendoza Line this year. Sad to say, the Captain has had it. Let’s just hope he has the good sense to retire and go out with some class instead of embarrassing himself by squeezing one more $3 million out of the game. He’ll make a great coach or manager. Even hitting just .209 he comes in below expectations.

Victor Martinez: Is known for his hitting and did not disappoint, hitting .336 with 41 RBIs for Boston (.303 with 108 RBIs overall) and providing some stability in the #3 slot. Can’t seem to throw anybody out (only 11%), and that is a concern, but overall a good addition. Meets expectations.

George Kottaras: Did a good job catching Tim Wakefield before taking one for the team with a phantom injury to allow Victor Martinez on the roster. Not much of a hitter, but .237 should be good enough to be a backup somewhere if not here. Meets expectations.

INFIELDERS

Kevin Youkilis: Consistent April to October at the plate and on the field even as moved from first to third and back again every day. Numbers were down a bit all around, but not significantly, given that the moves across the diamond had to be distracting. Meets expectations.

Dustin Pedroia: The 2008 MVP year was probably his career year, so this year’s numbers weren’t as good. But nobody plays the game harder, nobody dives after more ground balls, nobody sparks this team like Pedey. Exceeds expectations.

Mike Lowell: The hip was an issue, he would lose a footrace to any of the Molinas, but he still plays the game with determination. Even with the injury, he still hit .290 and is the epitome of class. Exceeds expectations.

Alex Gonzalez: After he arrived the Sox went from 8^th in team defense to 6^th. That’s why he was brought aboard. Meets expectations.

Nick Green: As the only healthy shortstop in April, he became the starter and produced an excellent first half of the season. He was wearing out by the time Gonzo got here, and cost the team a couple of games with wild throws, but when you expect nothing and get something, that’s the definition of exceeds expectations.

Julio Lugo: Say it with me now…below expectations.

Jed Lowrie: Spent more time on the DL than on the active roster. A lost year for Lowrie and now, for the third year in a row, he’ll have to prove himself again. Incomplete.

OUTFIELDERS

Jason Bay: Struck out a lot, which lowered his batting average, but posted power and RBI numbers very similar to Mark Texeira and way above his lifetime averages. Good luck in NY or SF. Exceeds expectations.

Jacoby Ellsbury: After being dropped to the #7 slot in the order midseason, rebounded to become the leadoff hitter that everybody thought he was going to be. One of only three regulars with a .300+ batting average, and don’t forget the 70 stolen bases. Exceeds expectations.

JD Drew: Remember that despite the superstar salary, what we expect from JD is “average.” We got more than that with a .279 season and 24 home runs. Also overlooked is his ability to run down balls headed toward Pesky’s Pole. Usually is below expectations, so this year raised his game to meets expectations, based on more or less earning his salary

RESERVES

Rocco Baldelli: Nobody knew, really, what to expect from Baldelli this year, but he proved to be the only reclamation job that worked out as a pinch hitter or a spot start in the outfield. Meets expectations.

Casey Kotchman: Proved to be a warm body and not much more, hitting just .218 in Boston. Below expectations.

Josh Reddick: Overmatched and underwhelming. Played like a guy up from Double-A. Oh yeah, that’s what he was,so I guess he meets expectations.

Mark Kotsay: Tell me again, why was he traded? The Sox lost a lot of flexibility and could have used him more than Kotchman, Reddick or the six games we got out of Adam LaRoche (tell me again, why was he ever here?). Meets expectations.

DESIGNATED HITTER

David Ortiz: The two-month long slump doomed Big Papi to a sub-par year. Even though he ended up with 28 home runs and 99 RBIs, which project out to a decent year, when you’re Big Papi, more is expected. Below expectations.

MANAGEMENT

Terry Francona: Took a flawed team with pitching that went from “too much” to “not enough” almost overnight and not enough power and still made the playoffs with 95 wins. Meets expectations.

Theo Epstein: While the Yankees spent the money to get the Mercedes free agents, the Sox didn’t, and got the Yugo free agents (or maybe I should say Lugo free agents), breaking down almost immediately. This team didn’t have enough to compete for the division let alone the World Series. Below expectations.

The final totals:

7 exceeds expectations (20%)
16 meets expectations (46%)
10 below expectations(28%)
2 incomplete (6%)

In order to win a championship, a team needs a lot of players to have, if not career years, better than average years. In the end, too many players had average or below average seasons.

You can argue that this team won 95 games, but expectations are higher than they are in, say, Toronto or even Detroit. A player that meets expectations here would exceed everybody’s wildest expectations in Pittsburgh and probably would be traded out of town for a couple of second-rate prospects.

The Season Ends

2009-10-11T20:21:00.002-04:00

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
- A. Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Baseball 1988-89

Not a Good Start

2009-10-10T14:45:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning thinking that it was Saturday but not being too sure. It’s that playoff zombie feeling from too many late-night games. But it doesn’t look like I’ll have this feeling much longer because it doesn’t look like the Red Sox will last much longer this year.

While the Yankees are staging ninth-inning comebacks and walk-off wins, the Sox are just trying to stay in the game, and not doing a very good job of that. A .131 batting average and two runs scored is not a recipe for playoff success.

This is a recap of the 2009 regular season condensed into two games. Boston hitters would feast on the bottom-dwelling teams and go south against good teams. Get swept by the Yankees? No problem, the Royals or Orioles are coming to town. The inability of this team to hit against the better teams was masked by its prowess against teams with losing records.

Now, in the playoffs, there are no weak teams. You can’t fatten up your average against the Indians. They’re playing golf right now and this isn’t better.

Meanwhile, the Angels just go on playing their brand of baseball, which puts pressure on a team no matter who it is. Hit and run, first to third, walk then steal second, two-out triples. The Angels have done it all. They may be geographically challenged about where they play, but they don’t have a problem with how they play.

They remind me of the 1970s and early 1980s small-ball teams that wore powder-blue uniforms and played on artificial turf in big, donut-shaped stadiums. Yup, the 1982 Cardinals of Ozzie Smith, Lonnie Smith, Willie McGee and Tommy Herr. Couldn’t hit home runs, but had five players with 19 or more steals, 87 total sacrifice hits, and were experts at bouncing the ball off that hard field for singles, doubles and triples. The team batting average was just .264, but they made every one of those hits count. When that team played the Dodgers, I’ll bet 23-year-old Mike Scioscia was watching and taking notes.

But, back to the Red Sox, who had eight strikeouts but only seven base runners last night. They’ve been in this situation before, of course. Remember Kevin Millar’s rant on the night of game four against the Yankees about how we have Schilling pitching tonight, then Pedro tomorrow and then game seven and anything can happen? Well, this year we have Buchholz then Matsuzaka and then game five and anything can happen. Not quite the same, is it?

The Divisional Series

2009-10-07T07:21:00.000-04:00

As always, the Yankees have all the advantages going into the playoffs. As always, the question is can they take advantage. While the New Yorkers have been resting and getting their pitching lined up, the Twins have been playing meaningful games and using up their pitching staff. So, after playing a four and a half hour game, using eight pitchers and flying all night to New York, Minnesota has to send Brian Duensing to the mound against probable Cy Young winner C.C. Sabathia. Heard of Duensing? Probably not. He started the season in Rochester and tonight will make his 10th major league start.

The difference in payroll between the two teams? $150 million dollars. That means the difference between what each team spends on players is greater than the total payroll of 26 MLB teams.

The Twins are one of the teams that I really admire. They can’t afford to keep the players they have, like Johann Santana and Torii Hunter, but their player development machine keeps churning out replacements. Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Cuddyer, Span, Liriano, Baker. They’ve won five AL Central titles in the last eight years. And, this year, with former MVP Justin Morneau down with an injury, players like Jason Kubel have stepped up big time while the team gets stretch-run acquisitions Carl Pavano and Orlando Cabrera, who always seems to end up on a division winner.

But, in the end, big money beats big hearts. Yanks sweep on their way to the championship. When you spend half a billion dollars in the off-season it should buy you a winner.

And, or course, the schedule favors the Yankee fans. While their games start at 6:07 (not 6:05 or 6:10, but 6:07), us Sox fans have to wait until almost bedtime for our games to start.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, it’s the Sox and Anaheim Angels Not of Los Angeles. Pitching is pretty even. On the surface the Sox seem to have better relievers, but the imploding Sox bullpen over the last two months inspires anything but confidence. Both teams can hit. The deal-maker/deal-breaker in this series is that the Angels run every chance they get and the Red Sox can’t stop any team or any player from running.

Much has been made about the way Boston has handled the Angels in the postseason going back to 1986 (maybe Dave Henderson should throw out a first pitch). But that is basically a statistical anomaly, and statistical anomalies usually even themselves out. Sorry to say, but looking at this objectively, Angels 3-2 in this one.
In the National League, I hope the Phillies get to the World Series just because I’d rather see Pedro in there than Manny or John Smoltz or Jason Giambi.

A Series of Things

2009-10-04T11:06:00.000-04:00

No team wins all of its games. In fact, teams almost never win two-thirds of their games. So, given the expectation that you will lose some games, a good indicator of how you do in a season is how many series you win or lose. This year the Red Sox had 18 series wins, 10 losses and 2 splits before the All-Star break. The Yankees were 18-10-2 in the same period, which explains how the teams stayed close for the first half of the season. After the break, though, the Sox went 12-9-2, while the Yankees were 17-5-1, pulling eight games ahead in the AL East.

There will be no more Wedgies in Cleveland as manager Eric Wedge was fired effective at the end of the season. The Indians blow out all their good players every few years and get prospects to start rebuilding all over again. They did it in the late ’90s with the Lofton/Manny/Thome/Vizquel/Travis Fryman/Bartolo Colon teams, getting players like Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore in return. This year, the Indians started the season with players like Mark De Rosa (now with the Cardinals), Victor Martinez (now with the Sox), Ben Francisco and Cliff Lee (gone to Philly), Ryan Garko (Giants) and Rafael Betencourt (Rockies). Now, it’s back to the youth movement with Matt LaPorta from Milwaukee last year, Andy Marte, Lou Marson over from the Phillies, Michael Brantley and Luis Vanbuena. It’s pretty tough to have to rebuild all the time, and the manager often takes the blame.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, General Manager J.P. Ricciardi was tossed after eight years. Being from Worcester, Ricciardi was interviewed a lot in the local media and always seemed to say the same thing, “We don’t have the money to compete with the Red Sox and the Yankees.” And he was right. The Jays could put together enough talented players to be competitive, but were never able to go after the big free agents. They always could get the Lyle Overbays and B.J. Ryans of the baseball world, but were never able to bring in a game-changing player. He did sign A.J. Burnett and Frank Thomas, but Burnett was inconsistent for his first two seasons and Thomas was a bust. The club developed some excellent players in Adam Lind and Aaron Hill, but there weren’t enough good players around them. Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil and David Purcey are all developing into good starters, but it will be the next GM who will reap the benefits. Then there were the injuries to Jesse Litsch, Shawn Marcum and Dustin McGowan, who were all hurt this year. Now it’s up to the new GM to sort out the pieces but, in the end, it all comes down to payroll, and unless the Jays can find lightning in a bottle for a couple of years like the Rays did last year, this same story will be written again a couple of seasons from now. Another example of how baseball needs a salary cap.

John Smoltz has come down to earth in St. Louis, where he is 0-3 with three no-decisions in his last six starts. Brad Penny, on the other hand, is 4-1 with the Giants and pitched a six-hit shutout in his last start. But the best former Sox pitcher out there right now is Pedro Martinez, who is 5-1, 3.63 ERA in nine starts for the Phillies.

Whether the Sox begin the postseason on Wednesday or Thursday, get ready for some 10:00 starts.

What If...

2009-10-02T11:05:00.002-04:00

One of my most memorable “Saturday Night Live” sketches was called “What If.” It was one of the pseudo-PBS shows in which Dan Aykroyd hosted a bunch of pseudo-pseudo-intellectuals debating topics like “What if Superman grew up in Germany, instead of America?" or “What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?”

Well, twice last week the Red Sox played “What If.” First, the question was “What if we used only Pawsox pitchers in a real Major League game?” Then there was “What if we used only Pawsox position players in a real Major League game?” Either way, it didn’t work out.

The pitchers’ game was necessitated by Josh Beckett’s back problems. He was scratched at the last minute and the emergency starter was Michael Bowden (4-6, 3.13 for Pawtucket). He gave up seven runs in three innings. Then came Hunter Jones (4-3, 4.25 for Pawtucket). He was followed by Dustin Richardson (2-2, 2.55 for Portland and Pawtucket), who was summoned to Boston from his home in Kansas to fill a roster spot. Manny Delcarmen, who has been pitching like a minor leaguer lately, finished the game off. Final score: Toronto 11, Boston 5 in a rain-shortened seven innings.

Two days later, with the Sox having clinched the Wild Card, it was Futures at Fenway time again. Tim Wakefield was totally ineffective as the starter, but the other nine guys in the lineup were even more ineffective as hitters, with Joey Gathright (.325 at Pawtucket), Josh Reddick (.127 in 18 games), Goerge Kottaras (.294 in 10 games), Brian Anderson (.228), Jed Lowrie (.176) and Chris Woodward (.129) combining to go 2-for-17 (Gathright had two singles). Where was Iggy Suarez when we needed him?

Well, those two games proved one thing: These guys are not ready for prime time.

In good news, Jon Lester showed that he’s OK, pitching a very Lester-like game in his final start of the regular season, giving up two hits and striking out seven. That’s one playoff question answered. We’ll have another answer tonight as Dice-K gets another start. He still makes me nervous. His first game back, he pitched like a different guy, challenging hitters and throwing strikes. Last time out, he was back to being “The Nibbler.” Against the Anaheim Angels, every nibble gives the Angels a greater chance to create mayhem on the basepaths.

Most teams have some sort of Fan Appreciation event at the end of the season. They give away good stuff to their loyal fans, things like game-worn shirts, bobbleheads and stuff like that. This year, the Sox are having their own Fan Appreciation events and, according to the official release, “ARAMARK vendors will also be providing lucky fans, selected randomly throughout the ballpark, with complimentary peanuts and Cracker Jacks during the 7th inning stretch of each game.” Your support is worth peanuts to us.

Wild Time

2009-09-30T07:31:00.001-04:00

If a team clinches something, and it really isn’t a “championship” of anything (no matter what the hats say), and it happens because of something another team does, and there’s a celebration, but it happens three hours after the game and no reporters are allowed to watch, did something really get clinched?

That’s the question this morning after the Angels beat the Rangers to put the Red Sox into postseason play for the sixth time in the last seven years. Of course it is all a moot point if the Sox can’t get their pitching straightened out, and fast.

Something has gone wrong each of the last four days, so the next week, when the starters make one final appearance before the playoffs begin next Wednesday or Thursday, will be crucial in determining Boston’s playoff pitching rotation.

First it was Jon Lester getting hit hard by the Yankees, literally. Then it was Josh Beckett being pulled from a start because of back spasms. He had three cortisone shots, and will get a final regular-season start next Saturday. Finally, Clay Buchholz got hammered by the Blue Jays to complete the trifecta. There are your top three starters for the playoffs.

And, as for number four, Tim Wakefield starts tonight to test his body again, as though all the back and leg problems that have kept him on the DL for most of the second half of the season will just go away and he’ll be fine to pitch through October. If he can’t continue, we’re left with Paul Byrd.

This presents pitching coach John (let me jot that down) Farrell with the biggest dilemma/challenge of his time with the Sox. Usually, teams give their pitchers a final tune-up start before the playoffs begin. Farrell has to find out if his three top pitchers can actually pitch. With Byrd as the fourth starter, there really are no other options at this point. Ironic isn’t it? The team that supposedly had too much pitching in May is now struggling to find enough pitchers to round out the rotation when it really counts.

And the Sox bullpen is not settled either. The supposed “best bullpen in baseball’ has been getting lit up lately on a regular basis. Hideki Okajima was sent back to Boston during the road trip with arm issues. Manny Delcarmen is now officially useless while Daniel Bard and Billy Wagner are taking turns being ineffective. For the last couple of weeks, the best pitchers leading up to Papelbon have been “Oh No” Ramon Ramirez and Takashi Saito.

At least after Monday night we know that one option will not be Michael Bowden, Hunter Jones and Dustin Richardson.

By the way, the Sox have now been the Wild Card playoff entry six times. Hooray! We set a record for finishing second!

This and That

2009-09-27T21:32:00.001-04:00

Early in the season, it was the Red Sox making a statement. We can beat you in April. Then the Yankees made a statement. We can beat you in May, June, July, August, September and, probably, October. While the Sox were swept again, the Yankees clinched the AL East title for the first time in three seasons, spending a half a billion dollars to ensure that they did. Now, having put the message out there that “We can beat you in high-scoring games, we can beat you in low-scoring games, we can beat you any time we want to, it’s on to the playoffs.”

Remember what Bill Parcells always said: “The first step is just to make the tournament.” But the Sox haven’t done that yet.

A couple of newcomers made a couple of great plays over the last week, as Alex Gonzales grabbed a ball to his left, twisted and turned and crawled to the second-base bag for a forceout. Then Victor Martinez, with two outs and the bases loaded, dove down the first base line, grabbed the ball, then dove back to the plate for the out. Two very similar plays that neither Nick Green nor Jason Varitek could have made.

Back in the preseason, we were wondering which Josh Beckett we were going to get this year, the 2006 model or the 2007 model. With the season almost over, it looks like the answer is 2006. Beckett has 16 wins, which is his average number of wins in a season over his nine-year career. All ballplayers have a career year, when the numbers stand out as a statistical anomaly (Yaz in 1967, Rice in 1978) and 2007 is Beckett’s career year. He’s a very good pitcher, but he may never duplicate that season again. I wonder what that will mean to the Sox when his contract comes up again after the 2010 season.

Every ballplayer has a time when they suddenly “get it” and it is a career-changing moment. For Jon Lester it was his no-hitter last year. For Clay Buccholz, it was the August 29 game against Toronto when he went 8 1/3 innings, gave up one run and struck out nine. He was 3-3 at that point, but since then has gone 4-0 with one no-decision, a 1.38 ERA with 24 hits in 32 innings. That’s even better than Jon Lester’s 4-1, 3.07 for the month.

The Pawsox ended their season at 61-82 with no notable performances by anybody. Their top pitcher, Enrique Gonzales, won eight games. Their top hitter, Mets-bound Chris Carter, had 16 home runs and 61 RBIs. So, they fired their hitting coach, Russ Mormon. He couldn’t make better hitters out of retreads like Paul McAnulty, Travis Denker and Chip Ambres. In those cases it’s not the hitting coach’s fault. Sometimes you just have guys who are in the minors for a reason: They can’t hit. The problem was that the alleged prospects at Pawtucket weren’t hitting either. Mark Wagner (.214), Aaron Bates (.213), Bubba Bell (.208) and Travis Denker (.238), all of whom had worked their way through the Sox minor league system, had hitting problems once they reached AAA-ball. Time will tell. Maybe none of them were good enough to make the majors anyway, but for all four of them it was a lost season.

And good luck to Chris Carter, who will be joining the Mets system in the off-season as the player-to-be-named-later in the Billy Wagner trade. Carter, who came here as the player-to-be-named later in the Wily Mo Pena trade to Washington, put up solid, if not spectacular, numbers in two seasons.

Speaking of minor leaguers, at the start of the season, the hottest prospects in the system were Lars Anderson, Michael Bowden and Junichi Tazawa. Anderson came nowhere near the hype, hitting .233 with only nine homers, 51 RBIs and 114 strikeouts. Bowden, who has not reached his “get it” point yet, had a decent year, 4-6 for a bad club with a 3.13 ERA, 88 strikeouts and 106 hits in 126 innings. Tazawa had an outstanding first pro season, posting a 9-7 record combined at Portland and Pawtucket with a 2.63 ERA and 94 strikeouts in 109 innings before coming to the majors. But the best pitcher I saw in the minors this year was Felix Dubront, a poised lefthander who was 9-6, 3.35 ERA for the Seadogs striking out 101 batters in 121 innings. The 23-year old was 13-9, 3.70 in 2008, so that’s two good seasons in a row. He should move up to Pawtucket and maybe Boston next season, potentially ahead of Bowden.

When the Orioles Were Good

2009-09-21T18:59:00.001-04:00

Here’s a cautionary tale for Red Sox fans getting ready to celebrate another trip to the postseason: Baltimore Orioles fans used to celebrate, too. Once, the Orioles were one of the great franchises in baseball and they have the World Series trophies to prove it.

In fact, many years ago, when I was about 11, some friends and I thought about abandoning the Red Sox and joining “Orioles Nation.”, if in fact there was one. This was 1961 and the Sox were in a decade-long mess while the O’s were an up-and-coming team on its way to a 95-win season with such young pitchers as Steve Barber, Chuck Estrada and Milt Pappas, who won 46 games among them. The young Brooks Robinson was on that team along with first baseman Jim Gentile whose .302/46 HR/141 RBI season was better than anyone Boston had to offer. Marv Throneberry even got into 56 games, one year before he became Marvelous Marv for the Amazin’ 1962 Mets. This was a team heading for great things!

Looking at that roster, there were a lot of Red Sox connections and several future managers and coaches. In addition to Adair, Williams would go on and play for the Sox before turning to managing. Jim Busby, Gene Stephens and Walt Dropo had all played for the Sox and Charlie Lau would be their hitting coach 20 years in the future. It was on this team that left fielder Dick Williams met Wes Stock, who was his pitching coach during the years Williams managed Oakland and Seattle.

Well, my friends and I decided to stick with the Sox, who sucked for six more seasons until former O’s player Dick Williams managed Boston to the 1967 pennant, helped by Jerry Adair, the Orioles 1961 second baseman. Good thing, because in 1962 the O’s slipped back to 77-85, tied with the Sox for seventh place.

But, then Baltimore started moving up again. They won 97 games in 1964 and finished third, having added Luis Aparicio from the White Sox and Boog Powell (39 homers) and Wally Bunker (19 wins) from their farm system. The next year, most of the pieces were in place as speedy Paul Blair became the regular center fielder (playing shallower than any other center fielder before or since), and rookies Dave McNally, Jim Palmer and Mark Belanger came up.

A year later, it all came together in the person of Frank Robinson. Acquired for three spare parts (Jack Baldschun, Milt Pappas and Dick Simpson), Robinson was the veteran presence the club needed to sweep the Dodgers in the World Series.

And in the pre-free agency era, this team was able to stay together and stay successful, going to three consecutive World Series (1969-71), winning it all again in 1970. They even had four 20-game winners on the staff in 1971 (Palmer, Cuellar, Dobson, McNally), the only time that has ever happened.

The Birds flew around the top of the American League, bringing in Hall of Famers Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray along with pitchers Scott McGregor and Mike Flanagan.

But then, it happened.

On October 9, 1996, in game one of the ALCS, calm-eyed Derek Jeter intangibly lofted a fly ball to right field. O’s right fielder Tony Tarasco got ready to catch it. Instead, Jeffrey Maier reached out of the stands and caught the ball, which was ruled a game-tying home run instead of fan interference and an out. The Orioles lost the series, the ALCS the next year, and apparently the will to win. In the 12 years since, they have finished next-to-last or last in the AL East 11 times, including this season when they will finish last.

Call it the curse of Jeffrey Maier. Or maybe it’s the curse of Peter Angelos, one of Sports Illustrated’s five worst owners, who has never let the Orioles be free-agent players except for 2007 when they cornered the market in middle relievers.

Whatever it is, the Sox won the season series 16-2 yesterday. Baltimore’s only two wins were in games started by John Smoltz, one of them the rain-delayed 11-10 loss.

I’m glad I didn’t switch 48 years ago.

What they're saying in Texas

2009-09-19T15:07:00.002-04:00

One of the things that I do on a regular basis is visit Web sites in the cities of the competition to see what they are saying. With the Sox battling Texas (sort of) for the Wild Card, today I went to Dallasnews.com, the Dallas Morning News site (their equivalent of Boston.com) to find out how things are with the slumping Rangers.

Here’s what I found out:

The lead on the Sports page was “Balanced Allen hands Trinity second straight loss.” Oh yeah, Texas, high school football, “Friday Night Lights” and all that. Apparently the Dillon Panthers have a bye week, because there was no mention of them.
The Cowboys-Giants game on Sunday night is expected to draw 100,000 people.
Some of the people who won’t be there are folks who have had Cowboys’ season tickets for years but have been priced out of the Cowboys new stadium by the $350 ticket prices, the $25,000 personal seat licenses and the $1,000 option fee to renew season tickets.
The Cowboys have had success getting to Eli Manning
The Cowboys hope to contain their opening night emotions.
There was a lot of trash-talking about the Giants in the Cowboys’ locker room this week.
The team has a Web site to provide you with your best route to the parking lots at the game, where parking will cost as much as $60! And we thought Foxboro was bad.
Jerry Jones is ready to preside over the festivities as he rakes in the cash at the new stadium.
Oh, yeah, there was one story telling me that the Rangers lost to the Angels. And another reminding Rangers fans that the game on Sunday starts at noon, and to get there early if they want to park for the normal Rangers’ parking price of $8. After noon, you will pay the Cowboys’ price of $60.

Apparently the teams share a parking lot, but they sure don’t share space on Dallasnews.com.

OFF TOPIC: The trade of Phil Kessel for three draft choices will go down in history as the Bruins’ version of Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen.

A real quick comment

2009-09-17T07:16:00.003-04:00

Some games are not worth four hours of your time. This one was.

And as for Cryin' Brian Fuentes, throw strikes, get outs and you don't put yourself in the postion to lose the game. C'mon, you were beaten by Jed Lowrie, Nick Green and Alex Rodriguez, a trio of light-hitting shortstops.

From the Globe: "Along one row of lockers, closer Brian Fuentes suggested umpires can be swayed by the crowd and mystique of Fenway Park, and that players on his team and across the league share the sentiment. “You hear it time and time again,’’ Fuentes said."

I think they call that home-field advantage.

Who was that Man?

2009-09-16T06:47:00.001-04:00

He pitched into the seventh inning and only threw 93 pitches, and with confidence. When he got two strikes on a batter, he threw strike three, instead of nibbling to a 3-2 count. He worked fast ( instead of a close to four hour game, it was over in less that three). No, it wasn’t Roy Halladay or Mark Buerhle, it was our very own Dice-K!

I must admit I was not looking forward to last night. Who was? I was interested in what I would see from Matsuzaka, but I expected more of the same. A ton of base runners, a lot of time furiously rubbing the ball, and Angels flying around the bases.

Instead, it was a turnaround. Maybe Dice-K is finally listening to the Sox pitching coaches and making some concessions in his methods to the American game. If he can show more of the same in the three or four starts he will get before the season ends he could help the Sox in the postseason should they get there.

And maybe even for seasons to come.

It’s always interesting to watch the Anaheim Angels not of Los Angeles play their own brand of baseball. We haven’t seen them since the Red Sox and Angels played six times in the first five weeks of the seasonwhen the Angels won four of the six games on the West Coast. This is the first and only visit the Angels will make to Fenway.

Unless….

If things continue the way they are, the Sox and Angels will meet in the ALDS again in what has become as regular an event as the leaves changing color. The teams met in 2004, 2007 and 2008 with the Sox holding a 9-1 record over those three years.

So, what has gone on with the Angels since we last saw them? Well, they were 18-15 on May 14, in second place. Since then they have gone 68-43, 25 games over .500, losing only 16 games in all of June and July.

The team is led, as always, by Chone Figgins, who is hitting .303 with 41 steals. But they have surrounded him with some good young hitters who have come into their own like Kendry Morales, Erick Aybar and Juan Rivera. Plus veterans Vlad Guerrero, Bobby Abreu and Torii Hunter are all around .300, which makes Matsuzaka’s performance all the more impressive.

Pitching-wise, Jered Weaver is 15-5, while Joe Saunders and John Lackey have 23 wins between them. The Angels recently acquired Scott Kazmir, who has a 1.86 ERA in three starts. Brian Fuentes has 41 saves, replacing K-Rod at the end of the bullpen.

As we know, the Angels do lots of things well.

Tampa Bay steals a lot of bases, the Yankees hit home runs in bunches, the White Sox like to hit-and-run. The Angels do all of the above. They lead the league in hitting, have 136 steals and 153 home runs. They are second in team defense, fourth in sacrifice bunts and first in sacrifice flies. They are second in hits. If they get a runner to second with nobody out, that runner scores 48% of the time.

All in all, a pretty impressive set of numbers, offensively. But the Angels are only one games better than the Red Sox. Why? Because, for all their woes and disorganization, the Sox have a better team ERA (4.44 to 4.67) and a better bullpen.

Last night’s game was a good performance, and, with Texas losing, the Wild Card lead is up to 5 ½ games. With a long road trip looming, the last of the season, it’s a good time for the Sox to put some space between them and the Rangers and also make a statement to their likely first-round opponents.

Up on the Roof

2009-09-12T19:24:00.001-04:00

When the new owners (and it looks like they will always be referred to as the new owners) bought the Red Sox, they paid so much for the team that there was no way they could build a new ballpark, a luxury the fans of 28 other teams have enjoyed, some twice. So, they set about trying to fool us into thinking we had a new ballpark by putting seats into different places, throwing huge ads above them, and charging lots of money to sit in them. Meanwhile, most of us were left with the 1930s-era grandstand seats, many of which face Logan Airport.

Well, I finally got my shot at the new seats. Last March, after sitting in the Virtual Waiting Room for the usual several hours, I scored tickets to the seats on the right field roof under the Giant Beer Conglomerate sign. On Wednesday, we trudged up the golden spiral staircase for the game against the Orioles.

The Sox won the game, 7-5, and it was a pretty good game, with Victor Martinez driving in three runs with a pinch-hit double for the win.

I wish I could say the seats are pretty good. They aren’t.

We got there and were greeted by a self-important usher, who told us that the security guy would stamp our hands and our tickets, so we could escape and come back if we wanted to. Then he led us to our home-plate-shaped table in the third row where we took our seats. You’re not facing the field, you are facing the people you came to the game with, which is OK if you want to talk. But if you want to talk, why not stay home or go to a real restaurant? Don’t you come to a ball game to watch the ball game? My seat faced Logan Airport.

The waitress came buy to explain that she would be serving us during the game, which means that she would continue to come by every few minutes, because on the Giant Beer Conglomerate deck, it’s all about the food, not the ballgame that would take place below us. As part of the $115 tickets, the table had a $25 per person food credit to eat up.

We started with a round of beers. No Sam Adams here, this is the Giant Beer Conglomerate deck and your choices are Giant Beer Conglomerate regular, Giant Beer Conglomerate Light, and Giant Beer Conglomerate Lime. My wife and daughters ordered food, but I decided to wait until I was hungry, much to the consternation of our waitress, who came by every few seconds to ask if I was ready to order yet.

After watching several planes land at Logan, I looked back over my left shoulder to see that the game had started! We were then treated to more visits from the waitress and a gentleman selling 50-50 raffle tickets, prompting my daughter to remark, “What is this, the Cape Cod League?”

As for the food, some of it was typical ballpark – Fenway Franks, sausages, peanuts – some of it was not. I opted for an $11.85 club sandwich, which consisted of one layer (aren’t club sandwiches usually two?) of turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato on toasted white bread. Not real appealing and not worth $11.85, but we had $100 of food to eat, so at least it added to the total. At the end of the night, he waitress made a big production of “time to settle up” and handed us out check for $102. Damn, we went two bucks over! One of the items on the bill was $4 for something called “Blank Classes.” We didn’t remember taking any classes, let alone blank ones, so we asked the waitress, who didn’t know what that was!!! Turns out, they didn’t know what category to put a hot chocolate in, so it ended up in an unnamed (blank) class.

Meanwhile, down on the field, this baseball game kept intruding into all the fun on the roof. Being so far up and so far from home plate, you really don’t feel like you are part of the game, but I couldn’t help noticing that Orioles manager Dave Trembly (who looks like William Shatner’s kid brother) kept changing pitchers. He used three pitchers in the sixth, three more in the seventh, and another in the eighth. Seven pitchers to nine outs. And we think our pitchers can’t go very long.

So, with all the pitching changes, we left after the eighth inning, when the game was already 3½ hours long. But we left with lots to remember about our night on the roof. Mainly, we’ll remember to sit somewhere else next time.

# 100

2009-09-08T06:59:00.002-04:00

I started this blog, appropriately, on Truck Day, the psychological start of the baseball season. Now, with the season winding down, I’ve reached post #100. Here are some of the highlights, lowlights, right predictions, wrong predictions and downright stupid things I’ve said in 99 entries.

2/6/09 (Truck Day): “But, here in Boston, the truck better have lots of medical equipment on board. I’ve never seen such a roster of walking wounded.” Right!

2/12/09: 5 reasons the Sox are better than last year

(1) Better starting pitcing – check

(2) Better relief pitching – check

(3) The Rays won’t be as good – check

(4) Fewer distractions in left field – check

(5) Deeper bench – struck out on that one until August

2/22/09: 5 reasons the Sox are worse than last year

(1) The 2009 Yankees are better than the 2008 Yankees – yup

(2) No Coco – wrong. Ellsbury has emerged as a better player

(3) Easy outs at the bottom of the lineup – check

(4) Big Papi may never equal his 54-homer season, but his slide from 54 to 35 to 23 last year in an injury-plagued season is a problem – yes and no

2/22/09: “With so many walking wounded coming off injuries or medical issues last year, or just getting older (Ortiz, Lowell, Baldelli, Kotsay, Drew, Bard, Varitek, Beckett, Wakefield, Penney, Smoltz, Saito) a whole lot has to go right for the Red Sox to contend in 2009.” Some things went right, some not.

2/25/09 “The team thinks that Dice-K is following their program in Japan, but they don’t know for sure.” By April, they knew.

3/6/09 “Even RemDawg is being held back with a mysterious ‘infection that he got while out of the country.’” If we only knew!

3/8/09 “Papelbon clone Daniel Bard pitching the fifth. Goes into the Papelbon stare before he pitches, then hits 99 on the gun. In one sequence he threw two at 97 then the next one at 86 to strike out the batter and prompt my wife to remark that ‘he’s got a good changeup.’ Yup, he sure does.” This is called foreshadowing.

4/3/09 “The team has eight starting pitchers (Beckett, Lester, Dice-K, Wakefield, Penny, Smoltz, and Buccholz and Bowden at Pawtucket). If they can keep any five of them healthy at once, it is the team’s strong suit.” Well, they couldn’t.

Also 4/3/09 on the bullpen: “The sheer numbers mean that nobody will be overworked.” Looked stupid there, but on the other hand I said, “Nick Green appears to be a capable backup, and could be versatile enough to last the season.”

4/8/09 on Varitek: “If he can hit .250, it will be a 30-point improvement over last year.” He can’t and it’s not.

4/13/09: “Was Josh Beckett throwing at Bobby Abreu? I don’t think so. When time has been called and the pitcher is already into his windup, the ball often ends up going high, often to the backstop.” MLB disagreed.

4/15/09: “Dice-K left the game in the first inning last night. The first inning!!! Of course, he did give up five runs and throw 43 pitches in that first inning, but still. How can a pitcher have a tired arm one inning into his second appearance of the season?” And then did it again in pitching for Portland in September. Bookends to a lost year.

4/27/09, as Sox sweep Yankees: “Unfortunately, there is a pattern here that goes back several seasons. The Red Sox sweep the Yankees early in the season, then the Yankees sweep the Sox later in the season.” The pattern continues.

5/5/09: “What is obvious from the weekend is that I was wrong about the Rays (and so was everybody else for that matter). They haven’t slipped back, they are better. Probably the best team in the American League, with great pitching, excellent timely hitting, power that puts the Sox to shame.” And I was wrong about being wrong.

5/18/09: “If you want to get on base, just hit it to the Red Sox shortstop. The Sox have made 24 errors, 11 of them by Nick Green and Julio Lugo.” And so the trade for Alex Gonzalez after three months of this nonsense.

6/3/09 on Jonathan Papelbon: “…he gave up three singles to load the bases then struck out the side to preserve the Sox 5-1 win over Detroit.” Just a typical Pap performance.

6/10/09 on the bullpen: “There really is nobody out there that makes you think, “Oh, no,” when he starts warming up (Oh, no, it’s John Wasdin).” I take that back, “Oh, no, Ramon Ramirez.”

7/3/09: “So, here’s to Tim Wakefield on the occasion of his 383rd start. Every time Kevin Kennedy, Jimy Williams, Joe Kerrigan, Grady Little or Terry Francona has given him the ball, he has given it his all, and more.” Tim has made only three starts since that game.

7/6/09 (midseason review): “A typical Red Sox season seems to be developing. They start strong and build up a small lead. The Yankees start poorly and then go into a surge in mid-June (they have won 12 of their last 13 at this writing) to take the lead in the division. The Red Sox give chase and possibly end up with the Wild Card.” Looking good on that one.

7/17/09: “Here’s hopin’ the August schedule doesn’t kill them. Starting July 31, the Sox play 15 of 19 games on the road, including two at Tampa Bay, four at New York and three in Texas.” 9-9 in the 18 games, but those six straight losses to the Yankees and Rays pretty much consigned them to second place in the division.

8/6/09: “Remember when the Red Sox had a five-game lead in the diviision? They have lost 7 ½ games in the standings since then.” It’s now 12½.

8/29/09: “When all the dust settled at the trading deadline, Terry Francona may have lost a long reliever, but he was given a bench. And he has used that bench to maximum effectiveness.” Still the case.

And now on to post #101 and beyond.

Pitch In or Pitch Out

2009-09-06T10:36:00.001-04:00

They lose a couple of games and two guys jump off the Tobin Bridge. Come on, it’s not that bad….YET.

But the way the pitching is going, there could be a line up there soon.

Which brings us to John Farrell, the pitching coach. He’s a very well-respected guy in the game, and has been mentioned as a managerial prospect in places like Pittsburgh. He wisely took himself out of the running for that thankless job and stayed with the Red Sox. But maybe this offseason he will finally get that manager’s job. We can only hope.

Farrell came to the Sox from the Indians’ front office. He had never been a pitching coach at the major league level. Nor at the minor league level for that matter. Here’s his bio from redsox.com:

After his retirement as an active player, spent 5 seasons from 1997-2001 as Assistant Coach/Pitching & Recruiting Coordinator at Oklahoma State University, completing his bachelors degree at OSU in 1996...With the Cowboys, instilled new disciplines and methods into the program and mentored 14 pitchers that were drafted or signed as non-drafted free agents at the professional level, including 1999 National League Rookie of the Year Scott Williamson. Prior to 2007, Farrell served as the Cleveland Indians Director of Player Development since November 2001.

All very nice. And in two previous seasons on the Boston bench the pitching has been pretty good – ERA around 4, which is one of the best in baseball. But we’ve found out that Farrell has a major flaw: He can’t see and correct pitching problems.

Case #1: John Smoltz
After posting a 2-5 record here with an 8.33 ERA, Smoltz moved on to St. Louis, where he has become the Atlanta version of John Smoltz again, striking out 21 in 17 innings. It seems that Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter noticed that Smoltz was tipping his pitches. A minor correction has made the difference and now Smoltz is helping the Cards toward the NL Central title while Boston has Paul Byrd in place of Smoltz.

Case #2: Brad Penny
Ten horrible starts in a row led to his demise in Boston. Then he goes to the Giants and pitches eight shutout innings. The difference? Well, remember in his last start here against the Yankees, RemDawg pointed out that Penny was just firing fastballs up there and the Yankees were geared up for them? The Giants got him to throw more breaking balls and it worked.

Case #3: Daisuke Matsuzaka
True, the World Baseball Classic screwed him up big time, but there were mechanical issues there too, and his continual nibbling around the plate and inability or refusal to go after hitters. Maybe Dice-K’s stubbornness and refusal to do things any other way than his own contributes, but there has never been a connection between the team pitching philosophy, as implemented by Farrell, and the pitcher. Seems like more could be done here to get everybody on the same page.

Case #4: Ramon Ramirez and Manny Delcarmen
Since August, Ramirez has melted down in about two of every three relief appearances. And when Ramirez doesn’t meld down, Delcarmen does. Why can’t there be some consistency there? And as for Delcarmen, he has never developed into the setup guy he was always expected to be. With his stuff, his record should be better.

Case #5: Josh Beckett
You want to talk about inconsistent, here’s another case where the player is having problems and the pitching coach can’t do anything about it. The Sox “ace” is in free fall at the most important time of the regular season. If this is a physical problem, well, there isn’t much a pitching coach can do about that. But if it is a mechanical problem that is leading to home runs flying out at an alarming rate, then the pitching coach should be able to do something about it. But, given his track record, Farrell probably can’t.

In short, John Farrell is a good pitching coach when things are going well. But every pitching coach is a good pitching coach when things are going well. The outstanding pitching coaches earn their keep by fixing things that go wrong. And Farrell has shown no ability to be that fixer, or to bring a young pitcher to the next level. Maybe it’s time for him to accept one of those managerial jobs over the winter. Case closed.

Patterns

2009-09-04T19:19:00.002-04:00

When you watch enough baseball, you start to notice patterns.

For example, when Ramon Ramirez and Manny Delcarmen come into a game back to back, one of them will melt down. Usually it is Ramirez, who has become about as reliable as that other guy named Ramirez that we used to have.

And if you are watching the game on NESN, you will notice the Dave Roberts pattern: whatever Don Orsillo says, Dave Robert repeats. Don says, “Great catch there by Jacoby Ellsbury.” Dave says, “Jacoby Ellsbury made a great catch there.”

In the games against the Rays this week, the pattern developed that Joe Madden couldn’t keep his ass on the bench and had to come out to change pitchers three times an inning. No wonder the games ran close to four hours. Instead of fining Jonathan Papelbon for taking longer than 2:25 to get ready (that’s two minutes and 25 seconds. It only seems like two hours and 25 minutes), MLB should institute a rule that a reliever coming into a game must pitch to a minimum of three batters or finish the inning. That would likely eliminate two of Joe Madden’s pitching changes and save nearly five minutes of down time. While they’re at it, make the pitchers stay on the mound and stop walking around the infield rubbing the ball after every pitch. When you have a 40-pitch inning and you have to walk around in circles after every one, the inning is excruciating, Dice-K.

Oh, and where were all the “wonderful, loud and enthusiastic” Rays fans that everybody talked about in the playoffs last year, packing the Trop with their cowbells? The total attendance for three games was about enough to fill the place once. Apparently, in Tampa Bay, success breeds apathy. With this year’s edition of the Rays stuck in third place in both the AL East and the Wild Card, the fans have gone back into the woodwork and it’s more like the old days there. Next thing you know, they’ll start calling themselves the Devil Rays again and that crazy guy that used to sit behind the plate and yell at the players will be back.

Look at this as another pattern. Cinderella teams like the 2008 Rays usually slip back the next season. Sometimes it’s because the season was a fluke. The 2007 Colorado Rockies put together that incredible winning streak at the end of the season and rode it into the World Series. The next year they were 74-88, and when they started 2009 18-28, manager Clint Hurdle was fired. The 1969 Miracle Mets followed their World Series win over the Orioles with three consecutive 83-win third-place finishes before returning to the Series in 1973 (ironically after winning only 82 games in that regular season).

The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox also followed the slip-back pattern, finishing fourth in 1968 as Cy Young winner Jim Lonborg broke his leg skiing and went from 22 wins to six, Tony Conigliaro continued to recover from being beaned and Fireball Fred Wenz was one of their bullpen options. At least the Sox managed to stay above .500 for the next 15 seasons, although they only made the post-season once during that period.

This year’s Sox team is also following a pattern that has happened several times over the last few seasons. Boston starts out strong, builds a lead in the division, and gradually blows the lead as the Yankees overtake them somewhere around the beginning of July. The Sox then end up as the Wild Card team. If you think about it, the same pattern happened in 2007, even though the Sox won the AL East that year. The difference was that the Sox’ 11 ½ game lead was too great for New York to overcome, and the Yankees finished two games back. If the season had gone on for another week, the Sox likely would have finished second.

This season is following the old pattern for Boston. Early lead, start to stumble, get swept by the Yankees in a four or five game series, lose the lead, fight for the Wild Card.

With a month to go in the season, the fight is on. Taking two of three this week in St. Pete has given the Sox an edge and pushed the Rays to the edge.