The Soxaholix channels Gordon Lightfoot, but brings up a point I’ve been pondering all year:
The legend lives on from ol’ Mattapan on down of the mistake Theo made with John Smoltzy.
The mistake wasn’t Smoltz, per se, but lack of a backup plan when Mark Teixeira fell through. Instead of going out and finding another power hitting first baseman (Adam Dunn?), the Red Sox put the Teixeira money in their pocket and went all cheap, signing high risk, high reward pitchers for little money. So when Mike Lowell did break down, there wasn’t a good option for the Red Sox. Instead of taking the $20 million they would have spent on Teixeira and spending it on the best players they could find, they thought they could get through with the team they had.
Of course, the Red Sox still lead the wild card by two games, so talk of the demise of the team is a little premature. The power of teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox is that they have the money to buy good players. The Red Sox are paying the price right now for not using their power of the purse to its fullest.
I love Adam Dunn, and lots of teams should have gotten him. But Mike Lowell’s not the problem (especially since the Martinez trade). The problem with the Red Sox is having three starters who are having a good night if they go five innings. How would Adam Dunn have fixed that?
OK, when this team was leading the AL East everyone was talking about how “deep” it was and how they really didn’t need much help at the trading deadline.
The last ten games before this one they were 5-5, which isn’t great but isn’t meltdown.
They are 3 1/2 back in early August and leading the wildcard. All teams look great when they are winning and bad when they are in a slump. And they are -at that moment.
Also, I think they lost something when they got rid of Manny and we are just starting to see the effects.
The Sox lack of power doesn’t just stem from not signing Teixeria or Dunn. Papi’s power has dropped drastically, reigning MVP Pedroia may not even get into double digits in homers this year, JD Drew is still JD Drew, and Jason Bay hasn’t (and probably won’t) fully replaced Manny’s power. That leaves the Sox with Youk, who’s probably good for 30 homers a year — but if that’s the best power hitter, when compared to years past it’s a hole that not even Teixeria could have filled.
I’m still miffed with the Smoltz signing early in the spring, though. If Buchholz is the great prospect that Theo has touted him to be, why sign an aging veteran? There comes a point where you have to let prospects sink or swim in the big leagues, and if Buchholz were in the starting rotation in April, perhaps we’d have a better Buchholz pitching in August. And if Buchholz didn’t show any improvement, you could have signed any number of pitching vets in need of a job during the season.
Yo, Pinto, stop analyzing the Sox since it’s obviously not your strong suit, and you’re only boasting because your MFY have had nothing go wrong this year, short of Wang who most everyone was waiting to implode anyway.
The reason Theo wanted Teix is because he’s a two-way player. He excells at both defense and offense, so fits the Theo mold. Dunn ain’t that. He may have been a nice DH target but Theo already had Ortiz for that; why go out and pay $10m for another one? Besides, reports were that Dunn did not want to DH.
If the MFY keep it up, as do the Sox, the Division is obviously theirs. No biggie there, it’s just one year. Stuff happens, and this year all the Sox ‘stuff’ just went bad.
Or maybe that ‘stuff’ (Dice, Buccholz, Ortiz, Bay, Drew, SS, is just waiting for a nice Sept run where all the pieces start working again. We’ll see.