As most of you probably know by now, I love to read baseball articles, pick them apart, and respond in kind. Typically, when this happens, I’m responding back to Dan Shaughnessy for some trite, overbearing, piece of trash he regurgitated onto the Boston Globe website. This time, the object of my ire is the Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rogers. In his annual pre-season “power rankings,” Rogers (in which he placed the Red Sox tenth behind the grossly overrated Marlins) goes into great detail as to why Bobby Valentine will have to work extra hard to “turnaround” a 90-win team that’s apparently full of lazy, selfish, uninspired players. In this piece, Rogers takes a lot of creative liberties in skewing the facts in his favor.
Bobby Valentine has managed in the World Series and won a championship in Japan but he never has taken a major league team to a division title in 15 seasons as a manager. It’s not likely to happen this year either.
What??? Bobby V has never won a division title in his 15 seasons as a manager? Why did the Red Sox even bother to hire him? They should just concede the season now! Honestly, with the advent of the Wild Card (apparently, a second one to boot), not “winning a division title” is the biggest non-issue ever. Terry Francona won one division title, managed his team in the playoffs six times, and came away with two World Series titles. Getting into the playoffs is all that matters. Nit picking how one gets into the playoffs is ridiculous. Bobby V reached the playoffs twice while managing the Mets during the Braves hey day. That was no easy task.
A year after widespread indifference and unprofessional behavior from players ended Terry Francona’s curse-busting run, the Red Sox are in danger of becoming a middle-of-the-pack team in the loaded American League East. They are winless in the playoffs since Game 6 of the 2008 ALCS at Tropicana Field, and expectations for 2012 fueled by one of baseball’s highest payrolls surpass the realistic projections for a team still reeling from a 7-20 September.
“Widespread Indifference.” “Unprofessional Behavior.” Those are some pretty bold words from someone that spent absolutely no time covering the Red Sox last season. Clearly, he must have acquired this information first hand through closely observing the attitudes and actions of the players. Right? Or maybe he got his information from those actually covering the team? What? He didn’t? None of them actually reported of the atrocities reportedly being committed in the clubhouse? Interesting. Oh wait, that’s right! His opinion is based off of the sensationalize Bob Holher story and the smoke screen that is Dan Shaughnessy’s faux rage machine. Great sources by the way. There’s nothing more concrete than sources who won’t identify themselves publicly, and a writer who makes a living by creating BS story lines in hopes of drawing himself attention.
Also, how are the expectations “fueled by one of baseball’s highest payrolls surpass the realistic projections for a team still reeling from a 7-20 September?” You just told us they didn’t have a chance to win the division title, and were in danger of becoming a “middle-of-the-pack” team in the “loaded” AL East! Sounds like the expectations (at least the ones Mr. Rogers has set) are pretty low to me. And when exactly do the Red Sox finally stop “reeling” from their September collapse? They haven’t played a game in four months. Isn’t it possible they’ve moved on from what happened? Maybe it’s just people like you who can’t get passed it? After all, it’s February, and you’re still focusing on something that happened months ago.
That’s one of the reasons why former Red Sox coach Dale Sveum picked the Cubs when Mike Maddux’s decision to remain as Rangers’ pitching coach gave him his choice between working in Boston or Chicago. Valentine, who almost was hired to manage the Marlins in 2010, joined Gene Lamont in the field of backup plans and eventually sold new general manager Ben Cherington that he was the right choice.
I love that Rogers makes these claims about Sveum and Maddux as if they’re absolute, well known facts. My question to him is how does he know this? Did Sveum and Maddux express these sentiments to him explicitely? If so, where were the articles about it back in November? Of course, we know the answer to these questions. He wasn’t told these things, and he’s using inneundo to create a more compelling story line. It sounds interesting, but it rings hollow.
President Larry Lucchino is playing a bigger role in the front office. He was Epstein’s mentor but left him hanging after a run of shaky free-agent signings, including Carl Crawford and John Lackey. Owner John Henry should have forced a reconciliation, maintaining the status quo in one of baseball’s best operations, but instead deemed Epstein replaceable. It’s possible Epstein would have left anyway, as he says, but the Red Sox made the choice easy when it didn’t offer him a contract extension and semantic promotion to president-baseball operations, his title with the Cubs.
Based on all of the reports I’ve read, Theo was planning on leaving the Red Sox when his contract expired after the 2012 season. As someone on the Bill Walsh plan for career development, Epstein wanted to explore other avenues, face new challenges, and break new barriers. Despite his love for the Red Sox, he knew he wouldn’t be able to fulfill those goals in Boston. When the Cubs job became available, he jumped at the chance to take the position. Why wouldn’t he? First of all, the new position was a promotion. Secondly, it gave him another opportunity to rescue a long-suffering franchise by bringing them home a championship. While we can play the “what if” game with the Red Sox offering Theo a promotion, we don’t actually know that didn’t happen. Again, Rogers makes assumptions off of no credible factual information. The Red Sox didn’t choose to let Theo go. Theo chose to leave.
The Red Sox’s biggest off-season additions were relievers Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon. None of the top-ranked free agents signed with the Red Sox or their AL East rivals.
The health of starting pitchers Josh Beckett, Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz is key for a team that will have Daniel Bard and someone from a group including Alfredo Aceves, Vicente Padilla, Andrew Miller, and Aaron Cook at the back of the rotation.
My question to Rogers would be, which of the top-ranked free agents would have been good fits with the Red Sox? Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder wouldn’t have worked because Adrian Gonzalez is a pretty damn good first baseman in his own right. Aramis Ramirez could have played 3B, but Kevin Youkilis is already on the club. I suppose he could have replaced David Ortiz at DH, but he’s a lesser player that was commanding a long-term deal. Thanks, but I’ll pass. C.J. Wilson or Mark Buehrle? Yeah, not so much. It’s rarely wise to give a pitcher a long-term deal when he’s on the wrong side of 30, and that’s what the Red Sox would have done if they’d given in to temptation. Giving John Lackey the contract they did is part of what caused their payroll inflexibility in the first place! Carlos Beltran signed for a reasonable deal, but his defensive issues and past knee injuries made him less attractive to the Red Sox. Would Jose Reyes and Jimmy Rollins have alleviated their situation at shortstop? Sure, but it wouldn’t have been wise to make those deals with age and injury history being serious issues. In reality, none of the top free agents fit the needs of the 2012 Red Sox. Ben Cherington and his team did what they had to do. In this case, it was making shrewd trades for relief talent, identifying risk/reward starting pitchers, and looking for value to find role players like Nick Punto and Cody Ross.
The Red Sox have their fingers crossed that Yadier Molina reaches free agency after 2012. Jarrod Saltalamacchia returns as the regular catcher after compiling a 4.62 CERA and allowing 92 stolen bases. He threw out 23 percent of base-stealers. Yalie Ryan Lavarnway, ranked by Baseball America as Boston’s No. 9 prospect, would love to become the long-term catcher. He has been the Red Sox minor-leaguer of the year two years running but is questionable defensively.
Finally, almost out of nowhere, Rogers drops the Molina bomb, and disses Salty and Lava. I have to admit that I find it particularly amusing that he uses CERA as a way to devalue Saltalamacchia’s abilities behind the plate. ERA, in of itself, is a poor metric for evaluating pitchers because it assumes that the pitcher has the ability to control what happens to a ball once it’s put into play. As Troy mentioned yesterday, pitchers don’t have that kind of control. (Or at the very least, they have minimal control.) With CERA, we’re assuming that both the pitcher and catcher have such abilities. Essentially, Rogers is saying that Salty is largely responsible for the pitcher’s performance during games in which he called. That simply isn’t true. He shouldn’t be held accountable for actions he’s not taking. He’s neither pitching nor fielding the ball. He’s merely calling the pitch (which may or may not be accepted by the pitcher), and receiving it. The outcome of that interaction is largely reliant on the other eight players on the diamond.