It’s been hard to not be at least moderately critical of the Red Sox roster construction this year. There’s been an abundance of, let’s say, questionable decisions this season. But, at the core, the decisions all seem to have a couple of threads in common:

1) The Red Sox would rather have a veteran than a younger player
2) The Red Sox would rather not disrupt the harmony in the clubhouse

Let’s look at a couple of recent examples:

Kevin Millar/John Olerud at 1B over Roberto Petagine/Kevin Youkilis
Millar has been getting hammered by pretty much everyone, but it’s legitimate. He’s simply not provided the Red Sox the offense they need out of 1B. With the Red Sox offense as potent as it is, you can deal with sub-optimal output from a couple of places (yes, a sub-400 SLG from a 1B is sub-optimal). The oddity, of course, is that that Sox have carried a better hitter on the roster for most of the year — Kevin Youkilis. Terry Francona, however, is a player’s manager and has a tendency to ride veterans as far as he can. Combine that with Kevin Millar’s tendency to not take kindly to losing his spot (c.f. last year’s tiff with Doug Mientkiewicz), and Francona stuck with the Millar/Olerud combo over the more productive Youkilis to keep from making waves.

This doesn’t even start to take into account the monster lurking down I95 in Pawtucket. Roberto Petagine has put up a line of .313/.445/.618 in AAA. Even if you don’t believe that minor league performance does have a correlation to major league performance, you have to believe that the Sox should give Petagine a shot to improve upon Millar’s numbers. Why haven’t they?

For starters, Petagine would have to be added to the 40 man roster — though that’s a fairly small inconvenience (bye-bye John Halama or Tim Bausher). The real hindrance is the fact that it would likely mean giving up on Kevin Millar. Millar seems to be fairly popular with the players in the clubhouse.

Implicitly, the front office is putting a tangible value on Kevin Millar’s “intangible” clubhouse value. They must believe that giving Millar’s job to an “unproven” guy like Roberto Petagine would have a detrimental effect on the team’s performance that would cost more than the incremental improvement in offense from upgrading from Millar to Petagine.

Adam Hyzdu/Gabe Kapler/Adam Stern over Chip Ambres
When Jay Payton threw his hissy fit to expedite his exit from the organization, the Sox DFA’d him to open up a spot on the 40 man roster. They had the chance to bring up Chip Ambres, who had been hitting pretty well all season in Pawtucket and seemingly is a perfect platoon partner for Trot Nixon. They didn’t. The Sox front office flipped through a couple of options, using a 12th pitcher, promoting Rule 5er Adam Stern, and finally reacquiring Adam Hyzdu.

Why? Why not just give the spot to Ambres, see what you’ve got, and then still have the opportunity to reacquire Hyzdu? You could argue that the Sox weren’t enamored with Ambres’ performance in AAA, but that’s not terribly logical — they picked him up in the offseason when the Marlins tried to sneak him through waivers, so they must have seen something then, and his performance in Pawtucket certainly didn’t do anything to diminish that view. You could argue that the Red Sox didn’t want to risk losing him without getting something in return. If Ambres flopped, the front office would have to find a replacement, which would require sending Ambres back to AAA. Ambres would once again need to clear waivers, something that wasn’t likely. This is more plausible.

Ambres had been solid all season though, so why not give him a shot as the 5th OF rather than carrying 12 pitchers over the first part of the season? Probably because Francona wouldn’t use him. Francona doesn’t do a great job of breaking younger players into the lineup (c.f. Kevin Youkilis), preferring to defer to his veterans, even when the youngsters might be better. Ambres would waste away on the bench.

To remedy the situation, the Sox had Trot Nixon bat against LHP numerous times in the past week, had Kevin Millar play RF where his offense is just as poor a fit and his defense makes him even worse, and carried 12 pitchers, most of whom didn’t get used regularly. Not an optimal use of the roster. But the clubhouse has remained happy. And will likely remain happy as they’ll first have Adam Hyzdu and, later, Gabe Kapler, as the team’s 4th OF. These are both veteran players who the team is already familiar with. They’re probably also both worse than Chip Ambres, at this point. Once again, the team has assigned a value to the difference between having Hyzdu/Kapler in the dugout rather than Ambres.

Ambres has since been dealt to Kansas City in the deal for Tony Graffanino, where he went 2-4 in his first game.

Keeping Alan Embree and John Halama over Lenny DiNardo, et al.
No need to talk about the Sox bullpen. It’s been atrocious. Inexplicably, Terry Francona has continually gone to Alan Embree in key situations, even if it’s been obvious since week 1 of the season that he’s pretty much done (really! go back and look - we all mentioned it in April). But, like clockwork, Tito raises his left arm and in walks Embree and out goes his batting practice fastball.

John Halama’s been pretty much an unmitigated disaster. Hard to see it coming, given that Halama’s been adequate for a few seasons now, but come it has.

So how did the Sox deal? Well, first they tried carrying 12 pitchers. Francona didn’t use most of the pitchers, but they were there, taking up a valuable roster spot.

Did they ever try replacing Embree or Halama? Nope. Not once. Even with Lenny DiNardo and Abe Alvarez doing alright in Pawtucket, the Sox never once gave them a shot to see if they’d be able to replace two of the worse relief pitchers in the AL.

This has finally been remedied this week. I think even Theo and company got sick of watching Embree come into high leverage situations. But the only logical explanation before this was that the Sox were worried about the clubhouse effect that dumping Embree (and, to a lesser extent, Halama) would have, combined with the fact that Francona would likely not have used the youngsters, instead probably electing to expand Mike Myers to full time duty (not an attractive proposition).

In each of these situations, it seems to me that the Sox front office has weighed the clubhouse effect and likely usage patterns by their manager, and determined that the incremental improvement by the newer player would not be enough to make the move. It’s a seemingly odd stance for a sabermetrically-inclined organization, but I have to believe this is the case. The front office simply is too smart to not believe that Petagine+Youklis is a net improvement over Millar+Olerud, that Ambres > Kapler/Youkilis, that DiNardo > Halama+Embree. So, they must have assigned some value to the clubhouse contributions of certain players and to the value in not overturning a clubhouse for incremental gains.

It’s hard for a stathead like me to swallow, but I’d much rather believe that this is the case. The alternative is believing that the Sox have started to reduce their reliance on performance analysis or that they’re more worried about the PR effect of dumping a popular player than improving the team. Neither of those options are palatable to me.

So, here we stand, about a week and a half before the trade deadline, in first place by a thin margin. The starting rotation is average, the bullpen atrocious, and the offense one of the best in baseball. The Tony Graffanino trade and Alan Embree DFA are two small moves that marginally improve the team, but might not be enough to win the East, let alone the AL.

It’s going to be an interesting 12 days. We’ll see how much a harmonious clubhouse is valued on July 31st.