Couple Things
1) If Pythag somtimes does not jibe with how you think about baseball, consider this past series with the White Sox for a little microcosm of how the thinking goes. Chicago outscored the Sox by five runs in three games but only came away with one win. So who would you say the better team is? The one that won the series, or the one that put more runs on the board?
2) Tough morning to be in the basement of 4 Yawkey…check out some of the performances around the league. First check out Anibal Sanchez, then go ahead and look at D-Lowe and then for good measure peep in on Cla Meredith.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Its pretty clear that most moves the Red Sox have made since the ‘04 off season have been disasterous. Crisp, Renteria, anyone brought in for the bullpen, the trade for Beckett & Lowell, the Mirabelli re-acquisition, etc, etc, etc. Things will get brighter (they simply have to), but the Sox have to re-think how they’ve gone about acquiring, re-signing and trading players.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:42 am
The Red Sox are guilty of executing a very good strategy, poorly.
Leveraging the farm system to acquire 25-year olds with track records of Major league success like they did in the cases of Crisp and Beckett is a very good strategy. It is not in any way sacrificing the future.
The problem is simply that, for whatever reason, Crisp and Beckett have stunk. If the Red Sox had gotten the seasons that most would have projected for Crisp and Beckett, the difference would probably be close to 6 or 7 wins. In other words, Division contention and the WC lead.
Now, that is not to excuse the Red Sox. They need to think about what it is they missed in evaluating Crisp and Beckett. Maybe this will turn out to be just a down-year for the two of them and they will bounce back big in 2007.
To sum, I think the front office has plenty of room for improvement, but they are still thinking about things the right way in my opinion and I think we, as Sox fans, are lucky to have them running our team.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Oh and the Mirabelli trade is just awful awful awful. A panic move in every sense.
September 7th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Look, I know virtually nothing about performance analysis, and even I knew Crisp and Beckett were going to be failures. So if the Sox brass couldn’t figure it out, so help all of us.
Beckett had bad road numbers last year in the NL East, which was certainly a weaker division than the AL East. To expect success after all the changes he had to go through was asking entirely too much.
Crisp, according to HBT, was one of the 10 luckiest players in all of baseball last season. In other words, he’s simply not a good hitter, and had been getting lucky for some time. This year, we saw what happens when he doesn’t get lucky.
Theo’s a horrible GM, it’s just that simple. If you’re a good GM, some moves fall through, but you simply don’t fail to the remarkable extent that Theo has.
I’d take Kevin Towers at this point. Hell, I’d take Bowden at this point.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Tough, Sean O but you back your position. Maybe what you have to say is part of what the Sox need to think about going forward.
But I am not ready to levy the critiques to the extent you are.
September 9th, 2006 at 10:14 am
I realize that not all deciscions have worked out well, but how can you say that Theo is a terrible GM?
The team won the world series in ‘04 and made the playoffs in ‘03 and ‘05.
If Varitek, Nixon and Wakefield don’t go down, where do you think this team is? I believe that it wins the Wild Card and contends for the AL East. Why weren’t people jumping down the Patriots throat last year when injuries hurt their season?
I realize that it’s easy to criticize trades but I do feel that it’s far to early to criticize the Marlins trade and the Indians trade.
The following stats reflect the Red Sox young pitchers (Beckett, Papelbon, Lester, Hansen, Delcarmen) numbers against the NL this year in 63.2 innings.
7-0, 2.82 ERA, 1 save, 8.91 K/9, and a batting average against hovering around .200 in 8 starts and 14 relief appearances.
In addition Sean O, the mere fact that you’d take Bowden at this point took away all of your credibility.