In an otherwise informative and thoughtful look at the job Theo Epstein and his Baseball Operations staff have done in 2006, Gordo champions the Manny Ramirez addition-by-subtraction cause by mentioning the 2001 Mariners.

Imagine, for a moment, the Sox replacing Ramírez with, say, a .259 hitter, one who hit just five home runs. Disaster, right? Well, that’s what the Seattle Mariners did when they didn’t re-sign Alex Rodriguez, after a 2000 season in which he hit 41 home runs, drove in 132 and scored 134 — numbers even more meaningful because they were produced by a shortstop — and replaced him with Carlos Guillen, the .259 hitter in question. In 2001, the Mariners won 116 games.

So the Mariners elininated A-Rod, brought in a clubhouse ping-pong table and water bubbler and that’s how they won 116 games?  Or do you think it may have had something to do with Bret Boone’s arrival (.331/.372/.578, 141 RBI)?  And did you know that the Rookie of the Year and League MVP in 2001 just so happened not to be on the club in 2000?   His name is Ichiro Suzuki and I am pretty sure he helped to make up some of A-Rod’s production.  Did you know the team OPS+ in 2000 was a very solid 111 but improved in 2001 to 119 thanks to Boone and Suzuki, as well as significant upticks in play from John Olerud, Mike Cameron and Mark McLemore. 

On the run prevention side, the 2000 Mariners were just about dead average - they sported a 101 ERA+.  Freddy Garcia and Paul Abbott were solid enough but the rotation also featured two soft-tossing left handers that both posted ERA’s north of five.  The bullpen, as it would be in 2001, was very good.  Where the enormous difference was made - how they went from an average pitching/defense unit to the very best basically came from two guys.  Freddy Garcia went from nice mid-rotation guy to bona fide front end horse, tossing nearly 239 innings with an ERA that barely exceeded three.  Jamie Moyer went from Joe Hesketh to Andy Pettitte in terms of output between 2000 and 2001, looking like a replacement level guy the first year only to find himself on the shortlist of the AL’s very best starters the next.  The M’s surrendered a league-low 627 runs in 2001.

I write this simply to demonstrate that Edes’s point is at best incompetently presented and at worst an intentional omission of facts to keep fighting the good fight against Manny Ramirez.  You don’t get better simply by subtracting HOF-caliber talent and replacing it with run-of-the-mill guys.  What works is when you get significant improvement/career years from some of your holdovers (Olerud, Sele, Garcia, Cameron, Moyer, McLemore, Rhodes) while adding to the mix two players that turn in MVP-caliber seasons of their own (Boone and Suzuki).   

So yeah, if Beckett turns in a Cy Young 2007, Schilling is lights out, the Sox go and get two MVP-candidates to fill out their lineup, Jonathan Papelbon turns out to be a very good starter, Jason Varitek and Coco Crisp return to form and Dustin Pedroia becomes a top-10 2B then sure, the Sox very well could afford to see Manny walk.  But this notion that Edes floats wherein he more or less asserts that simply by virtue of taking Manny away the Red Sox would stand to gain is just preposterous.