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2006 AL East Pennant Race, Abated By Death

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A few points on Boston Massacre II:

  • The Red Sox made two crucial moves that 1)I heartily supported at the time, and 2)have, in retrospect, turned out to be bad-to-disastrous. One the first of these–letting Damon walk and brining in Crisp–I was completely wrong about, not just with hindsight but at the time. From Speaker to DiMaggio to Lynn to Damon, the Red Sox’s best teams have always had a plus defender in center to cover all that ground. And while Crisp can’t possibly be as bad as his Luzinskian routes indicated this weekend, a look at his numbers confirm that he’s not quality defender in center. And at the plate, he’s an undisciplined singles hitter who’s OK if he hits .300 and barely acceptable if he hits .275. And it’s not just that Damon’s a lot better; he went to the Red Sox’s main competition, and kept them afloat when they lost their other two OFers. Given their resources and that he was pretty clearly going to the Yankees, the Red Sox needed to accept the fact that they’d be taking a bath on the last year of the contract and sign him.
  • On the other hand, I still think that the Beckett trade was a good one; given the thinness of the pitching market, getting a still-young pitcher of that talent was a move they had to make. And–as with the Yankees the previous two years–I think a lot of what looks like failings in the Red Sox’s pitching staff is in fact a result of the left fielder-and-two-DHs “defense” they’re frequently going with. Still, not only has Beckett not done the job, but Ramirez is having a pretty good season as a 22-year old shortstop. I would still have made the trade given what I knew at the time, but this could look even uglier than the Damon fiasco in three years.
  • In some respects, Joe Torre got incredibly lucky; he has a lot of flaws, and was an unqualified failure with the Mets and Cards and a qualified one with the Braves. But managers have skills that work better with some teams than with others, and the Yankees context lessens the importance of his indecision with personnel and his smallball fetish, and emphasizes the importance of his ability to massage egos and manage the press. (That may sound backhanded, but it’s not; in New York, those are major requirements.) But one area where Torre is a truly great manager is his instinct for the jugular. You would never see Torre starting the 8th inning of a game where a season was hanging in the balance with a completely gassed Mike Timlin out there. You would never see Torre fail to pinch run for his immobile slugger before a bunt in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game because he was worried about what would happen if he didn’t score. Tito has done a good job in Boston overall, but Torre humiliated him on Sunday.
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