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The Red Sox collapse
From the beginning I didn’t have a good feeling about this Red Sox season. Perhaps the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup in the spring sucked up all my pro sports enthusiasm. The additions to the team seemed sound – Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford – and the talk early on was how would they find enough work to keep all of their top of the line starting pitchers occupied through the season. Their pitching seemed to abandon them as Dice-K was lost for the season and then Clay Buchholz went down for the last six weeks. Crawford was a disaster right from the start and while Gonzalez repeatedly demonstrated why he was valued so highly, he became a victim of the Home Run Derby Slump which, each year, takes one of the players who dominates the home run derby at the All Star game and turns him into a weak singles hitter for the rest of the season.
For the past week I’ve been more concerned with finding time to go see Moneyball, the new Brad Pitt movie that’s based on the Michael Lewis book of the same name – one of my favorite works of nonfiction ever – than I have been with the pennant race. Having lived through the Bucky Dent home run, the Bill Buckner error, and the Aaron Boone home run, this year just adds to local Red Sox lore. The team did win the World Series twice in our lifetimes, what more do you want? Still, the aura of Theo Epstein is badly damaged. Daisuke Matsuzaka, J D Drew, John Lackey and Carl Crawford: he’s spent a lot of money on players that have defined mediocrity over the past few years.
Unfortunately, the same vibe I had about this Red Sox team back in the spring is how I feel about the Patriots today. Go Bruins.
All the multi-millionaire ballplayers who work for the Boston Red Sox company should hide until February. Go away. We don’t want to see you for four months. The joy of watching Jacoby Ellsbury play all spring and summer will be a good memory for the winter.
Whose collapse was worse this month; Obama’s or the Sox?
Jacoby Ellsbury (MVP) has 32 home runs and Adian Gonzalez has 27 home runs. I did not realize how slow Gonzalez was on the base path, till I saw home play this year. During the spring I said on this blog that Jacoby Ellsbury was better all- around player than Ted Williams. I am sticking to that story, Remember a couple of years ago the Red Sox wanted to trade Ellsbury. Go Yankees !
UGH – glad they’re gone and I do not need to be up until 1:00AM watching Yankee-Sox 6 hour playoff games. This was as inept a display of baseball fundamentals as I’ve seen since I coached my son’s 13 and under team. No one know how to run the bases, the left fielder can not catch the ball, the first baseman thinks Jesus made the Red Sox lose.
I said over a month ago that the curse of Neil Diamond and that god awful song would haunt the Red Sox for years to come. Kill the song – or it will be another ninety years.
This probably goes down as the most expensive team money can by that swirled the drain and got flushed without an ounce of spine – bring back ‘Cowboy Up’ and shots of Jack in the clubhouse and get rid of the corporate suits and the tickets that the average fan can never, ever afford.
Finally, lets hope the Bruins do not turn into the corporate shills that the Sox and sadly the Patriots are turning in to. Please leave hockey to the real fans.
Bob, do you think fans will buy tickets next season. Will they be like the Spinners whom reached there peak a three years ago.
Right in Lowell, don’t you mean Gov. Perry.
Not sure about whether the crowds will come back but my guess is the RS corporate spin machine will get everyone eager when the equipment trucks rolls south next February and like lemmings, Sweet Caroline will follow the truck over the next cliff. I kind of like the fade – it reminds me of the days when you could go get a ticket at Fenway 10 minutes before game time for less than a mortgage payment.
No one on this team showed up in September except Ellsbury, Aceves, and Scutaro (who by the way batted .387 with 21 RBIs for the month).
And for as fine a year as Adrian Gonzalez had, he batted only .183 against the Yankees, and .131 against the Rays. I’ll throw in the Tigers for good measure since they made the playoffs too: .131.
But you’ll be happy to know that he feasted on Orioles, Mariners, and White Sox pitching all year long.
And I’m already starting a countdown for when Lackey’s contract expires after the 2014 season.
Correction: Gonzalez batted .130 against the Tigers this year, not .131. I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow him an undeserved percentage point.
The Red Sox are a microcosm of corporate America today – too much salary at the top for too little effort.
Yes, Ellsbury had a great season, and he did not fold under pressure, but the team pays him less than 1/6th of what they gave Carl Crawford, and not even as much as Conor Jackson (who’s dat?)
Any team needs players who will work to improve their lot, not ones that ride out their past.
Micheal, Gonzalez said it “God’s will” that they lost to Baltimore.
Dick, did not the Chicago Cubs win twice very early in the 20th century and have not won since.