The Year after the Other Next Year

Boston Red Sox 2008

Copyright © 2008 Timothy Horrigan

Daisuke Matsuzaka after Game 4, 2007 World Series


Back before the 2005 season, I put up a page about the then World Champion Red Sox. I revised it a few times over the course of the season. It's still on my site, if you really care:

My 2005 Red Sox page didn't get a whole of hits, but I went ahead and put up a 2006 page:

And then, I went ahead and put up a 2007 page, which brought them good luck:

And now I am putting up a 2008 Red Sox page... If nothing else, the eBay auctions at the bottom of the page are worth checking out.

Manny Ramirez in left field @ Fenway Park, vs. New York Yankees; July 26, 2008
 [July 31, 2008] After years of himself being himself, the Red Sox finally traded Manny Ramirez. It was a three way deal with the Dodgers and the Pirates where Manny ended up in Los Angeles (rejoining Nomar Garciaparra), and younger and statistically similar but much duller slugger named Jason Bay ended up in Boston. I think it was a bad deal, especially since the Sox gave up two other players as well: a mediocre pitcher named Craig Hansen and a fairly good outfielder named Brandon Moss, who are on their way to Pittsburgh. The Dodgers made out well, although they presumably have to pay Manny's huge salary. They gave Pittsburgh a major-league third baseman, Andy LaRoche and a minor league pitcher named Bryan Morris.

The trade solves one problem: Manny was behaving even more erratically than usual this summer.

On a personal note, I happened to first hear the news of Manny's trade from my next State Senator, Amanda Merrill, who coincidentally is the mother of Sam Fuld, a promising outfielder in the Chicago Cubs minor league system who played briefly in the majors in 2007. He was not traded on July 31st, as far as I know. I think the Sox could have used him.

See:

[July 17, 2008] One of the many Red Sox players in the 2008 All-Star Game turned out to be the MVP. J.D. Drew didn't enter the game until the 7th inning, but he played almost a whole game. He hit a two-run homer in the 7th and much later got a 2-out walk which led to the game-winning run in the bottom of the 15th. (The Twins' Justin Morneau just barely scored on a sacrifice fly. And actually in my opinion Morneau was, strictly speaking, just barely out at the plate on a very, very close play. I think the home plate umpire was eager to get the game over and done with.)

It was a tense and awfully long game... 4 hours and 50 minutes, ending just before 2 a.m. It was longer than some cricket matches. The tension was increased by the fact that the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, had decreed that the game would be played to a conclusion. In 2002, the All-Star Game ended in a tie— and a fan riot— in Selig's home town of Milwaukee, after the managers ran out of players. The managers ran out of players again this time, but they managed to keep the game going until someone won it.

My opinion about the All-Star game, not that anyone asked me, is that it's an exhibition game, so it;'s no big deal if it ends in a tie. I would place a limit— perhaps 12 innings— on how long the game has to go on. After 2003, MLB has the gimmicky "this time it counts" feature where the league who wins the All-Star Game gets home field advantage in the World Series. Who cares? Home field advantage makes very little difference in a best-of-7 game series between two good teams. Give the home field advantage to the league who didn't host the All-Star Game if no one wins the game,. I say— or to the one who did host it. It really doesn't matter!



[July 15, 2008] The first half (technically the first 60%) of the season, up to the All-Star break, went pretty well for the Red Sox. They have the second-best record in Major League baseball and they are half a game ahead of a hated Eastern division rival. The hated divisional rival is, however, Tampa Bay. The New York Yankees are six games behind and are muddling through a season which will (unless things turn around for them) be remembered as the year the old Yankee Stadium was torn down and the year Madonna.broke up Alex Rodriguez's marriage.

The Sox have had a couple of key injuries— to David Ortiz and Curt Schilling— but they are chugging along. Eight Red Sox were chosen for the All-Star Game, not including Daisuke Matsuzaka, who has a league-leading 10-1 won-lost record.

Two of the highlights of the season so far have been:



[March 20, 2008] The 2007-2008 off-season went fairly quietly for the World Champion Red Sox. At least it was quiet until the eve of their departure on the vernal equinox for a four game series in Japan. The players almost boycotted the team's trip halfway around the world to play two exhibition games against Japanese teams and two real games against the Oakland Athletics after the union reps discovered that the coaches (as well as the managers) were not getting the same $40,000 appearance fee as the players. (The coaches are not union members but most of them are former players.) The problem was solved the way most problems of this sort are, by digging up a little more money at the last minute:

The offseason began peacefully: there were no major riots after the final game of the World Series. (The night was marred slightly, however, by a premature and highly misleading news leak— while Game 4 was still going on— to the effect that Alex Rodriguez would not be re-signing with the Yankees. Red Sox Nation found time, even in this moment of triumph, to bitch about A-Rod's timing. A few days later, he signed a contract with... the Yankees.)

Curt Schilling did re-sign with the Sox, but he is injured and may never pitch again. This stinks, but it was a pleasant surprise that he came back at all— and if his shoulder does in fact heal on schedule, he will be back for the second half of the season.

The highlight of the Major League off-season was the uproar over steroid use. The Sox got off fairly easy in the Mitchell Report (named after Sen. George Mitchell, who used to be a member of the Red Sox's corporate board.) The only recognizable name from the 2007 team to be scapegoated in the report was Eric Gagne, a relief pitcher who was soon shipped off to the Minnesota Twins. The big scapegoat, even more so than Barry Bonds, was the great pitcher Roger Clemens, who of course began his legendary career in Boston— but Clemens is in trouble for his activities as an Astro and as a Yankee.

Speaking of Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez has a small but finite chance, looking a few years down the road, of beating Bonds's home run record. It looks like Bonds will end his career with his current total of 762: he wants to keep playing but no one has signed him and in any case he will spend much of the 2008 season in federal court. Ramirez, who is 35 years of age, has 490. If Manny hypothetically keeps playing till the age Bonds (apparently has) retired at, he would have 7 additional seasons to hit an additional 273 homers before retiring in 2015. Manny certainly is capable of reaching that goal, even though he is injury prone and also has a tendency to well... be Manny. He already holds one major home run record: most post-season homers (24 as of the 2007 World Series.)

However, A-Rod will probably beat Manny to the record: A-Rod is only 32 years old and has already hit 518 home runs— and is a much more consistent player. If he continues to have good luck and to keep his current rate of production, A-Rod is likely to pass Bonds and quite possibly also Japanese champion Sadaharu Oh (868 home runs) and Negro Leagues champion Josh Gibson (an estimated 800 to 1000.) We wish A-Rod well in his quest, even if he is a Yankee.



Jonathan Papelbon after Game 4, 2007 World Series




2007 was a great year for the Red Sox: they led the American League wire to wire, and won the World Series for the second time in 4 years. They have won 29% of the Series so far this century, and the Yankees haven't won one since the last century. (2000 was in the 20th century, not the 21st.)

The first half of the Sox's 2007 season was flawless. They slowed down a little bit in June and July, but they still had the best record in baseball and were 10 games ahead of the Yankees by the All-Star Game break. The early spring schedule was front loaded with Yankees-Red Sox contests: in April, the Sox won five of six games against the Yankees, including a wild April 21, 2007 game where they tied a record by hitting four consecutive home runs. The Sox sent six players to the midsummer classic including an almost unhittable Japanese pitcher— not Daisuke Matsuzaka, but rather the "other" Japanese pitcher, left-handed reliever Hideki Okajima. The winning pitcher in the All-Star game was the Sox's Josh Beckett.

The summer was an up-and-down time for the Red Sox. However, through it all, they stayed in first place, out of reach of the Yankees. The last week or so of the summer epitomized the rollercoaster nature of the season. The Red Sox played a four game series with the Other Sox in Chicago, and scored 10 or more runs in all four games. The composite score for the four games was Red Sox 46, White Sox 7. The the Red Sox came home and dropped three heartbreakers in a row to the Yankees. The Yanks' Roger Clemens and Chien-Ming Wang both took nohitters deep into their starts. Then after dropping another heartbreaker to the last place Orioles, the Sox broke their l4-game losing streak when rookie Clay Buchholz pitched a nohitter in his second career start.

Like in 2004, they had to battle back in 2007 from 1-3 deficit in the League Championship series. However, this was against the Cleveland Indians, not the hated Yankees, and those last three games went by pretty smoothly. They were not an underdog in the World Series either: their World Series opponent was the lowly Colorado Rockies, who needed to win a 163rd game by literally a millimetre just to be in the playoffs at all.


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Tammy Nowotny in her Red Sox 2007 World Series shirt

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Daisuke Matsuzaka after Game 4, 2007 World Series


       


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