I just watched the Orioles pull the plug on the Red Sox season, while Evan Longoria brought the Rays off of life support and into the postseason. It was a riveting night of baseball.
I should be upset (see: my reaction to Sox v Yanks, 2003 ALCS) but, in all honesty, I am more disgusted with the hometown nine than I am disappointed that they didn't make the playoffs. I feel sorry for a handful of players--namely Lester, Ellsbury, Pap, Ortiz, and Pedroia--all of whom have been here for a while and genuinely seemed like they cared about winning. The end of this season was doubly cruel because it came at Papelbon's hand, one of the only Sox players who had stood up during their September swoon and claimed responsibility for a loss. Nobody else mustered that type of accountability. Now, just like after they lost to the Angels in the 2009 ALDS, he will have the dishonor of being on the mound when the Red Sox season ended, though this exit seems so much crueler. He had had a good season.
In many ways this is a very hateable team. It's a $160 million group that has a little brother complex with the Yankees, but which also acted all season like they were entitled to be in the playoffs. Well guess what--that didn't happen. J.D. Drew and Daisuke seemed content to cash their paychecks and give about 75% in return. Good riddance, both of you. Jon Lackey is a disaster both on and off the field and, with every rant, harder and harder to root for. There's no way he's going to be here for the duration of his contract. I want to cheer on Carl Crawford but his exorbitant salary will forever (well, for 7 years, anyway) be an albatross...he'll never really be accepted here, through no real fault of his own. Who would turn down that sort of money?
It's easy to trash this team by bringing up the guts and glory of the 2004 crew, which gave New England the greatest thrill in generations. They were fun to watch. And they were a different assemblage of talent than what we have now--the sum of that team's parts was much greater than the whole. This team? The 2011 edition looked great on paper (in projected boxscores, if not on the ledger) but no sabremetrician could have predicted this collapse. The frailties of this team were exposed during the same month when the Yankees found their professionalism and the Rays found their spirit. The statistical machine failed and nobody knew how to fix it.
Over the past week I found myself rooting more for the Rays, actually, in the hope that there would be a one-game playoff tomorrow for the AL Wild Card. That would have been fun to watch and then, had the Sox won to actually earn their trip to the postseason, I think my outlook would have been different.
But here we are again--another Red Sox implosion, ensuring that Boston sports talk radio is a must-listen for the next few days. The fallout from this disaster will be fascinating to watch. Oh--but the sellout streak is intact, so that's good news, right?
At least I have basketball to look forward to. The Celtics have one more year to make a run before the rebuilding process begins.
Wait--they're locked out? Ugh. Long winter ahead. Someone beat the Yankees.
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Such a devastating September. I have the excuse of not living in the area to pretend like it doesn't reach me...but it does.
ReplyDeleteTo make matters worse, Mike's team (the Cards) have been on the other side of the same story in the NL.
Pats and Bs have to shoulder the burden, now, of bringing the city back...
It's a shame, but there's no overcoming a spiral like that. I think that the contrasts to 2004 have been overplayed in the media: that team was, after all, the second-highest payroll in baseball, $20 million ahead of the next team and $50 million ahead of their WS opponents.
ReplyDeleteI also detest the way the local media have been on the verge of wetting themselves with excitement at the prospect of a complete collapse: it's why I barely read the sports pages and never listen to sports radio these days.
I do wonder about conditioning for the pitching staff: I thought John Farrell was terrific in his time here and I can't help but wonder what role his departure played, and whether Francona had delegated so much to Farrell that he didn't spot problems this year in time. Hard to know, and harder to prove, of course.
I've heard rumblings about the conditioning being an issue for a few months now; and every year the training staff seems to expose itself to a lot of criticism (Ellsbury last year, Buchholz this year, Daisuke ad infinitum). Makes you wonder why these sort of issues persist year after year.
ReplyDeleteBut while conditioning is certainly part of the equation, no single variable can account for the complete and utter collapse--and now that Francona has gone (wrong move, IMO--he was the perfect manager for this team, win or lose) who knows what this team will look like next year. I hope they keep Ortiz and Pap. If not, it will be like rooting for NUFC when Barton was there...I'll hold my nose, avert my eyes, and still hope they win.
But as a lifelong New Englander, this collapse is familiar--we've seen it so many times before. I think Sox fans are tortured by both the team's past failures and recent successes; it's more comfortable to play the lovable losers, but more fun to be the winners...and we seem to be stuck in the middle of those emotions (with a giant payroll to boot). I hope this season brings back some of the self-loathing to Red Sox Nation; it's more fun to root for the team when you are convinced they will invent a new way to piss all their success away.
Happy Friday.