Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Not Good news
Back to Australia I go, another 24 hour flight followed by meeting new roomates! Scary. I hope that they are better than my freshman college roomate. And my Sophmore year suitemates. They were awful.
Being home gave me two weeks to check in on my beloved Red Sox. So what have I learned about this years team in 14 days?
We aint winning shit.
Too many holes for us. For every great player we acquired in the off-season to put us over the top (Schilling, Foulke,) two have regressed from 2003. (Millar, Mueller, Trot, Lowe.) Thus the record breaking offense of 2003 no longer exists. Also, Bronson Arroyo is now our third starter, as Wakefield is having off year combined with Lowe's total collapse.
Sabrmetricians will continue to flaunt our league leading OPS and ERA as evidence that, we are the most talented team and we will turn it around and over-achieve in the last two months to make up for the underachievement of the first four. First off, this neglects the teams general inabiliity to turn baserunners into runs and to keep from making errors in the field leading to...unearned runs. Second, it neglects the observational evidence and the makeup of the team. Pedro, Curt, Ortiz, Damon, and Manny arent going to play much better; they are all having monster seasons. An increase in wins is going to have to come from increased performance by Lowe, Nixon, Millar, Reese, the bench etc... (and it would certainly help if Nomar could stop popping up on the first pitch on a quarter of his ABs. What amazes me is he can be that bad a player on some ABs, literaly little league level, and still hit over .300.) Barring a Wake in 95 miracle, I think we're fooked.
Yes we may add payroll, may convince Houston to take Youkilis and D Lowe for Beltran. No doubt we will sacrafice a prospect to add some third starter of Jeff Suppan quality who may help us win an extra game or two. Hopefully the teams in the AL West will continue to flounder and we can hold on to the Wild Card. But this team reminds me so much of the 02 addition, great individual performances, 93 wins, just missed the playoffs. Sounds about right for 04 too.
Being home gave me two weeks to check in on my beloved Red Sox. So what have I learned about this years team in 14 days?
We aint winning shit.
Too many holes for us. For every great player we acquired in the off-season to put us over the top (Schilling, Foulke,) two have regressed from 2003. (Millar, Mueller, Trot, Lowe.) Thus the record breaking offense of 2003 no longer exists. Also, Bronson Arroyo is now our third starter, as Wakefield is having off year combined with Lowe's total collapse.
Sabrmetricians will continue to flaunt our league leading OPS and ERA as evidence that, we are the most talented team and we will turn it around and over-achieve in the last two months to make up for the underachievement of the first four. First off, this neglects the teams general inabiliity to turn baserunners into runs and to keep from making errors in the field leading to...unearned runs. Second, it neglects the observational evidence and the makeup of the team. Pedro, Curt, Ortiz, Damon, and Manny arent going to play much better; they are all having monster seasons. An increase in wins is going to have to come from increased performance by Lowe, Nixon, Millar, Reese, the bench etc... (and it would certainly help if Nomar could stop popping up on the first pitch on a quarter of his ABs. What amazes me is he can be that bad a player on some ABs, literaly little league level, and still hit over .300.) Barring a Wake in 95 miracle, I think we're fooked.
Yes we may add payroll, may convince Houston to take Youkilis and D Lowe for Beltran. No doubt we will sacrafice a prospect to add some third starter of Jeff Suppan quality who may help us win an extra game or two. Hopefully the teams in the AL West will continue to flounder and we can hold on to the Wild Card. But this team reminds me so much of the 02 addition, great individual performances, 93 wins, just missed the playoffs. Sounds about right for 04 too.
# posted by Marmaniac @ 10:30 AM 
