Jason being Manny

John wanted a posting about Manny – an update about his numbers since he had donned a Dodgers uniform earlier this month. So here they are: in his twenty-two games as a Dodger, Manny has batted .380, with an on-base percentage of .480. He’s knocked in 22 runs, scored 12, and hit 6 home runs. His RBI pace has him finishing well above 100 for the season, just as he has in 12 of the past 14 seasons. He remains an RBI machine.

But here’s a more interesting statistic. In the 22 games since Jason Bay has replaced Manny in left field, the Sox have gone 15-7, while playing 13 of those 22 games on the road. That’s a .681 pace, far better than they’ve played in any other month this year, again remarkable because they’ve played on the road more than half of this month, and entering August were well below .500 on the road. In fact, if they had played .500 ball on the road all year, they would now be 25 games above .500, well on their way to the post-season. Not that Manny hasn’t been good for the Dodgers, but they continue to play only .500 ball, and are losing ground to the Diamondbacks in the weakest division in baseball.

At first glance it looks like Jason Bay hasn’t had Manny-esqe numbers, but a closer look reveals that his production may have been just as valuable. He’s batted .385 this past month. He’s knocked in 18 runs, and scored 20, while hitting 4 home runs. But that translates to 34 runs produced in the month, six more than Manny produced for the Dodgers. Of course Bay has better bats behind him in Boston’s lineup, hence more chances to score if he gets on base; but runs are runs. And that doesn’t even take into account the defensive improvement. Yesterday was a good example of that: Bay made a great running catch up against the left field wall, which helped the Sox keep the score even until Lowrie knocked in the winning run in the 11^th inning.

So as much as we loved Manny, and as much as he meant to the Sox in the post-season runs during 2004 and 2007, baseball remains a team game. And a Jason Bay who actually wants to play, and isn’t intimidated by Fenway’s atmosphere, can actually help his team more than a future hall of famer who, for whatever reason, decided he no longer really wanted to play for the Sox. So I wish Manny well in Dodger blue, but I’m pulling harder for Jason now, and hope he gets to win a ring or two before he hangs up his cleats.