Two-Hit Wonder?

It's still baseball season. For most of the AL, there is a pennant race underway. What with three divisions and two wild card slots, more than half of the teams in the AL are still in the mix. But not us here in the Nation. We're either rooting against the Yankees or just not paying attention. However, since there is nothing much to write about in terms of SU football, and because hoops season is still a couple months away, let's muse about baseball this afternoon.

So the question is -- did Theo really know what he was doing?  Or was he just lucky? On the plus side, he gets credit for trading Nomar away, and picking up Cabrera, Dave Roberts (the Curse would not have been reversed, at least not in 2004, without Roberts) and a couple other miscellaneous guys. No one expected it at the time, but Theo's move filled out the roster that would win eight straight that October.  Then he also gets credit for the Beckett and Lowell pick-up; and those two guys were instrumental in 2007. Does Theo get credit for hiring Tito? If so, that's three good moves.

On the other hand -- JD Drew, John Lackey, Carl Crawford, a whole rotation or two of ineffective starting pitchers, and an equal number of shortstops who seemed unable to hit the ball once they came to Fenway. So if all these moves had been made at random, or by a ten year old fan, would there have been any different ratio of good moves to bad ones? In other words, when Theo traded away Nomar, or when he picked up Mike Lowell, did he really know what he was doing? Or did he just look like a genius when those couple moves worked out for the Sox? I'm inclined to go with the lucky theory. We'll find out in a year or two by watching what happens in Chicago. His Cubs are not in the cellar, but their record is even worse than Boston's right now; so that means it's pretty bad.

The other thing is that I have to admit that Boston's front office has clearly been outperformed by the Yankees. It's easy to talk trash on the Yankees; they throw more money at their roster than any other team in the Major Leagues. But I think they get a more consistent return on their investment than other profligate front offices. Boston got very little for all the money they've lavished on free agents this past decade. Other teams (Philly comes to mind) have similarly had trouble with their expensive acquisitions. And even though the Yankees have won fewer titles than Boston over the past decade, they've put a more consistent team on the field, year after year. And that was true even before the meltdowns of the past two years.

So now it's up to Boston's front office -- what will they do with the two hundred and sixty million dollars, or bones or clams, or whatever you call them,  they just saved? Are they planning to hoard all that cash figuring that the fans will still fill Fenway regardless? Are they going back to the free agent market, where they've had so little success? Or will they use that money to lock up their own young players? Let's revisit that question next spring. And let's hope we can do that while we're still caring about wins and losses.