Ted's Army: The Voice of Red Sox fans

Why the Red Sox should bring back Tito and Theo

We've been having fun hating on everyone and everything today, mostly because that's the only way we can handle what the Red Sox did in September. But this post isn't going to be like that. This post is going to ask you to put down the pitchforks and torches, step back from the walls of the castle, and try to think reasonably.

Both made serious missteps before and during the 2011 season, but Theo Epstein and Terry Francona should return as the main cogs in the Red Sox managing team.

Why? I can think of three main reasons.

1. They've established a track record of success. In the eight seasons under Epstein and Francona, the Red Sox have amassed 744 wins, second in all of baseball to, of course, the Yankees (771). Only three other teams have even scratched the 700-win surface -- the Angels, Phillies, and Cardinals. A sustained run of winning is really hard to accomplish, giant payroll or not. The Cubs, Mets, and Dodgers all spend significant amounts on payroll, and have won 645, 654, and 675 games, respectively, over the same period. When you have a winning formula, which the Red Sox have found with Francona and Epstein, along with this ownership, you don't throw it away just to prove a point. You don't throw it away just to appease a fanbase who is calling for someone's (anyone's) head. The Patriots didn't axe Belichick after the 18-1 season for this very reason.

2. They work well together. While it's been reported that they've bristled at one another at times, Tito and Theo share similar philosophies. Both believe in steadiness. Both believe in, for the most part, the idea of regression to the mean, and that things even out over the course of a season. Both believe in saying as little as possible to the media (and in being pretty pleasant in what they do say). It's not like we have a stat-nerd GM paired with Dusty Baker. These guys are on the same page. Maybe it's to their detriment in some cases -- maybe the lack of urgency rubbed off on the team to a degree. But that can be overcome -- just see reason number 3.

3. We've seen in this town that teams can overcome collapses without being torn apart. Look no further than last year's Bruins. In 2010, they choked away a seemingly locked-in playoff win against the Flyers. Many B's fans were calling for the heads of coach Claude Julien or captain Zdeno Chara, saying the team didn't play with enough fire, didn't have enough heart, or couldn't come through in the clutch. Sound familiar? The Bruins brought back the same principal members of the group (Julien, Chara, Lucic, Krejci, Bergeron, Recchi, etc.), maintained the same attitude, and got a vastly different result in 2011. There's no reason that can't happen with the Red Sox in 2012; in fact, I would call it likely that we would see a significantly better result from the same core next year.

I'm as disappointed in this team as anyone, and I'm frustrated with Theo and Tito. The Lackey contract was disgusting. The Crawford contract, one year in, is Zitotian. The farm system, post-Gonzalez trade, isn't terribly strong.

Meanwhile, Tito overworked his bullpen (though you could argue, which I would, that's the fault of the starting pitching), made panicky lineup decisions, and couldn't seem to get any kind of urgency in any players not named Dustin or Jacoby.

These were mistakes, but mistakes are made even by the best people and the best leaders. But the Red Sox would be making a bigger mistake to let one month overshadow an eight-year track record of success.

Sox September goes up in flames.

While I'm 100.9% sure this is video is fake, it's a perfect representation of the Sox September collapse.  Skip to the 30 second mark for when the fun begins.

Carl Crawford is the next J.D. Drew

We had many reasons to smile at the start of spring training, one being that this was J.D. Drew's final season in a Red Sox uniform.

The $72 million softy is gone, but his spirit lives on... in the form of Carl Crawford.

The similarities are obvious. Both players are grossly overpaid. Their arrivals had fans wondering, "Do we really need this guy?"

Drew refused to play thru any injury (hangnails included). And his stoic nature drove fans nuts. Crawford is a more emotional person. He's already apologized twice for his crappy performance.

Another huge difference between the two is that Crawford gives a damn about his reputation. And because of that, I don't think he'll survive here.

How hard will it be to move an aging outfielder with 6 years and $128 million left on his contract?

These are the people I hate

I saw a movie once* where a character's life was in a funk that they couldn't shake.  So their therapist recommended that they write down everything that was bothering them onto a piece of paper and then set the paper on fire. 

*OK, so it was Ben Affleck's classic Surviving Christmas.  Don't judge me and act like you didn't enjoy it just as much as I did!

The act of burning the paper didn't do anything for his psyche (if my memory serves me correctly, and the screen capture I found confirms, once Ben started the fire James Gandolfini thought he was an arsonist and hit him in the head with a shovel.  It was that kind of zany film).  But over the course of the film, Ben learned many lessons on life, love, and letting go.

I'm not yet at a stage where I can learn anything from the Sox collapse, and become a better person for it.  But I am at the point where I can make a list of things that I hate.  More specifically, the people that I hate and blame for my misery.

So here you go, in no particular order:

Robert F'n Andino
Carl Crawford
Tim Bogar
Curt Young
John Lackey
Evan Longoria
Alex Gonzalez
Daniel Bard
Dan Johnson (and his 4th frickin RBI)
Boone Logan
Jim Leyritz
Jonathan Papelbon
JD Drew
LeBron James
The musical group Hanson
MySpace
Smart cars
Etheopian Warlords

Whew.  I feel slightly better getting that off my chest.  Why don't you let us know who (or what) you hate in the comments.  Maybe we can turn this into a gigantic reenactment of the opening scenes of the classic comedy Surviving Christmas.

Because really, doesn't that sound more appealing than the alternative: wallowing in your sorrow, alone?

God wants me to call Gonzalez a gutless fraud

"I'm a firm believer that God has a plan and it wasn't in his plan for us to move forward. God didn't have it in the cards for us... For me, I'm a firm believer in God and God has a plan and it wasn't in God's plan for us to be in the playoffs... It''s always injuries. Any team that doesn't make the playoffs and is supposed to, it's because of injuries. Plain and simple... there's no such thing as a bad stretch of games. Every game is an individual game."

Adrian Gonzalez (courtesy Boston Dirt Dogs)

In all the years of epic Red Sox failures, has a player ever blamed god and injuries? And this isn't some hack role player. These are the words of the team's $154 million franchise player.

Man (the bleep) up.

(video courtesy Barstool Sports)

Your Morning Dump...where hindsight is always 20/20.

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here... highlighting the big storyline. Because there's nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

Good riddance. A season that started with the potential to be one of the greatest in Red Sox history instead ended in unbearably ignominious fashion last night.

Best Team Ever? Try Worst Chokers Ever. Or Most Unlikable Team Ever. Or Team That Once and for All Makes the Patriots No. 1 in Boston . . . Forever.

The Red Sox were euthanized by the Orioles last night when $142 million man Carl Crawford failed to catch a sinking liner in the ninth, allowing the O’s to walk off with a 4-3 victory.

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Rays — who are everything the Red Sox are not — pulled out a miraculous 8-7 victory over the Yankees after trailing 7-0 in the eighth, when Evan Longoria blasted a walkoff homer in the 12th.

The Red Sox had a chance to force a one-game playoff in Tampa today regardless of the Rays’ fireworks, but they managed to screw that up in appropriately pitiful fashion, blowing a 3-2 lead in the ninth, in part because shortstop Marco Scutaro inexplicably stopped running a la Luis Aparicio in 1972, and then with finality when closer Jonathan Papelbon couldn’t protect a 3-2 lead in the ninth.

As far as we know the Sox boarded a plane home for Boston, but slinking would have been a more acceptable method of transportation.

This one rivals 1978. It rivals 1986. It rivals anything they’ve done in their history, which we thought we’d rewritten, but we’re now reliving..

Herald:Sox relive history history by imploding

OK so last night... pretty bad. Haven't heard a bar in pure silence until last night. Pure shock over what occured. Pretty glad I didn't have to write the recap to last night's game which would've led to another expletive laden rant about what occured. But after chewing on it, I've come to the conclusion that it wasn't a choke or a collapse... it was the Baseball Gods.

You can't buy a championship... you build a team. It's what we poked fun at with the Yankees over the past decade...only the Sox try and do the same and got the same result. This team became what we've hated as a fan. We've become the Yankees. I'm sure it didn't help that the Sox we're trying to buy Bruce Chen to start a possible 163rd game. The Baseball Gods respond by making sure that they wouldn't even have the chance to have a play-in game. As everyone was saying after last night: "that's baseball".

But now that the worst case scenario has happened, everyone wants to make the claim that this collapse was the worst ever. It's not even the worst in the past decade. Sorry but David Ortiz is wrong by saying that this is worse than 2003. Not a chance. That still haunts me and many others. 1978 is still haunting the older generation because that team at least fought a little more.  Tomase couldn't be any more wrong. It's easy to say that this season is the worst because the wound is still fresh.

It's been a hell of a ride this season and it got cut way too short from what we imagined but it could be worse... we could just have sucked all year like the Cubs. At least we witnessed what this team can do when it's going...and it was pretty damn scary. Next year suddenly became a HELL of a lot more interesting.

Rest of the links: Globe:Dead Sox|Plenty of question marks for Epstein|Sox make unwanted history with historic collapse|Longoria finish a wild card comeback|Herald: Players back Tito|Wrong right off the bat| Crawford's fitting end|Devastating blow for Sox|Sox complete collapse|CSNNE:Epstein: No sugarcoating this|Sox problems deeper than the final|Papelbon rare blown save comes at worst time|WEEI: Why Francona was one who deserved (and deserves) better|Ortiz: Worse than 2003 season|Papelbon: One moment won't define my career|Taking stock of biggest collapse in September

Recap: Goodbye 2011 season

Well, that's all folks. The Sox had a 3-2 lead going into the ninth and Tito left it up to Papelbon. Long story short, Pap blew it. What a way to go out. Robert F'in Andino hit the game winning single to left that fell just short of Crawford's glove, to beat the Sox 4-3. Just minutes after that douche won an absolutely meaning-less game for the Orioles, Evan Longoria hit a game-winning 200ft. homer in the 12th to clinch the wild card. If you weren't aware of the score in that game, the Yankees were leading 7-0 through 7 innings.

A lot of questions surround this game and the team moving forward. What if David Ortiz didn't try to stretch that single into a double in the 7th and get thrown out? What if Scutaro wasn't send home in the 8th? Let me add, Scutaro was out by 10 steps. What if there was no rain delay? So many F'in questions and we'll get to the others later.

Dustin Pedroia tried to do it on his own, going 2-for-4 with 2 RBI, including a solo homer in the fifth. Jon Lester was as good as you could ask him to be on 3 days rest (6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 4 BB, 5 K). Aceves was a bit shaky, but pitched got out the 7th after hitting 2 batters. Daniel Bard pitched a perfect 8th and we know the rest.

The stats don't matter anymore because it's all over and this team may undergo a major front office face-lift. Now we can approach the other questions. Will Tito be the manager of this team next season? Will Theo still have a job? Will Curt Young still have a job? Will Papelbon get a contract to pitch here next season and beyond? Will Ortiz be our DH? There will be many more questions than that beginning tomorrow, after everyone wakes up from this hangover of the biggest collapse in history. Right now, no one is safe.

Check out the box score for the rest of the stats, if you give a damn.

Box Score

Jose Reyes allows us to fondly remember Teddy Ballgame

This here site is named after Ted Williams, you may have noticed, and for good reason: He's one of the all-time greats. Baseball-Reference's EloRater (constantly adjusting for what people think of ballplayers based on head-to-head votes) has him as the 2nd greatest of all-time behind Babe Ruth. His numbers are gaudy. My grandpa, a huge Yankees fan who saw Ruth, Gehrig, and Dimaggio in person, even admits that Ted was the best he's ever seen.

And here's another reason Ted is the man: He didn't beg out of games to preserve personal records like Jose Reyes did today.

Reyes, in the lead for the National League batting crown, delivered a bunt single to lead off the bottom of the first inning of the Mets' 3-0 win over the Reds. He then was pulled asNew York Mets manager Terry Collins adhered to the shortstop's request to be removed if he singled. Some fans booed after realizing Collins had sent Justin Turner to pinch-run for Reyes.

Reyes, bidding to become the first player in franchise history to win a batting title, finishes the season with 181 hits in 537 at-bats (.3371 average).

[...]

"I said, 'If I go 1-for-1, take me out of the game,'" Reyes said. "And I did that. If I went 0-for-1, maybe I'm still in the game until I get a hit."

If you're not familiar with the story about Williams, in his .406 season he entered the final day on .400 on the nose. I'll let that same ESPN story take it from there:

The decision to pull Reyes comes on the 70th anniversary of Ted Williams deciding to play in a doubleheader on the final day of the regular season in 1941 even though his .39955 average would have been rounded up to .400.

"If I'm going to be a .400 hitter, I'm going to be a .400 hitter all the way," Williams was quoted as saying at the time.

Williams went 6-for-8 in the twin bill to up his average to .406.

Atta boy, Teddy.

The sad thing is, this will probably end up helping Reyes make even more money this offseason. Unless Ryan Braun has a huge night and overtakes him, Reyes' agent will be able to use "batting title winner" in negotiations, and you just know some dumb GM will fall for it and fork over Crawford money. 

Let's just hope it's not Theo.

With the season on the line, Tito hands the ball to.... Bruce Chen?!?

(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

In the 'You Can't Make This Stuff Up' department, Fox Sport's Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Sox are trying to get their grimy little paws on Bruce Chen to pitch the potential tie-breaker game against the Rays.  In exchange for Chen, it's assumed the Sox will simply have to part with cash.

Supposedly, the Sox are targeting Chen because Tampa struggles against lefties.  And with Lester on the mound tonight, we don't have any other lefties to throw at them. 

Also, Tampa destroyed our pitching this month (as did everyone else), but have yet to face Chen all season.  Using our baseball skills have failed us thus far, so maybe we can beat them using the element of surprise? 

Last season, Chen threw 9 innings against the Rays over two games, holding them to 3 hits, 0 runs while striking out 7 batters.  If you're looking for any feather to stick in your cap, I guess this is it.

But that's what our $160,000,000 team has come down to: Finding someone, anyone, outside our organization to win us the most important game of the season. 

It's the perfect way to complete the collapse.  One final 'F You!' to Sox fans.

Your Morning Dump... Where Aceves and Lavarnway keep us alive

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here... highlighting the big storyline.  Because there's nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

For the last few weeks, as the Red Sox starting rotation has faltered, Terry Francona has resisted inserting Alfreo Aceves into the rotation, reasoning that the swingman is more valuable pitching multiple times out of the bullpen each week rather than just one spot start every five games.
  
Tuesday night, Aceves helped prove Francona's point.
  
With starter Erik Bedard lifted after just 3 1/3 innings, Aceves was brought into the game in the fourth and took the Sox though the seventh, contributing 3 2/3 innings of one-run ball on three hits.
  
He threw 36 pitches -- 27 for strikes -- and worked tirelessly, getting the Sox from Bedard to Daniel Bard, their eighth-inning man.
  
"He's done it time and time again," said an appreciative Francona. "He's so valuable doing what he's doing."  

"We thought about leaving him in and [finishing] it out," said Francona, "but because he's so resilient, we'll probably have him [available] Wednesday. And chances are, we'll probably need him."
  
Aceves guessed that he would be available, too.
  
"If I wake up tomorrow," he said with a smile, "I'm good [to go]."

CSNNE - Aceves continues to prove worth out of pen

On a pitching staff with Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Daniel Bard and Jonathan Papelbon, who would have ever thought that Alfredo Aceves would be our most valuable arm?  The simple fact is that the Boston Red Sox would not be in the playoff hunt if it wasn't for his versatility and ability to succeed in any role, at any time. 

Let's look at the state lines of 4 Sox pitchers this month:

23 IP |  26 K  |  7 BB  |  5 HR  |  5.48 ERA  |  .267 BAA
25.2 IP  |  27 K  |  12 BB  |  2 HR  |  5.96 ERA  |  .298 BAA
24 IP  |  19 K  |  10 BB  |  2 HR  |  1.88 ERA  |  .217 BAA
23.2 IP  |  14 K  |  12 BB  |  1 HR  |  9.13 ERA  |  .353 BAA

Can you figure out which numbers belong to which pitcher?

First is Beckett, then Lester.  The fourth is Lackey (the 9+ ERA should have given that one away).  And the 3rd is Aceves.  Obviously the best line would belong to the guy I just called the pitching staff's MVP, so hopefully you guessed that one correctly.

All have gotten approximately the same mount of work in September (mostly due to Lackey, Lester and Beckett's inability to get out of the 3rd inning).  But Aceves is the only pitcher who's not just playing good, but is actually shutting batters down.  

I get the argument to put him in the rotation, but if Tito did do that, who's left to clean up the messes left by all the other starters?  Is there a single arm in the bullpen that we can trust right now that's not attached to a man named Alfredo or Papelbon?  On a related note: could you imagine the hilarity of Tito calling in Papelbon to pitch in the 4th?   I'd love to see it happen once just for kicks.

If we were to re-cast Pulp Fiction using the 2011 Boston Red Sox, the role of 'The Wolf' has to go to Alfredo Aceves.  But, then, who does Lackey play?

On Page 2, Lavarnway gets some well-deserved love