****NOTE: BECAUSE OF A WEBSITE ADMIN ERROR, THIS STORY WAS INITIALLY CREDITED TO BETHANY FLANNERY. IT IS ACTUALLY WRITTEN BY MIKE TARDIFF. COMMENTS DIRECTED AT BETHANY, HOWEVER INTERESTING THEY MAY BE, ARE INAPPROPRIATE****
With New England on top of the sports world, sometimes I have to find something negative to opine about, lest I become complacent and ungrateful for all of the greatness.
Very seldom does Theo Epstein bite the proverbial big one, but since the Twins’ pitcher Johan Santana is now headed to the Mets, it seems as though he finally has.
With the Red Sox coming off their second World Series title in four years, the front office in Boston had their chance to put their foot on the throat of the Yankees by acquiring the best left-handed pitcher in baseball.
But they didn’t.
And with their reluctance to deal two very solid prospects for a Hall of Fame-track southpaw, the Sox kissed their chance at an almost certain dynasty good-bye.
Don’t get me wrong, Jon Lester and Jacoby Ellsbury are great young ballplayers, who seem to be perfect fits in New England: Ellsbury with his fierceness on the base paths and Lester through his resiliency and toughness.
But the fact of the matter is, however, that had Epstein and his cohorts of Moneyball junkies pulled the trigger to get Santana to Boston, the Sox would have enjoyed the luxury of having the best left and right- handed pitchers with an impressive array of arms to follow.
And if you couple low ERA’s, high strikeout numbers and economical pitching performances with a high octane, Papi-centered offense, you’ve got possibly the greatest baseball team ever assembled.
That’s not the case when you have a guy with awesome speed and average defensive capabilities (Coco Crisp is a better centerfielder than Ellsbury on any day ending in “y”) and a left-handed pitcher who, no matter how good his stuff is, can’t manage to keep his pitch counts from rising to triple digits early in games.
The only consolation in the whole matter is that the Yankees weren’t able to get him.
And that would be fine, if the Sox only had to worry about winning the American League-but they don’t.
This trade makes the Mets a much stronger club. They were the best team in the National League for large portions of last season, and now they could, even more so than the Yankees, pose a viable threat to the Red Sox’ chances to repeat as World Champions.
Santana could have been the Randy Moss of next year’s Sox club, and while it’s unlikely that they could run the table and go 162-0, they definitely could have made a bid at the record of 116 for a single season.
And having the Majors’ leader in ERA, strikeouts and wins over the last five years would have made any playoff series an uphill battle for opponents with a Santana-Beckett one-two punch.
Repeating as World Champions is a tall task for any franchise, but the Red Sox made things a lot harder on themselves by letting Santana and his golden arm slip through the cracks.
****NOTE: BECUASE OF A WEBSITE ADMIN ERROR, THIS STORY WAS INITIALLY CREDITED TO BETHANY FLANNERY. IT IS ACTUALLY WRITTEN BY MIKE TARDIFF. COMMENTS DIRECTED AT BETHANY, HOWEVER INTERESTING THEY MAY BE, ARE INAPPROPRIATE****