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2008 Red Sox vs. 2001 Red Sox?

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It is very interesting to be considering the possibility of a Los Angeles Dodgers – Boston Red Sox World Series.  I have been wondering something, and today I found out it is true:

The Los Angeles Dodgers right now look more like the 2001 Boston Red Sox than the Boston Red Sox do.

Check out the rosters, and you’ll see that while the current Dodgers have 3 players from the 2001 Red Sox (Derek Lowe, Nomar Garciaparra, and Manny Ramirez), the current Red Sox have only 2 (Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield).

What’s extra interesting is that these three Dodgers were 3 of the superstars on that Red Sox team – the kind of guys that you’d see on the cover of the program guide.

What’ll happen if these Dodgers show up in Fenway Park for Game 3 of the World Series?  I expect we’ll hear applause for Garciaparra, and if there’s an appropriate moment, for Lowe; but expect to hear Manny booed as loudly as ever we’ve heard a player booed in Boston.

As for who wins, I hope the Red Sox would demolish the Dodgers if the matchup comes to pass.  Vindication that would be!  And validation for the decision to ditch Manny.

The one thing to make me worry is that Joe Torre would be in the opposing dugout.  If there’s one man who could best coach a National League team on How To Beat The Boston Red Sox, I’m thinking Joe Torre’s gotta be that guy.

But we’re not there yet.  We must wait and watch …

(By the way, though I’d root for a Sox sweep of the Dodgers in the World Series this year, I’d be hoping for a 7 game Sox-Rays ALCS.  The Rays have been fun to watch this year, and I’d like to see them get something for all the effort they’ve made.)

Jacoby Ellsbury, Mr. September

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This year, until recently, Red Sox fans have been a bit let down by the performance of Jacoby Ellsbury, who gave the Red Sox such a huge boost in September and October of last year.  He started the year pretty well, but didn’t produce offensively through the middle of the season with anywhere near what we knew to be his potential.

September has been a different story this year.  He finished out the month of September with an 18-game hitting streak.  It was his best month overall of the year.  He hit .340 in September – and that’s his only month hitting above .300 this year.  His 20 runs are about equal to his totals in each of the first two months of this year.

And all of this sounds strangely familar.

Why?  Last year, as a late-season callup, Jacoby had an outstanding September as well, actually performing better at the major league level than he had been to that point in the year in the minors.  He carried that consistently high level of performance through October, and the World Series, right up to the final victorious game.  It seemed that in every game, he did something to help the team win.

So we seem to have a pattern emerging here.  It’s quite a common thing for players to have their “time of year”.  Johan Santana, for example, though good before the All-Star break, each year is close to unbeatable in the second half of the season.  So I don’t think it’s a stretch, based on just the last two seasons of performance, to give Jacoby Ellsbury the moniker “Mr. September”.

Though, as a Red Sox fan, I can hope that he can start to find that hot streak a little earlier in the season, and still keep it through October.  🙂

Does 9=8 or does 9=9?

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The Rays manager gave them a mantra at the start of the season: 9=8.  The explanation:  9 guys playing to their potential as a team means becoming one of the 8 teams to make the playoffs.  Also, get 9 more wins from the offense, 9 more wins from the defense, and 9 more wins from the pitching, and that’ll give them 93 wins this season, which should be enough to make it into the playoffs.

Well they have achieved that, and now have exceeded it.  They have 95 wins with 5 games left to play, and they keep on winning.  Which brings me to the question:  will they artfully demonstrate their mantra, 9=8, by finishing with 98 wins?  Will they finish with 99 wins, thus seeming to demonstrate that no, math is math, and 9 always does and always will equal 9 and only 9?

Well, let’s see.  They have 8 road games in 7 days to finish the season, and have won the first 3.  The remaining 5 are against two of the three coldest and worst teams in the American League, the Orioles and the Tigers.  They are motivated to keep winning to attempt to both catch the Angels for the best record in  the American League, and stay ahead of the Red Sox for the division title.  The only mitigating factors are that those “chasing” motivations may be gone by the last couple of games, at which point they’ll want to rest players for the playoffs, and also they’re playing on the road, where their record isn’t nearly as good.

I think they’ll finish with one of these, 98 or 99 wins, but it is hard to decide which.  Time to decide.

I like too much the poetry of 98 to mirror 9=8.  I predict the Rays will finish with a 98 and 64 record.

Red Sox fan is glad the Yankees won tonight

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You wouldn’t think it.

Red Sox fans are not supposed to root for the Yankees.  Ever.  Except maybe, when the Yankees are playing a team the Red Sox need to beat.  That was not the case tonight.

In fact, a Yankees loss tonight would have put the Red Sox into the playoffs.  No way I, a Red Sox fan and lifelong Yankee hater, should be rooting for the Yanks.  And yet, I was watching tonight, rooting for the Yankees to beat the Baltimore Orioles.

What gives?

Tonight, the Yankees played their last game in Yankee Stadium.  Next year they move into a new stadium, and the current Yankee Stadium, with all its great baseball history, will be gone.  It was a night for baseball fans to reminisce.  It was a night to celebrate all the greats who played there, all the great moments that occurred there, and perhaps create a few new ones.

It was NOT a night for the Yankees to eliminate themselves from playoff contention by losing.

Even though everyone knows the Yankees will not make it to the playoffs this year (the odds of all the remaining necessary games going their way are about 4 in a million), the fact that they leave their stadium as a team officially still in the hunt is only right.  A loss tonight would have meant they were out of playoff contention for the first time in 13 years.  What a damper that disappointment would have put on a night that should be about positive memories.  Leave that hard truth for another day.  Let it happen with a Red Sox win tomorrow.

Farewells are bittersweet enough.  I will get satisfaction enough tomorrow in seeing the Yankees not make the playoffs.  Let’s not have the Yankees’ worst on-field disappointment in 13 years mar a day of celebration.