Everyone was all heated and flustered when Mark The Shark and his agent Slick Scott played us like Kenny G plays the saxaphone. But now we've had some time to cool down, I have some thoughts on the direction Theo is going. The Sox have only given out one contract over 40 million dollars, JD Drew, since Theo has been here. He knows free agency is trouble. He knows its where you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on an 8 year contract for a player that has about 1 year left in his prime. He knows that player cannot outperform that contract, only live up to most of it if you are extremely lucky. And he also knows that money is guaranteed. Teixeira was the one Theo was willing to pay for though. When we got outbid I think it only kicked Theo back into high gear. Build the young core and focus on player development.
Pedroia and Youkilis are now extended for very reasonable money. Teixeira makes more than both of them combined and they both finished ahead of him in the MVP race. Pedroia won the damn thing and Youk had a higher slugging percentage. Next I think you see Theo throw Jay Bay in that mix and try to get him extended for reasonable money. If you go look at Bay's career numbers you'll notice a couple things. First, hes scary consistent outside of 2007 where he was horrendous (knee injury). Right back to his career avg's last year. And his 162 game averages are just barely behind Teixeira's. If you take out the 2007 fluke year, they would be dead on. Theo is building a strong core with these three and committing probably 50m less than NY gave to Teixeira.
Bay 162 gm avg - 31 HR / .282 avg / .375 obp / .516 slg / 131 ops+
Tex 162 gm avg - 36 HR / .290 avg / .378 obp / .541 slg / 134 ops+
Its not just about names. People wanted Michael Young bad last week without realizing that he put up an Ellsbury stat line last year and had the same OPS as Lowrie. The thing is Lowrie and Ellsbury are on the upswing and Young is on the down. The homegrown talent where you can control these young players for short money is so important. These are the guys that outperform their contracts. Lowrie, Ellsbury, Buchholz, Masterson, Lester, Pedroia, Youk, Del Carmen. Thats how you overcome NY's payroll advantage. To be fair, Cashman has realized this to some extent and the Yankees have come a long way in the past 4 or 5 years, but they are still old and rich for the most part.
The Rays have finally put together a good team that can ball with the big boys. They finally figured out the model. The thing thats a little different with true small market teams like them is that they need to build through the draft. They finish at the end of the standings for a few years and get top picks in the draft (Crawford, Upton, Delmon, Price, Longoria) and they make the most of those. Eventually they have a period like they do right now where a bunch of blue chippers are on the field for them on the cheap. Now the key with them, and any well managed small market team is you need to pick and choose the players you can extend because it wont be many, and when its time for those studs to hit free agency and become Yankees, you get rewarded with draft picks for losing type A free agents. Now you are back where you started, trying to hit in the draft. So it can be done. Its not easy, but with good drafting and smart management, small market teams can compete.
Back to the Sox though. We were 4th in the lg in runs scored last year but we definitely could use another bat though right? Well since there isn't anything on the market what did Theo do? He turned us into the Angels of a few years ago. We just loaded up on incentive laden pitching deals to make sure we can stand a couple injuries to the starters. And he turned our bullpen into the filthiest in the majors. Ramon Ramirez, Saito, Papelbon? Thats unfair. Then imagine if Oki has a big year? Thats three guys that could really close and maybe four. We haven't even talked about MDC and Masterson. Plus if Buccholz broke out this year, Penny was back, and Smoltz got healthy we won't know what to do with all these arms. They'll get flipped into that big bat we wanted no problem. Theo recognized that he could stock up on arms for cheap and use them for chips later.
We still have money we could spend too. Hopefully that is paying whatever slugger we move some pitching for down the stretch run. JD Drew is our highest paid player right now. The Sox don't have a 20 million dollar player on the roster. The Yanks have four of them in the infield when CC is pitching and a 13m catcher. The Sox have a ton of chips right now, we just need to let Theo figure out how to allocate the resources. "The allocation of resources", you know what thats the definition of? Economics. Coincidentally Theo's major at Yale. Sox will be alright this year.
Get me Jerry Remy in my life every night at 705.
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