So how dumb does Grady Little look now?
And how about that Nomar Garciaparra trade? Are the Red Sox happy that they traded their franchise icon–because he was a prospective free agent–for another shortstop who will soon leave via free agency and a backup first baseman who is unhappy with his role?
Not that the Cubs are looking so great for their end of that trade either. But if Garciaparra leaves as a free agent, and there’s probably a 60 percent chance he will, at least they’ll still have Matt Murton, an All-Star outfielder in the Florida State League whom the Red Sox tossed into the deal.
With Orlando Cabrera headed toward free agency, Boston might have only Doug Mientkiewicz to show for the July 31 deal that ended the run of one of its most popular players since Carl Yastrzemski. At 30, Mientkiewicz has been stuck on the bench in the one-sided American League Championship Series.
This is progress?
Of course, neither the Red Sox’s Theo Epstein nor Cubs general manager Jim Hendry was thinking about 2005 and beyond when they orchestrated the four-team deal at the trading deadline. These moves were made with the World Series in mind.
Epstein and other members of Boston’s new-age front office felt great when, after lugging along at 41-40 May-July, they went 42-18 after dumping Garciaparra, whose balky Achilles’ tendon was apparently a bigger concern than the need for pitching depth.
Scouts and other baseball wise men talked about how much better the Sox had become in the field, and no doubt they were.
But in a winnable game, unlike Saturday’s 19-8 embarrassment, the improved glovework didn’t make a difference in the sixth inning Sunday.
New York turned a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 lead by scoring on Hideki Matsui’s triple (his record eighth extra-base hit in the series), two walks, a wild pitch and three infield singles, two of which could have been turned into outs.
Fixated only on cutting down Matsui at home plate, Cabrera called third baseman Bill Mueller off a Bernie Williams chopper and then whiffed his try at a bare-handed grab.
Second baseman Mark Bellhorn had no shot to get Ruben Sierra after going into the hole to backhand his grounder but had a play on a Tony Clark roller to his left. He stopped the ball but couldn’t get a grip to make a throw.
Somewhere, you’d have to imagine Garciaparra was smiling.
Looking back on the wreckage caused by the Yankees, how much did the remodeling project help the Red Sox?
Compared to the need for another starting pitcher, improved fielding and speed–also added by reserve center fielder Dave Roberts, who was acquired from Los Angeles–seems like fine-tuning.
Epstein tried to pry Matt Clement from the Cubs but couldn’t. He should have kept trying to shore up the rotation behind Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez but seemed to get sidetracked by the whole Garciaparra issue.
With an ankle injury limiting Schilling to three innings against the Yankees, the Red Sox didn’t have enough starting pitching to get past the AL semifinals.
Derek Lowe, initially dropped from the rotation, worked 5 1/3 decent innings in Sunday’s Game 4. But even after he held New York to three runs, the Boston rotation had allowed 18 runs in 16 1/3 innings.
Despite the surprising sweep of Anaheim in the first round, the troubles didn’t come out of the blue. Consider these September ERAs: Pedro Martinez, 4.95; Lowe, 6.52, and Tim Wakefield, 8.20.
Manager Terry Francona apparently wasn’t the answer. He is solid in the dugout, but so was Little.
If you believe in karma, you shouldn’t have been surprised by this showing against the Yankees.
It seems somehow fated since Game 7 of their classic ALCS a year ago, when Little was left twisting in the wind after Martinez could not a protect a lead.
Afterward, it seemed that Little may have been the only person in New England who felt more comfortable with Martinez protecting a 5-2 lead in the eighth than turning it over to a bullpen that had been a season-long problem. Everyone else suddenly knew that the Red Sox would have gone to the World Series if only Little had called in Mike Timlin or Alan Embree.
Never mind that Little had handled a complicated team brilliantly in September, running both games and the clubhouse well to get his team into the playoffs. All anyone seemed to care was that a three-run lead had turned into an 11-inning loss in Game 7 and that the 85th consecutive year had passed without the Red Sox winning a series.
Someone had to pay, and Little was the one.
