Manny more returns

The Hunt for Red Soxtober is over.

They were sunk by the Rays. Not the Yankees. Not the Angels. The no-longer-Devil Rays.

Now, I mentioned in my previous post that I’d start off with more about Manny. I am going to do that, but I am not going to suggest that the Sox would have won if they still had Manny. They wouldn’t have won. The Rays had their number this year and that little bit of extra magic in games 5 and 6 just prolonged the inevitable, right? That’s what the media want you to believe, but I am getting ahead of myself. Back to Manny.

I have been sitting on this second Manny follow-up post for more than a week. As I also mentioned previously, work was in the way again and I just postponed. Is this still relevant today? I don’t know, but maybe you could still read it.

Anyway, it started with Tim McCarver’s ignorance, which I had decided to ignore commenting on until I read the Facts About Manny Ramirez piece on the Baseball Prospectus, which I’d never normally read (and I forget how I got there).

Suggest you read it because it points out that the man played his ass off and the stats back it up. Hey, maybe you won’t, so just read this part:

In July, when Ramirez was supposedly “refusing to play,” the Red Sox played 24 games. Ramirez played in 22 of them. This was tied for fourth on the team with J.D. Drew and Jacoby Ellsbury. He was sixth on the team in plate appearances (AB+BB) in July. Not quite Lou Gehrig’s numbers, but he helped out a bit more than David Ortiz (six games), and was in the lineup somewhat more often than peers such as Moises Alou (one game). Oh, he didn’t get three days off in the middle of the month-Ramirez played in the All-Star Game.

When he played, Ramirez killed the league. He hit .347/.473/.587 in July. His OBP led the team, and his SLG led all Red Sox with at least 25 AB. The Sox, somewhat famously, went 11-13 in July. Lots of people want you to believe that was because Manny Ramirez is a bad guy. I’ll throw out the wildly implausible idea that the Sox went 11-13 because Ortiz played in six games and because veterans Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek has sub-600 OPSs for the month.

Four days before he was traded, Manny Ramirez just about single-handedly saved the Red Sox from getting swept by the Yankees, with doubles in the first and third innings that helped the Sox get out to a 5-0 lead in a game they had to win to stay ahead of the Yankees in the wild-card race.

If all of the above is “refusing to play,” I would sincerely like to see what “trying” looks like. It would be entertaining to see a player post a .600 OBP or .800 SLG.

Therefore, that leaves people to bitch about his behavior in the clubhouse. If that’s the case, I point back at Simmons’ piece:

We kept hearing how Manny quit on the Red Sox even if his July numbers didn’t reflect it: 75 at-bats, 26 hits, four homers, 16 RBI, a .473 on-base percentage and a 1.060 OPS. Only NESN’s Remy handled the situation diplomatically, defending Manny’s tenure in Boston while expressing the appropriate amount of outrage at his recent behavior. Remy said he believed the Manny soap opera had affected the clubhouse and needed to be resolved. You know, because these guys were tired of being distracted from more important things, like playing poker, texting their friends or having 15-minute conversations centered around topics like “Does my bat feel heavy?” or “If it burns when I pee, that’s bad, right?”

I left the part in about the stats because it matches the other piece, but I think it all came down to the clubhouse, which is crap. I’m sure all of us have people in our office that we can’t stand, but have to deal with on a daily basis too, but we can’t petition to have them traded because they are disruptive. You suck it up and deal with it. You ignore them.

The boys Manny left behind voted to pay Manny two-thirds’ playoff share. I guess they could have been petty about it and only voted him a half playoff share, you know… because he didn’t really play the whole time he was there, right? But they paid him his due for the two thirds of the season he was in Boston.

I don’t know. The whole thing still makes me feel sick. Yeah, Jay Bay had a great playoff run for us and I think so would have Manny had the Sox just told him they wouldn’t pick up his options. Gots to point to Simmons again, this time his Game 5 writeup:

Jason Bay came up to lead the bottom of the eighth. I like Bay. He has been very good. But if you honestly think I wasn’t swearing at Manny Ramirez and Scott Boras at that moment, you don’t know me well enough. Manny would have had Fenway swaying like a bridge during a hurricane. Manny would have had the Rays’ fans quaking in their boots. Manny absolutely, positively, unquestionably would have gotten on base. (Of course, Manny would have hit fourth, not fifth, but whatever. I can’t look at Bay and not think of Manny. At least not yet. Bay is like the dutiful, pretty second wife who does everything right … and yet, I can’t stop thinking about the soul-wrenching tramp who married me first and broke my heart. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it’s going to take some time. The fact that Manny finished the 2008 playoffs with an OPS that was almost as high as my freshman GPA in college didn’t help.) And if Bay failed to get on base, I would have punched some things and complained about Manny again.

What was obvious to me as the playoffs, and really the post trade deadline season, was that these Sox didn’t have that extra something they have had in the past. The swagger was gone. Didn’t seem to matter if they didn’t win a game or two, they’d get the next one. Seemed to make a big difference when the Rays were killing them to end the season, but whatevs, they still made the playoffs, right?

Of course they did. They held off the slightly resurgent Yankees, thanks in part to Manny, to take that Wild Card. They then taught the Angels that you can be the best team in baseball and still lose to a team that can’t carry your jock in a five game series. After that, their new nemesis, the Rays. I know, I was there at Game 4, which is where I will pick this back up next time.

Yup, I am splitting this post up because it is getting way too long and I am way too tired. I need to go to sleep. And yes, it isn’t even midnight yet.