Red Sox Should Be Concerned Heading Into Playoffs

• Indians 4-Red Sox 3:

The playoff matchups in the American League are pretty much set and the Red Sox, despite their

successful history against the Angels, have reason to be concerned this year. The Angels are on a mission this season and two of the Red Sox main strengths as they've won their championships----starting pitching and clutch power hitting in the middle of the lineup----are question marks as they prepare for a trip to Anaheim.
Something clicks in Josh Beckett's brain at playoff time, so they're not going to have to worry about him; but Daisuke Matsuzaka is very likely going to have trouble with the Angels patient hitters as they run up his pitch count and gladly accept his propensity to walk people. Jon Lester's been excellent this year and knuckleballers like Tim Wakefield are always hit or miss.
The bigger problem is going to be the lineup. Jason Bay has been everything the Red Sox expected when they traded Manny Ramirez away; that being said, Jason Bay is not Manny and has never once played in a big game on the national stage in his entire career. The Angels are not going to let David Ortiz beat them and are going to force Bay to deliver in the clutch as Manny did. Even with the MVP-quality years being had by Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia, they're not additives to what was already a championship recipe;

they're actually picking up for the departed Manny; the injury-diminished Ortiz; the aging Jason Varitek; and the injured J.D. Drew.
No matter what Bay's stats look like and how well he's replaced Manny on paper and especially in the clubhouse, he's not Manny and he's not someone that the Angels are going to sit there and say, "we have to stop this guy if we're gonna win"; that could end up being a miscalculation, but it's a strategy not to allow Ortiz to beat them and to make Bay come through; if he does, you tip your hat to him. The Angels were never intimidated by the Red Sox just as they were never intimidated by the Yankees; the reason the Red Sox beat them so consistently was that the Red Sox weren't a favorable matchup for the Angels and the Yankees were; now that's changed and the Red Sox are in for a rough time heading to Anaheim unless Bay can make up for Manny's absence when it really counts, and that's a big question mark.

• Diamondbacks 4-Cardinals 2; Brandon Webb saves his second Cy Young Award:

I think it's safe to say that in addition to keeping his team alive in the playoff race, Brandon

Webb's last two starts have saved his 2008 Cy Young Award. If the situation calls for it, he may even do more than that; if the Diamondbacks see an opening to catch the Dodgers on Thursday, there's no way Doug Davis is going to start that game and Dan Haren and Webb will be moved up to start on short rest. If they're alive going into the weekend against Colorado and the Giants see the opportunity to knock out or severely damage the playoff chances of their archenemy Dodgers, the Diamondbacks could still have a chance.

• The trades you don't make are often the best ones:

Ervin Santana winning his 16th game last night brought back memories of spring training

when the offensively challenged Angels were discussing a trade that would've sent Santana to the White Sox for Paul Konerko. Think about the dominoes that would've fallen had that deal taken place. Konerko has picked up his game lately, but he was so awful early in the season that he was benched; Santana jumped out of the chute for the Angels and (along with Joe Saunders) took over as the team's ace to counteract the absence of John Lackey and get the team off to a good start. Then there likely wouldn't have been a deal for Mark Teixeira and Teixeira may have ended up with the Diamondbacks because they were the other team with whom the Braves were having serious discussions. What would that have done to the NL West?
Then there were the rampant rumors of Brian Roberts being sent to the Cubs. With the addition of Kosuke Fukudome, there probably wouldn't have been room to keep Roberts, Fukudome and Mark DeRosa and DeRosa might've been traded; DeRosa has never been the power hitter he's proven himself to be this year (it's likely his career year), and the Cubs have

discovered that Fukudome may be just an average player, and not what they were expecting; he's lost his starting job to boot. Looking at the numbers, DeRosa has had almost identical numbers to Roberts except with more power and a ton of clutch hits. How many teams would've had interest in DeRosa, a player who can play every position competently except catcher?
These are just two examples of rumored moves that didn't happen and would've made things worse for their team if they had happened. It's easy to look at trades that were made and judge them in the long and short term, but sometimes more can be learned from looking at trades that were said to be "near completion", but never came to pass for one reason or another and ended up working out far better than any completed deal could have.

To The Left Is The Abyss; To The Right Is The Promised Land

On May 31st, I wrote a blog comparing the Tampa Bay Rays to two other teams that had been woeful for what seemed like an eternity and suddenly parlayed a series of smart veteran

acquisitions along with the development of the high draft picks (one of the few perks of being so consistently bad) into an unexpected leap into contention----Comparing The Rays To Other Teams That Came From Nowhere. Those teams----the 1984 Mets and 1991 Braves----eventually fell short in their first year of realistic contention. The Mets faded out against a hot, veteran team in the Chicago Cubs; the Braves made it all the way to the World Series before losing to the Minnesota Twins. Now that the Rays have hit the skids heading into the All Star break, there's another way this could go for them and that is what happened to the 2001 Minnesota Twins.
Like the Rays, the Twins had been a franchise in constant rebuilding mode. With little money available to sign free agents, the organization instead relied on the coordination of

instruction instilled from GMs Andy MacPhail and Terry Ryan to manager Tom Kelly and permeating the entire system from top-to-bottom to develop young players. The team hadn't had a winning season since 1992 and annually finished either fourth or fifth in their division. When talk of contraction was at its apex, it was the Twins and the Expos that were the two teams most often discussed as being eliminated based on their apparent haplessness. Then something strange happened: in 2001 the Twins began winning.
All of the young players they'd developed or acquired began performing in the big leagues. With an average age of 27, those young players----A.J. Pierzynski, Cristian Guzman, Jacque Jones, Torii Hunter, David Ortiz (yes, that Big Papi before he became Big Papi), Johan Santana and J.C. Romero----led the Twins to an uprising that shocked the baseball world and vaulted them into

first place with a 56-32 record and a five game lead in their division over the powerhouse Cleveland Indians. Instead of a team that was forever being raided for their high-priced veteran stars like Chuck Knoblauch, the Twins were seen to be a team that was going to add veteran players and take their shot to win when they had the chance. Then, despite a veteran manager who'd won two World Series and had schooled his players in the correct way to play the game, the Twins slowly started falling apart. As attention to the young, unknown and unexpected contender grew, the youngsters, especially closer LaTroy Hawkins, wilted under the pressure.
As the slump began to build momentum, all of the positive attention that the Twins received for their sudden improvement turned into bewilderment of how far and how fast they'd fallen. Even with all of their experience, Kelly and his third base coach Ron Gardenhire were unable to stop the Twins from falling out of first place and from a high of 24 games over .500 on July 12th, to a record of 65-61 and 5 1/2 games out of first place by August 21st. The Twins eventually righted their ship enough to end the season with a record of 85-77, which would have been seen as an amazing jump from their previous years of 1993-2000 when they averaged 66 wins a year, but was still a disappointment considering how they looked like they were going to confound the experts with an unexpected playoff berth.
There are similarities with the Rays to both situations----that of the Mets and Braves and

that of the Twins. After years of justified ridicule, the Rays have been garnering positive attention that their young players and management have never experienced. Like the Twins of 2001, the Rays are being chased by two veteran, pennant race-tested teams who have the cash and prospects to make drastic improvements at mid-season. Like the Twins, the Rays have hit a slump at an inopportune time. Even with all of their veteran leadership, the Rays management is nowhere near as competent as that of the Twins; there's a potential for panic in Tampa that could rapidly unravel all the good work they've done.
On the bright side for the Twins, the 2001 season was a portent of the future as the team turned that experience into four division titles in five years and consistent contention despite payroll constraints. Kelly retired to the Twins front office after that season because his work was done; he'd turned the Twins youngsters into a well-schooled unit that won games not only because they were talented, but because they played the game correctly as well. (It's amazing how many games can be won by hitting cut-off men, taking the extra base, etc.) Gardenhire took over and has been one of the most unsung top managers in baseball.
The Rays are at the same crossroads that the Twins were; will they snap out of it and

become the 1991 Braves? Or will they collapse under the pressure and have to take solace in their improvement from laughingstock to a team on the rise and look toward the future with hope? The road is in front of them; which will it be?