Might As Well Fold the Tent

“We should probably just pack up the season and call it a year, huh. Half-game back, might as well fold the tent.” – Jason Bay after Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the Rangers.

The team doesn’t seem all that miffed at this point but The Nation certainly seems to have a different thought level but who is right? And what in the world seems to be the problem?

Everything in this lineup makes sense for the most part but finding out where to put it and when is the problem. We have a starting rotation that would get a “F” on durability since we have had 3 out of the 5 rotation positions playing musical chairs since June. Our fielding positions have been playing leapfrog into each others positions with 1B playing 3B, 1B playing LF, and the poor team down in Pawtuckett can’t get a win because every viable candidate for them has been brought up to the big league club.

We have a DH who seems to have too much on his mind to stay consistant (going 4 for 43 before his 2 run homer on Friday then hitting another HR on Sunday), we have the leader of the team and catcher who is amazing behind the plate but lacking very much so beside it while we have another catcher who is not too shabby behind it and much better beside it. Our aging 3B keeps getting sat for the younger guns during periods that he is the hottest bat in the dugout. We went out of our way to pick up a SS who hits .210 because he plays better defense than the current SS who is hitting .233.

There’s a lot going right on this team and there is a lot going wrong. Obviously, being .5 games back in the AL Wild Card to the Texas Rangers (who? yea, exactly) is a large part of what is going wrong.

So what can we do to right this ship?

Some consistency in the lineup would be nice. We haven’t had an injury plagued season, it’s just been a lot of covering up the droughts. Management seems very worried this season about filling a hole where there was once a player able to produce. If a guy is going through a drought, Tito Francona used to (and every other manager in baseball still does) allow them to “hit their way out of it”. I swear, Tito would say that at least once a week on WEEI in past years but the pressure on this season has brought a new strategy. This is baseball, you don’t take a cool bat and sit it out, you let him hit it out unless you don’t plan on him being in that position as your starter anymore. The only person they have done this with has been David Ortiz and he has refused to come back in a manner that lasts for more than a week. I do agree with putting a time limit on this “let him hit it out” technique, and Papi has definately over-stayed that.

The starting rotation needs to be a place for 5 guys. Look at every other team in the league. No other team has rotated starters like the Red Sox this year. Look at the Philadelphia Phillies, a team pushing for probably a second straight visit to the World Series (as long as the Dodgers don’t disagree). They have had Cole Hamels as their Ace ALL SEASON, the kid is 7-7 with a 4.69 ERA. Earlier in the season, his ERA was up over 8 and he is still the Ace and the team still wins games.

Bringing consistency to the starting rotation gives players an ease to the mind that every 5th day, they will have this guy on the mound, this catcher will catch him, and this will be our defensive strategy. When you go through 10 different starting pitchers in a 2 month period, serious lack of consistency grabs hold of everything a baseball player knows and depends on and shakes up the team and their game.

The return of Tim Wakefield should be a major boost to the team (as long as he stays healthy). The team knows what they get with him and thats a day that they know Victor will catch and Wake will throw and there will be a lot of flyball outs and the game will be under 3 hours. BOOM! There it is. Consistency. He isn’t even in the rotation and I just described to you what will happen when he pitches 90% of the time. Beckett and Lester, you’ll get 8-10 Ks out of them, low scoring until they come out in the 7th or 8th and lots of time to get a lead. 90% of the time, that strategy will be correct. Penny brings you 6 innings, probably about 3-5 runs. Not spectacular but you know what you got.

When you are throwing pitchers like Buchholz, Smoltz, Tazawa, etc into this lineup and swapping them all out, the players lose that “I know what’s going to happen today” feeling and they are not as comfortable as they need to be in order to get the win. Remember, baseball players are easily the most repititious people in the world. If something messes up their game day ritual, they will never be the same, at least until tomorrow.

Realistically, the problems with this second half slide are obviously top-down (windows up!) and the team just doesn’t seem to know how to respond. The team has been left with numerous great players to play between 1B and 3B and yet not a single viable option for SS. We have brought in and up a lot of players this year but nothing has filled the gaps that we started with. I have always been a supporter of Tito and can’t imagine not doing that here. He has done the best he can with what he has been given and is obviously getting a lot of heat from above (THEO?!) to take what he has and work it in and make it work. Period.

With an away series in the Toronto Boring-dome starting tomorrow and then the Yankees at home this weekend, a lot has to go right for this team to not only stay in the AL Wild Card hunt but to stay viable in their own division. Thankfully they have today off and have some time to sort it all out because this next week is going to be overly important to the fate of the 2009 Red Sox.