Adrian Beltre, Silver Slugger

Not that this is particularly surprising given the torrid year he enjoyed, but 2010 Sox third baseman (and current free agent) Adrian Beltre has been awarded the Silver Slugger for American League third basemen. Beltre hit .321, slugged .553, and belted 28 home runs, all while earning a league-best 49 doubles, and even legging out a couple of triples.

Not bad, Mr. Beltre... Not bad at all. Unfortunately for the Sox front office, as much as they'd like Beltre back, it seems as if agent Scott Boras is angling for a long-term contract. You all know as well as I do that Theo is reluctant to give players more years than he thinks they're worth - he'd much rather overpay for a shorter contract.

As frustrating as it can be to watch our free-agents walk year after year, Theo's strategy is a sound one. Within a few years we'll be treated to a first hand example of what happens when you hand out contracts with a shelf-life that exceeds the players' prime. Yessir, the Yankees core is finally aging, led by Captain Intangibles himself, and by 2013 New York will employ wayyyy too many aging superstars (except Mariano Rivera. Everyone knows androids are impervious to aging.). Personally, I can't wait.

But back to Beltre. I don't see him back next year. It's a shame, because he fits so well in Boston and at the hot corner in Fenway Park, but the fact is he'll get more money and more years if he goes elsewhere, and players don't hire Scott Boras if they're looking to take any sort of home-town discount.

But seriously... Who else can hit a home run - from one knee?!?

One thing you can probably count on is Beltre staying out of the Bronx; they're pretty set in the third-baseman department at the moment. If you asked me right now, I'd have to guess that Beltre will be on the West Coast next season. His family is still out there, and he's expressed an interest in playing out there in the past. I'm torn between wishing for his presence on an NL team so we don't have to get beaten by him, or wishing for him to land in the AL so that he can come back to Fenway, and we can all yell one last time: "YOOOOO ADRIAN!!!!!!"

But wherever he ends up, you can be sure that he'll get paid. And after the year he had for us in 2010, he most definitely deserves it.

Quotable Quotes: Ted Williams

Last time I was at home, I stopped in at a local store, just looking to browse. As always, I ended up in their small section of baseball paraphernalia, and then I saw a book I knew I just had to have:


This book is nearly eight hundred pages long, and every page has between four and seven quotes on it - quotes from players, managers, Hall of Famers, scrubs, sportswriters, fans, and anyone in between. That's somewhere around four thousand quotes.

I've since been combing it for especially relevant Sox quotes, so I'll have something to write about during the offseason. For this first installment of "Quotable Quotes," I thought I'd pick adages from and about the late, great Teddy Ballgame. So without further ado, here are the best that The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotations has to offer.

"There has always been a saying in baseball that you can't make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter more than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game." - Ted Williams

"You dumb hitters. By the time you know what to do, you're too old to do it." - Ted Williams

"If ever a player deserved to hit .400, it's Ted. He never sat down against tough pitchers. He never bunted. He didn't have the advantage of the sacrifice fly rule like those hitters before him." -Joe Cronin

"Hitting is 50% above the shoulders." - Ted Williams

"Wait until [Jimmie] Foxx sees me hit." - A young Ted Williams to a writer who had just told him "Wait until you see Jimmie Foxx hit."

"No one can ever see the ball hit the bat because it's physically impossible to focus your eyes that way. However, when I hit the ball especially hard, I could smell the leather start to burn as it struck the wooden bat." - Ted Williams

"Yeah, you can pitch him low, but as soon as you throw the ball run and hide behind second base." - Manager Lou Boudreau, on pitching to Williams

"I don't care to be known as a .400 hitter with a lousy average of .39955." - Ted Williams, before playing the final game in 1941 to bring his average up to .406


Obviously, Red Sox fans are right to be proud of Williams, the Splendid Splinter himself. Even beyond the accolades, and despite his obvious disdain for the press (and, at times, the fans), Williams was a genuinely good human being. In arguably his greatest act, Ted Williams used his Cooperstown induction speech to make a plea for baseball equality: "I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro ballplayers who are not here only because they weren't given the chance."

Yes, Williams could be cantankerous. Yes, he didn't care much for fans or writers. But he was OURS. The greatest hitter who ever lived was a Boston Red Sox, and no one can ever take that away.




This will be an ongoing feature during the offseason - do any of you have requests for specific players or quotations?

Yankees fan resorts to anonymous name-calling

So this is the comment I got after yesterday's post discussing the travesty of Derek Jeter's fifth Gold Glove. I really wish "Anonymous" had elaborated: am I an idiot for agreeing with baseball-reference that Jeter didn't deserve the award? For intimating that the Yankees would sign him for more than his market value? For calling your precious Captain Jetes less than a team player?

Whatever it was, "Anonymous," at least I have enough conviction behind my views to post them with a name so everyone knows who I am. Why the "anonymous" tag? You can sign in with Blogger, Google, AIM, iChat, WordPress, LiveJournal, and several other services, so don't give the "I don't have an account" excuse.

You commented as "anonymous" because you're afraid I'm right. Your precious Captain is not the player he once was, and "the player he once was" was never all that impressive, at least defensively. I'll tell you a secret, anon: I'm HARDLY the only one who thinks this way. I don't pull the topics for my posts out of thin air. I read dozens on sports sites and stats sites every day, including many who report for neither the Red Sox or Yankees (like, I don't know... BASEBALL-REFERENCE).

The next time you come to my blog to insult me and spew your vitriol without any evidence or reasoning, find the courage to do it under your own name. And if you're still thinking that I was targeting poor Derek Jeter because I hate the Yankees, here's some links to people who wholeheartedly agree with the entire premise of yesterday's post.

NBC Sports: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2010/11/10/what-theyre-saying-about-jeters-gold-glove/

The New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2010/11/10/2010-11-10_derek_jeters_selection_as_american_league_gold_glover_at_shortstop_exposes_flaws.html

ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5784846

Bleacher Report: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/513590-highway-robbery-derek-jeters-gold-glove-win-is-inexcusable

MLB Fanhouse: http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2010/11/09/derek-jeters-fifth-gold-glove-evidence-of-award-gone-wrong/

So, anonymous, next time you want to call me an idiot, please take all of thirty seconds to Google "Derek Jeter Gold Glove" and check that 90% of the internet doesn't agree with me. Bye-bye, now.

Long live Derek "E6" Jeter!

I love baseball-reference. This is not news to any of you, but today, more than other days, I wanted to start a post with my appreciation of that particular site, rather than tucking a parenthesized citation into the middle of a stat-laden paragraph.

So why today of all days? Because if you went to www.baseball-reference.com earlier today, you were greeted with this fantastic chart listing the 2010 American League Gold Glove recipients:

The "We can't believe it either" has since been taken down, presumably so that they'll have space to list the National League Gold Glove shortstop tomorrow, but it was just too funny. The fact that a statistic-based website feels it is necessary to openly mock the AL GG selection should show how flawed the system has become.

Derek Jeter is not a good defensive shortstop, and he hasn't been for quite some time. Wanna know why he only made six errors this season? Jeter has no range, so the same hits that someone like Elvis Andrus knocked down but couldn’t get over to first in time just rolled right on by Captain Jetes. Errors are a fail-stat; they prove nothing.

Jeter's UZR is horrible: -4.7. He can't get to anything anymore, and all of the intangibles and calm eyes in the world aren't going to change that. I can't wait for the Yankees to sign him for the next four or so years for three or four times as much as he'd be worth on the open market. I can't wait for his skills to erode on the field before our eyes eighteen times a year. And I can't wait for the inevitable temper-tantrum "Mr. Team Player" will throw when the Yankees start to phase him out at shortstop.

"Past a diving Jeter." = music to my ears.

Don't kid yourself into thinking he'll move without drama - that is, if they can find somewhere to put him... first base, third base, and DH are pretty much covered in Yankee Stadium for the next five years. Despite a reputation for being a team-first type of guy, Jeter flat-out refused to shift to third base in 2004 when A*Rod came to town, despite the fact that Jeter was the inferior shortstop, even then.

So I'm sure he'll demand his "due respect" and stay at short for a few seasons longer than is wise. And I'll even support the additions of more Gold Glove awards to his trophy cabinet, so long as I get to see "E6" in the New York box scores for years to come.

Fenway Park Tour, 2010

This Sunday, my friend Steph and I took an impromptu trip to Boston. We thought we were going to see our college field hockey team play in the NESCAC Finals, but our athletics website had a a typo, and it turned out that they weren't playing after all.

So there we were, sitting on Tufts' campus with nothing to do. We were watching the first half of the Tufts/Bowdoin game when I remembered that I hadn't redeemed my Red Sox Nation Fenway Park tour for 2010. Steph and I promptly decided we would leave at halftime and head to Yawkey Way.

I always forget that you can park on Yawkey Way when it's not a game day...

When we arrived, there was a bigger crowd than I had initially expected, but I was okay with that. Steph had never taken a Fenway tour before (she's more of a Pats fan), and the only time I'd taken one, I had gotten the handicapped accessible version (which did allow me to see a lot of the hidden areas of the ballpark), so we were both pretty excited.

Our tour guide was an older gentleman named Steve who referred to his 2004 and 2007 World Series rings as "chick magnets," and continually made jokes about the group of Canadian Naval officers on the tour, referring to them as "the whole Canadian navy."

When we reached the first stop on the tour, the EMC Club level, we were greeted with a view of the latest renovations, this time to the right field grandstand and right field box sections:


Last year, Tom Werner, John Henry, and co. replaced the damaged cement under the left field side, as well as painting the wooden seats and fitting them with springs so they retract by themselves when you stand up. This winter, the right field sections get the same treatment: the seats have been removed so that the cement can be repaired, and they will be returned in time for Opening Day. As I'm sure you all know, Fenway Park is the oldest Major League ballpark still standing, and it also boasts the oldest seats: these same wooden ones, installed in the 1930's.

The tour then moved through the park, and we were ushered through the Red Sox Hall of Fame:


Steve was quick to share that the late, great Ted Williams is a member of several different Halls of Fame: the Red Sox HoF at Fenway, the Baseball HoF in Cooperstown, the Fly Fishing HoF in Livingston, New York, and the Marine Corps. HoF at Quantico.

The tour moved on, through the bowels of the old ballpark, and on towards the Green Monster seats.



Of course, I'm much too poor to buy those tickets, so getting up on the Monster during a tour is the only time I'll sit there. That said, it is quite a view.

The tour wrapped up over in the left field infield grandstand seats, where Steve regaled us with anecdotes about the team's and park's history. I have to admit, I was dissappointed that the organization is still perpetuating the myth that Harry Frazee financed No, No, Nanette with money from selling Babe Ruth, when it's simply not true. Sure, it's a cute story, but spreading misinformation isn't going to do anything for Sox fans' reputation for being somewhat informed.


That aside, I was happy simply to be at Fenway Park once more, since I haven't been since returning to school in August. I also won't be seeing any games until at least late May, since my study abroad program is keeping me out of the country until then, so it was definitely nice to get a chance to bid the park adieu for now.

Oh, and I made sure to yell "SIGN V-MART" in the general direction of the front office on my way out.

[All pictures in this post were taken by me (Kayla Chadwick), but can be reproduced so long as you credit me as the photographer.]

Fire Joe Morgan? Check.

That's right, Red Sox Nation. ESPN has officially parted ways with announcer Joe Morgan, whose voice assailed our ears on Sunday Night Baseball for more than two decades.

Gone are the days when we'll have to dread the Sox playing the Sunday night games for any other reason besides Monday-morning fatigue. There will be no more meandering stories about Morgan's days as a player, and, alas, not more reason for snarky Twitter users to point out that according to baseball-reference, Morgan wasn't even playing in the game he's waxing poetic about.

It is the end of an era, as ESPN has failed to renew his contract, as well as that of Jon Miller. No official word yet on who will replace them, but as long as it's not Tim McCarver, I think we'll be able to handle that.

One more year of Big Papi

As I'm sure you've heard by now, the Red Sox have acted to pick up David Ortiz's option for 2011, and will pay the slugging - and aging - designated hitter $12.5 million next season.

Now, as soon as we hit the middle of April and Papi is sitting at .145 with no homers and a single RBI, fans will be screeching that he's washed up, overpaid, and taking up valuable roster space. We all know this will happen: for one, it's happened the last two years, but he's also not getting any younger.

Ortiz would not be worth $12.5 million on the open market. Despite the fact that he was one of the few 2010 Opening Day starters who managed to stay off the disabled list, and finished the year with a .270 average, 32 home runs, and 102 RBIs, DHs aren't as valuable as they once were.

No matter what he might tell you, David Ortiz cannot be an everyday first baseman, and so he must play in the American League. Most teams with a choice these days opt to keep the DH spot open to rotate in their aging or injured players when they need some rest, and so full-time DHs are not in particularly high demand.

However, this is be now means a bad decision from the Red Sox' point of view, as it prevents them from having to commit to him for more years, as they certainly would have had to do if they wanted him to take a pay cut. It is very likely that 2011 will be a farewell tour for Papi, unless there's some sort of 2006 revival, and/or witchcraft.

To be perfectly honest, I think this is for the best. David deserves to have a farewell tour that showcases him before the inevitable decline intensifies. Hopefully, after this year, the two can part ways amicably: Papi will retire with dignity, and the Sox will bid him farewell in a classy manner. This is unlikely, because baseball players, as a rule, keep playing long after they're particularly productive. But hey, a girl can dream, right? And you know me... I'm always dreaming of baseball.