After enduring the long mess that was the Red Sox 2012 season, Boston fans have had more than enough reasons to forget those miserable six months. Yet we can thank that scattered group of uninspired and uninvolved prima donnas for enlightening the baseball world on something that has hovered unseen in front of the game for over a decade. The Red Sox of 2013 won the World Series because, after purging the team one year before of its parasitic and overpaid All-Stars Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Josh Becket, general manager Ben Cherington rebuilt the team around winners. We thank that 2012 team for proving that compiling All-Stars like a collection of expensive and milk-white figurines, a collection the Red Sox cherished before last year, does not work.
Ben Cherington knows why, just weeks ago, his Red Sox team paraded through the confetti-swept streets of Boston, hoisting the World Series trophy in front of two million fans. He handpicked a group of decent players (not necessarily All-Stars) to create a consistent and winning group. On their spirited run to the World Series, it was the consistency of their lineup that pushed them to eek out win after heart-thumping win.
The consistency of Boston’s role players eased pressure off the stars at the top, driving the team over the edge offensively in the postseason. The flow and balance in this Red Sox lineup created a consummate consistency that ensured that someone, seemingly a different player every night, would come through in the clutch. Mike Napoli, Daniel Nava, and Johnny Gomes – the role players near the bottom of Boston’s lineup – know how to win. They can always be counted on to get big hits when needed, accumulating 25 game-winning runs batted in (RBI) this season. Napoli alone won two games in the Championship Series against the Detroit Tigers with two game-deciding home runs over the wall, helping to push the Red Sox to the World Series.
These three quality hitters, considered mid-level talent, earned a total of $18.5 million in 2013. Together, the trio combined to drive in only four fewer game-winning RBI than the Anaheim Angels’ stars Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, and Mike Trout did. Those faces of the Angels franchise, though, took in nearly double that this year at $50 million.
The power hitters on the Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers, Disneyland-like teams built around entertainment and ticket sales, have no such role players to support them. That pressure to drive in runs, added to the pressure of living up to their several-hundred-million dollar contracts fit for Superman, never materializes into winning baseball, especially not in the most draining situations, in the throes of playoff baseball.
When the Red Sox traded Gonzalez, Crawford, and Beckett to the Dodgers in 2012, the Dodgers happily scooped them up, knowing that they would generate much needed excitement around the team. Yet the Dodgers did not make the playoffs that year. In 2013, they reached the National League Championship Series, only to fall two games short of beating the Cardinals and advancing to the World Series. When they could have made a push to come back and win the series, their supposed behemoths of baseball choked, losing 9-0 to end their much-hyped season with a mouse-like squeak.
The Angels are in a far worse situation after signing Albert Pujols, who for nearly a decade, was far and away the best hitter in the game, and pitcher C.J. Wilson to megadeals (amounting to more than $300 million over the course of their contracts) after the 2011 season. A year later, they followed their spending spree up with a similar deal for 2010 American League MVP Josh Hamilton, agreeing to a contract worth $123 million over five years.
Even after winning the offseason two years in a row, the Angels missed the playoffs twice. In 2013, they finished with an abysmal 78-84 record. How could this happen? The Angels have an incredibly unbalanced lineup. The role players hitting at the bottom of the lineup do nothing to support the top, batting a dirt-poor .241 average with runners in scoring position this year. When their stars do get on base, they have no one to drive them in.
So go forth, general managers, and buy the best you can buy. Throw money at big names of Robinson Cano, Brain McCann, and Jacoby Ellsbury. See if it works. See if you can build a roster with enough big names to send brainwashed and foolish fans rushing in a mobbed crowd of excitement and anticipation to your ticket office. See if it leads to a championship parade in November 2014. It won’t. The pressure of being transplanted to a foreign market with expectations all too high and every swing all too important will make them crumble, as it has over and over again in the past.
Do what the Red Sox have done, and what the St. Louis Cardinals do every year. Create balanced batting lineups and pitching staffs centered around a star and supported by winners. Go after Carlos Beltran, who has proven to be a perennial postseason flash of excellence, batting .333 in 51 career playoff games. Take Shin-Soo Choo, as solid and consistent a player Major League Baseball has seen this decade. Try your luck with Omar Infante, who, at a cheap price, could bolster the bottom of your lineup and take pressure off of the top of the order.
Within ten years, we should see a revolutionary difference in free agency in baseball, turning from a complacent bidding war between the most moneyed teams into a selective and deliberate process in which general managers shirk big names and go after players that fit into their unique systems and create a balanced lineup. •
