Wantlist: 1992

1992 BOWMAN
306 Luis Ortiz RC

1992 TOPPS Gold Winner
3 Jeff Reardon RB
10 Wade Boggs
59 Mo Vaughn
127 Carlos Quintana
163 Dana Kiecker
182 Jeff Reardon
207 Jack Clark
249 Tony Fossas
296 Tom Brunansky
349 Steve Lyons
377 Bob Zupcic
399 Wade Boggs AS
416 Ellis Burks
468 Greg Harris
488 Scott Cooper
521 Joe Hesketh
598 Jody Reed
639 Wayne Housie
653 Dennis Lamp
677 John Marzano
694 Mike Gardiner
708 Tom Bolton
724 Kevin Morton
734 Scott Hatteberg
758 Tim Naehring
782 Phil Plantier

1992 Topps KIDS

69 Mike Greenwell

70 Ellis Burks

1992 TSC Dome

18 Wade Boggs AS

26 Joe Caruso

29 Roger Clemens AS

80 Scott Hatteberg

87 Terry Horn

149 Jeff Reardon

166 Chad Schoenvogel

168 Aaron Sele

1992 Topps Stadium Club Members Only
Wade Boggs

Roger Clemens - Matt Young

1992 Topps Traded - RED SOX

32T John Flaherty

52T Butch Hobson

125T Frank Viola

131T Herm Winningham

Ellsbury, Youkilis, and Some Randomness

Kevin Youkilis went on the DL yesterday. Really, there has to be some sort of rule against that, right? Once a team loses 5 or 6 all-stars to the DL in one season, they should be able to select a player from another team to fill his spot. Like an expansion draft. Start with the teams in the basement, and start going up until you find a good player. But, really, has any team ever dealt with this kind of talent being lost in a year? Check out this all-DL team for the 2010 Red Sox.

Pitchers: Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz, Manny Delcarmen (yeah, I know)
Catcher: Jason Varitek
First Base: Kevin Youkilis
Second Base: Dustin Pedroia
Third Base: Mike Lowell
Shortstop: Wait…nobody? If I were Marco Scutaro, I’d watch out
Outfield: Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Cameron, Jeremy Hermida
DH: Victor Martinez

Let’s see, that’s eight former all-stars and a former MVP? Any other team able to match that? It’s even worse to think that they’ve practically all overlapped. In fact, other than Youk, I think there may have been a point where everyone else was on the DL at the same time. Yikes!

I finally figured out the Ellsbury hubbub. I finally realized why he’s been slammed constantly in the paper and on the radio for healing. Theo wants to trade him. That’s basically Theo’s MO when he wants to trade a popular and talented player. Get the media to say he’s soft and doesn’t want to play. Nomar? You can’t trade him. He’s a Boston icon. So, the media went to work saying he actually threatened not to play. The team owned TV station was sure to zoom in on him every time he was on the bench when the Sox were losing. Therefore, it was easier to trade him. Manny? Same thing. He was too talented to trade. (Even John Henry thought so.) So, you have to slander him first. Start leaking every time there’s a minor incident. Have the team owned TV station zoom in on the dugout during a scuffle. Have the radio stations claim that he, too, threatened not to play. That made it easier to trade him. So, now we have Ellsbury. He’s talented, and a fan favorite. (Remember the uproar over including him in a Santana deal?) So, Theo got to work. Get the radio stations to say he’s soft, and taking too long to play. Have the team owned TV station show him in the dugout as the Sox are losing a game he’s not playing it. It’s like they have the script printed and ready whenever Theo wants to do something stupid.

The difference this time? Two things really. First, a lot of Jacoby’s fans are women who think he’s cute. They don’t care if he plays hard, or not. (And, no, not all his women fans are only fans because he’s cute) So, the usual slander won’t work. Second? Unlike the other two moves, trading Ellsbury makes sense. How’s this for an off-season? Call San Diego. Give them the Ellsbury and Buchholz package they wanted for Adrian Gonzalez. (Obviously, try to get them to take Casey Kelly or Daisuke Matsuzaka instead of Clay. Seriously…Dice-K in Petco could work.) Let Victor Martinez and Beltre walk. They’ll want more money than Theo will want to give. Sign Ortiz to a contract just like he has now. Use the money they saved not paying Beltre, Lowell, and Martinez to make the hard push for Carl Crawford. Not just hard. Blow him away. Can’t refuse, kind of offer. Then sit back with this line-up:

Pedroia
Crawford
Youkilis
Ortiz
Gonzalez
Drew
Cameron
Scutaro
Saltalamacchia

And a rotation of:

Beckett
Lester
Lackey
Matsuzaka
Wakefield

Not a bad idea, if you ask me. See? Theo doesn’t need to slander players.

He just needs to make sense when he trades them away.

Injury Bug

I’m not sure which is more frustrating for me as a Red Sox fan: that every day there seems to be a new injury to a key member of the team, or the morons complaining about the speed with which the players recover from the injury. At the moment, I’m leaning towards the latter.

Players get hurt. It’s annoying. It happens to every team. But why, oh why, do fans seem to think players can mentally change the healing process? Why do they think you can will a broken bone or pulled muscle away? Why do they think playing with pain is so noble, when taking time to heal a character flaw?

Jacoby Ellsbury broke his ribs. I’ve never broken a rib, but I’m guessing it hurts a lot. I’ve broken a collarbone, which is a similar thing. They can’t cast a collarbone, so I was simply trying to keep it still. Every time I moved just wrong, it sent a jolting pain up and down my body. Fun, it wasn’t. And, I wasn’t even trying to swing a bat. Who am I to say how long it takes before a player can stop that jabbing pain? I’ve heard Lou Moron-i spout over and over on EEI that Ellsbury needs to learn how much pain he should be playing with. Huh? I’m guessing that Ellsbury knows how much pain he is in. He knows when he can play. He’ll come back when he can play the game the way he needs to play it.

Ellsbury is currently on a rehab assignment, working his way back. More EEIdiots have actually suggested he should be playing for the Sox, instead of rehabbing in the minors. They seem to ignore the fact that coming back form a rib injury, it might not be the best idea to get out there and start playing every game right away. He should probably take it easy for a bit. Take a game off here and there. So, he could play for the big club, and sit out once every few games. The Sox tried that with a player once. Nomar played with the big club. He just took a “scheduled” day off every once in a while. The media ran him out of town for it. Didn’t David Wells once want to skip a rehab assignment? He was slammed by the media for being more concerned about reaching personal incentives than helping the team. So, Ellsbury goes on a rehab, gets slammed. Nomar and Wells don’t, and get slammed. Which is it?

The other option open for Ellsbury? To have come back a while ago, and play through severe pain. Yeah, he could have done that. People point to the fact that Mike Cameron did. (Cameron is now back on the DL.) Of course, when Cameron was in there playing with pain, he couldn’t get to flyballs. He couldn’t generate the same bat speed. He was a fraction of himself. That was helpful? Didn’t Bill Buckner try to play through painful ankle injuries once? Didn’t he keep playing, despite the fact that those sore ankles limited his range and mobility? Did that help the Sox out? Didn’t Curt Schilling once try to pitch through an ankle injury? It was a big game, the first game of the ALCS even. Didn’t he grit it out for the “good” of the team, and play through? Didn’t he show his guts and play his heart out for the team? Well, he did for the first three innings anyway. That’s when he was knocked out of the game, having given up six runs and digging a series hole for the Sox that they were just barely able to dig out of. It’s really good that he played, instead of giving the ankle more time to heal so that he could pitch, you know, effectively.

Yes. There are players who help their team just by having their name on a roster or line-up card. Manny Ramirez sitting in the dugout terrified Joe Torre. Even if the report stated that Manny was not available, just having him in the dugout changed the way Torre managed. Pedro Martinez changed a game just by being there. When he trotted out of the bullpen in game 5 of the ’99 ALDS, the Cleveland crowd went silent. They were scared to death of the sight of him jogging in. The Indians line-up had itself beat before he threw a pitch. Ellsbury isn’t Manny or Pedro. (Neither is Pedroia, by the way, but that’s another story)

Why can’t we trust that players know when they can play? Why can’t we assume that Ellsbury would want nothing more than to play the centerfield position left open by Cameron’s injuries? Why do fans keep assuming that “75% of so-and-so is better than a sub”? It’s usually not.

It hardly ever is.

Boy Wonder

It’s appropriate that some people referred to young Theo Epstein as “Boy Wonder” when he took over control of the Sox. Boy, does he make me Wonder.

The trade deadline passed this weekend. The Sox had a lot to do in order to make a run at the playoffs. They needed bullpen help more than just about anything. The Sox needed an outfielder. With Ellsbury out for a bit more, and Cameron apparently needing lots of extra rest, a quality back-up outfielder would be huge. They had Mike Lowell tearing up his rehab starts. Since the Sox were apparently in no hurry to add him to their roster, he needed to be sent away. Luckily, there was a lot of good going on with the team. Injuries to stars were starting to go away. Ellsbury is on rehab assignment. Pedroia can start ramping up the rehab again. Victor Martinez just returned, allowing the Sox to stop using their third string catcher. So, how did the Boy Wonder improve his team? Anyone?

He traded for a back-up catcher. What? He traded away a bullpen arm. Huh? He designated his back-up outfielder for assignment. What’s that now? So, he filled a hole that was no longer there, and made two other holes worse? Umm…Ok.

He couldn’t have traded for a decent catcher a month ago? Why did he wait until now? He didn’t have the cash/PTBNL that would have gotten Austin Kearns? Like I said, the Sox have their stars returning. I didn’t need a big splash. I needed some improvement to get the best offense in baseball back up and running.

I’ll cut Theo a little slack in the lack of movement in the relief corps. Grabbing other team’s closers is an expensive way to go about it. If he wants another team’s set-up guy, he can probably get it through a waiver trade without having to settle for a mediocre closer like the Yankees did. He just needs to actually make a move for a middle reliever, and fast. Theo still has options. Honestly, he can probably even still get a not-so-bad bat. (the lone advantage of being in third place) He just has to improve this team so it doesn’t look like he’s given up on the season. He better not be saving everything for next year.

That sure looks like what he’s doing.
　

More Thoughts

Once again, I opened the mailbox and found an unexpected bubble mailer inside. It’s always quite exciting to see what wonders lie within. Just like last time, this surprise package was from Adam of Thoughts and Sox. It seems that as I post my wantlists, he’s been finding more and more cards that I need. It’s been fantastic to knock of chunks of my wants like that. What did he send over this time? Here’s a quick sample.

The Boggs and Rice are from commemorative all-star sets inserted into rack packs. The Boggs is from the 1987 set, and the Rice ’86. Since I didn’t buy many of these types of packs, my collection is limited. It’s always nice to add new ones. The Quinones is from the 1986 Topps Traded set. Despite the name of the set, Quinones hadn’t been traded. But, the set also included players making their ML debuts after the main set had hit the printers. That’s where Rey comes in. After three seasons in the Sox system, he got the call in 1986. The rest of the cards are from the 1985 Topps set. This is one of the first sets I remember having any quantity of. I remember buying a lot of “old” packs of 1985 Topps chasing the selecting of rookie cards including Roger Clemens, Dwight Gooden, and Mark McGwire. For some reason, though, not many of the ’85 Red Sox remain in my collection…and I never got the Clemens (or McGwire). But, this is a selection of some of the cards from that set. A young Oil Can looks out from behind some great spec’s. Bruce Hurst would have many fine years with the Sox. Jerry Remy looks to be having a pretty good time, years before he would begin his second career. The man who took Remy’s position, Marty Barrett, looks thrilled to be here. Mike Easler came off a fine year for the Sox in 1984, and was looking to do it once again. The Tony Armas is from the All-Star subset of cards. In addition to his regular issue, he appears on this card with special recognition. In the 1984 season, Armas slugged 43 home runs, and drove in 123 runs. That was a monster season. He was well deserving of the all-star nod.

As I mentioned, this was a small look at the selection Adam sent over. The rest are just as wonderful. As always, it was much appreciated.

I love surprises.