Red Sox’ Moves After ’04 Now Look Much Better

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Building a dynasty, or even a mini-dynasty, is a hard business in any sport. Even if you could come up with a perfect roster, something no team has ever done, you can’t preserve it. You can’t stick the team in a garage and only drive it on Sundays. Each player’s level of productivity varies with the season, rising and falling with age, injury, or interest. Contracts end and negotiations fail. Your ace pitcher goes skiing and busts a leg. Your second baseman has a motorcycle accident in violation of his contract. Your third baseman busts a knee playing pick-up basketball. Your lefty reliever decides to experiment with cocaine. Call it major league entropy. All teams are affected by the inevitable deterioration of their rosters, even wealthy clubs like the Yankees and the Red Sox.

The best any team can do with entropy is try to stay ahead of it, proactively replacing parts that seem likely to wear out in the near term. That’s what the Red Sox tried to do after their 2004 championship, not that anyone appreciated it at the time. After the trophy had been hoisted and the Champagne spilled, the organization opted to cut ties with several key players, including shortstop Orlando Cabrera and pitchers Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez, all free agents. Cabrera was replaced by fellow free agent Edgar Renteria. Lowe, who had an off year in 2004 before pitching well in the postseason, was signed by the Dodgers. Most controversially, the Red Sox allowed the Mets to outbid them on future Hall of Famer Martinez. In place of Lowe and Martinez, the Sox signed free agents Matt Clement and David Wells.

None of these moves worked out, and when the Red Sox were swept by the White Sox in the first round of the 2005 playoffs, they were widely second-guessed. The decision to “break up” the championship team came under even heavier criticism when the 2006 edition failed to qualify for the playoffs at all. Yet the Sox unquestionably made the correct decisions, even if their method of dealing with the consequences didn’t pan out. Cabrera was a pennant race necessity, the durable shortstop that Nomar Garciaparra was no longer capable of being. Cabrera is not a great player. Even at his offensive best he doesn’t generate many runs, and while he’s a good defender, he’s far enough from spectacular that he’s been unable to wrest the Gold Glove away from Derek Jeter. Renteria was a disaster in Boston on both sides of the ball, but in a winter in which the other shortstop options were Cabrera or David Eckstein, he was the best choice. Still, none of Cabrera’s successors have been Boston assets.

Lowe had been all over the place in Boston. In 2002 he was a Cy Young candidate; in 2003 he was just average; in 2004 his ERA was over 5.00. At 32 it was time to let him move on. Clement, more than a year younger and coming off of a good season with the Cubs, pitched well for half a season and then broke down.

The Sox made some effort to retain Martinez, but they correctly sensed that he was reaching a dangerous age and would not give the hurler the four-year deal he was insisting upon. The Mets bit, giving the three-time Cy Young award winner $53 million to pitch for them. They got a good season from Martinez in 2005, one that the Sox would likely not have received (their version of Martinez would not have been pitching in a weaker league that was unfamiliar with him and lacked the designated hitter). Everything that has come since has been compromised by injury, and the Mets will be lucky to get a second good year out of the deal in 2008.

With the benefit of hindsight it’s possible to argue that the Sox would be a better team if they had retained the three players, but this ignores the costs that keeping them would have imposed.

A one-year deal for Martinez wasn’t on the menu, and the Sox reasoned that the resources absorbed by a defunct ace would be better spent in other areas. The three departing free agents signed deals totaling $121 million, all on four-year contracts lasting through 2008. Clement, Wells, and Renteria were signed for a base price of $73.5 million, with Wells’s contract terminating after 2006 and Clement’s ending after this season. Some of the difference has gone to pay for Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, J.D. Drew, and David Ortiz’s contract extension.

The Red Sox have made their share of mistakes — despite an improved second half, Drew looks like a very expensive misfire right now — but a bigger one would have been to sacrifice long-term goals to curry short-term favor with the fans. The real key is Martinez. He probably wouldn’t have gotten Boston past Chicago in 2005, wouldn’t have put them in the playoffs in 2006, and he very well might have prevented them from getting there this year.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.


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