By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Didn't get a chance to post this Tuesday, but figure it's still worthwhile since my colleague Nick Cafardo and I fall on the opposite ends of the spectrum regarding the Red Sox handling of Jose Iglesias. Nick believes he should have been the starting shortstop breaking camp. I believe he had a .554 OPS in Triple A last year and should probably learn to hit pitching semi-competently at that level before he makes the big club. There's a bit of a disagreement.

I understand why Nick and others are eager to see Iglesias in the big leagues. His glove is phenomenal, and one of the most enjoyable things about following a team is the arrival of a promising prospect. But promising prospects tend to lose that promise when they are rushed, and there is no evidence that Iglesias is ready to hit at an acceptable level.

Iglesias's glove does not yet justify his bat. I'm sure the Red Sox did the right thing; Nick does not believe they did. Check out the podcast to hear both perspectives. Including the right one. (Mine!)

@GlobeChadFinn

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Today's media column, calling out  Curt Schilling's about-face as an analyst, is here. I should note that I don't have a problem at all with Schilling criticizing the Red Sox; it's his job, after all, and as I say in the piece, he's offered some thoughtful analysis this spring, particular in regard to the starting rotation.

My gripe is that given his mantra during his playing days that no one can know what's going on in the clubhouse if you're not a part of the team . . . well, he sure seems to think he knows what's going on in the clubhouse, and unless he's a late entry into the bid for the fourth/fifth starter roles and I missed it, he's definitely not a part of the team. He's a media member who now gets his information in the same conventional way a reporter does -- by talking to those who know. That he used dismiss the method he's now using is pretty rich.

Plus, he was way over the top in his criticism of Bobby Valentine and how his stewardship has already taken a wrong turn before a single meaningful game has been played. It's just the kind of thing he would have railed against, loudly and repeatedly and through as many mediums as would have him, as a player.

Chat is at 2:30. The post is below this one if you missed it.

One other media note that didn't make the column, but is something many of you have asked about: Why did it take NESN so long to put new in-game reporter Jenny Dell on the air? (She made her debut Saturday, though a couple of segments were taped.)

I checked in with NESN spokesman Gary Roy for an explanation. Here's his reply:

This is a non-story. Historically, NESN's Red Sox reporter has not been a big part of our spring training game broadcasts. Jenny has been doing what Heidi and Tina before her have done during spring training games, gathering interviews and comments for NESN Daily, since the clubhouse is open and players are made available during the games.

Regarding the taped introduction of Jenny, unlike at Fenway, we do not have a fixed in-booth camera in Fort Myers, so it is difficult to see people in the broadcast booth, so we pre-recorded the introduction interview.

It's a reasonable answer, though I do recall Heidi Watney being much more visible during the spring than Dell has been this year -- interviewing players coming off the field after workouts early in camp, that sort of thing. And NESN did have nine broadcasts this spring before she made her debut. Given the anticipation -- much of it built by the network -- regarding who would replace the popular Watney, it is curious that it took so long for her to appear on the air, just as it was surprising that her debut March 24 was taped.

The logical question was to wonder whether she was initially ready for the job. At ESPN, her online segments were recorded, and her live television experience before being hired by NESN was minimal. One industry source said the decision to hire her from among seven candidates was made in part because of her engaging personality and selfless attitude. Those were not Watney's strong suits behind the scenes.

No matter how clumsily NESN might have handled the buildup to Dell's debut, the belief here is that she will prove a strong hire. Her segments Saturday and Sunday (when she did go on live) were fine. She works hard. She'll get better. Chances are she already has.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

As the end of spring training nears and the beginning of the Bobby V. era dawns, the 2012 Red Sox remind me a little bit of their edition from a decade ago.

Like the 2002 Red Sox of Manny, Pedro, Nomar, and, er, Tony Clark and Rey Sanchez, these Sox have tremendous talent at the top of the lineup and rotation but questions of depth and health to which only the long season can provide answers. Those Sox won 93 games and missed the playoffs. I figure the current Sox will win right around that number and earn one of the wild-card berths.

They're also following a season in which the final chapter was miserable -- as unlikable as John Lackey and that brigade was in September, the 2001 Red Sox were the most loathsome team I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Somewhere, Mike Lansing just tore up a lineup card in agreement.

That team reentered my conscious this week because, well, mostly because I'm a nerd. More specifically, an eagerly awaited order of old Baseball Prospectus annuals finally arrived -- five or six in all, filling in the gaps in my library.

(I'm somewhere between completionist and hoarder when it comes to baseball books; I even have a few of those old "Scouting Report'' books from the mid-'80s that provide insights along the lines of "Jim Rice is a powerful righthanded hitter.")

(Update: Wife, via email: "By a few, you meant you just bought all of those too." Yes.)

The 2002 Prospectus, featuring Adam Dunn on the cover, isn't quite as appealing as the 1997 edition, simply because the latter makes three references on the back cover to Rey Ordonez doing something usually done through a straw. He's not someone you want your shortstop to emulate or become, people.

Anyway, I greatly enjoyed reading the Sox capsules from the 2002 edition (and wish I knew which BP writer wrote them; there are no bylines in the annuals). So I figured it would be fun to throw together a quick quiz on a Red Sox team from 10 years ago that bears some resemblance to the one we'll be watching come April.

The two decent leadoff hitters pictured -- and if you don't recognize Johnny Damon and Rickey Henderson, I'm presuming you ended up here by accident while looking for a Tom and Gisele gallery or something -- aren't included in the quiz, and just so you know, neither are Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez, or Pedro Martinez.

And since this is from the 2002 BP annual, some of the references are to players who moved on before the start of that season.

Get your No. 2 pencils ready. The quiz begins . . . now. Answers are after the jump.

1. "Great starters are usually marked by their consistency, but ------ was as inconsistent as a great pitcher can be, racking up good years interspersed with incredible ones in 1985, 1987, 1991, 1994, and remarkably, 1999."

TATB clue: A joy to watch pitch when he was reasonably healthy, with filthy stuff and exceptional command, he's the prototype of someone who belongs in the Hall of Very Good.

2. "------------- pitched most of 2001 like a man with elbow pain. His curve wasn't sharp, his sinker didn't sink ... [if] healthy he'll make a fine starter, but his starting stint in 2001 shouldn't give anyone false hope.''

TATB clue: He's made 334 starts since, winning 146 games.

3. "April: .343/.356/.515/ Everything after: .241/.274/.363. Once word got around that ----------------- would swing at curveballs in the dirt, he got very little to hit the rest of the way . . . plays hard but is a total waste of the Red Sox' time.''

TATB clue: Was traded for a pitcher who was huge in the Red Sox' 2003 playoff push, but essentially buried by Grady Little in the postseason.

4. "Obtained for nothing as a former replacement player with a Quadruple A label, --------------- outperformed Tino Martinez over the the last three years for about $15 million less."

TATB clue: Somewhere, the original Roberto Hernandez stalks him with the intent of starting an "Anchorman"-style brawl, up to and including the use of a trident.

5. "He got his big chance, and he blew it. ----------- is usually more than acceptable at the plate, but he did nothing with the whimper-stick in 2001, and at 32, he's not likely to get another shot.''

TATB clue: Ended up having a decent run, but is no Carlos Pena, no matter what the movie might suggest.

6. "He just keeps right on rolling -- out to the mound and through opposing hitters.''

TATB clue: You knew him as The Handsome One, though maybe you didn't know you knew him as that.

7. "It's a shame he suffered so many injuries over the last few years, because at one point he was an All-Star, one of the most underrated players in baseball.''

TATB clue: Nope, not Tim Naehring. But he played alongside him for some good years.

8. "Barry Bonds led all of baseball with a .515 OBP; ----------- was second at .504 [in the minors] . . . He could outwalk Shea Hillenbrand right now in a fair fight.''

TATB clue: The best quote about him, hands down, came from Terry Francona. "I've seen him in the shower. He's not the Greek god of anything.''

9. "The armchair psychologist's dream. The radio talk-show host's dream. Or both ... If you're hitting .300/.400/.500, no one cares if you question whether dinosaurs existed."

TATB clue: If you really need a clue here, all I can say to you is: Bye, bye, bye.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Maybe it was Ben Cherington's call. Maybe Bobby Valentine resisted. Or maybe, perceived rift be damned, the Red Sox manager and general manager worked in unison and came to the conclusion after talking through the possibilities.

But really, the process doesn't much matter at the moment. It's about the result, and in this case, it's the correct one.

Sending Jose Iglesias to Pawtucket to start the season is the right thing to do.

Tuesday morning's news that slick-fielding, offensively raw 22-year-old shortstop was among six players sent down by the Red Sox brought the proper conclusion to one of the most intriguing ongoing stories in Fort Myers.

Should nondescript but underrated veteran Mike Aviles break camp as the Red Sox starting shortstop? Or should Iglesias, who is so smooth and flashy in the field that he's made watching infield drills trendy, be awarded the job even though he had a downright miserable go of it at the plate his first time through Triple A?

It's a compelling competition, and thus no surprise that it seemed every Red Sox fan had an opinion. I dug in and took my stance a couple of weeks ago: Iglesias needs to master the International League first before throwing him in the fires of the American League East.

There is nothing in his record to suggest he is ready. Nothing. The notion that he will hit better in the major leagues is based in neither fact nor logic. You say Ozzie Smith struggled with the bat when he came up with the Padres in '78, and I counter with this: He was 23, older than Iglesias is now, and he batted .303 in his only season in the minor leagues. Besides, no one, not even a prospect as skilled with the glove as Iglesias, should be compared to the Wizard this soon. That does a disservice to Ozzie's legacy, and puts an unfair burden on Iglesias.

The primary comparison for Iglesias is Rey Ordonez, and it is a frighteningly accurate one; in his final season in Triple A, in 1994, he had the exact same OPS Iglesias had last year. As sensational as Ordonez could be defensively, he was an atrocious hitter, which is one reason he spent just six full seasons as a starter in the big leagues. Red Sox fans should hope that Iglesias amounts to more than Rey Ordonez.

We always fall for the flashy fielders, right up until the point we get sick of watching them make outs 80 percent of the time. I get that -- it's a blast to have a shortstop who shows up on Web Gems every other night. Pokey Reese is the most dazzling defensive player to play for the Red Sox during my lifetime, and I loved having him here in 2004. But he also hit .221 -- .133 in an injury-plagued second half -- and no one was pining for him to play every day by that season's conclusion.

And please don't compare him to that other spectacular shortstop the Red Sox have had in recent seasons, Alex Gonzalez. He hit 19 homers in Double A at age 20, and 40 extra-base hits in 108 games at Triple A the following year . Iglesias, who had a .554 OPS in Pawtucket last season with 10 extra-base hits, is a long way from being the offensive threat Gonzalez was in his youth, and Gonzo has been a mediocre hitter in the big leagues.

As for the other guy ... well, some may not have noticed, but Mike Aviles is a pretty good ballplayer, though it's sometimes difficult to recognize because his best times came for lousy Royals teams and he's been plagued by injuries. But this is a guy who has an .814 career OPS against lefthanded pitching, who has a .288 lifetime batting average, whose career .419 slugging percentage is higher than that of recent past Boston shortstops Gonzalez, Marco Scutaro, Orlando Cabrera, and Edgar Renteria.

This is not some roster fodder we're talking about; Aviles can be an important part in deepening a Red Sox lineup that is loaded with three MVP candidates at the top but has more questions than usual (Ryan Sweeney, Jarrod Saltalamacchia) in the bottom third.

Despite Bobby V.'s odd phrasing in saying Aviles has taken to shortstop like "a duck to water," we're talking about a player who has appeared in more games at the position (152) than at any other during his four-year career. This duck has long known his way around the pond. Aviles has a strong arm, and while the eye-test suggests his range isn't spectacular, defensive metrics indicate he's more than competent at the position. He won't be worse than the calm-eyed guy with all the Gold Gloves in New York.

Aviles deserves to play now, to be the shortstop for at least the short term. I've said it before this spring, and I'll say it again: He may well be an upgrade on Scutaro offensively, provided he stays healthy. That, of course, is the big caveat. Aviles has never played more than 110 games in a season, and chances are he will find himself on the disabled list at some point in the summer.

Which is why Iglesias must be ready for his chance. Because it will come, if not early this season, if not even this summer, then certainly soon enough. His glove is golden. But he's far from ready as a hitter, and he must learn to hit minor league pitching before the big leagues beckon.

Here's hoping he goes down to Pawtucket and hits enough that the decision to bring him to the major leagues sometime this season is even easier than the decision to send him down Tuesday.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Jenny Dell will make her on-air debut Saturday

Dell, hired in late January as the replacement for the popular Heidi Watney as NESN's in-game Red Sox reporter, will be in NESN's lineup during the Red Sox-Phillies game at 1:30 p.m.

Dell, a UMass grad, has been in Ft. Myers for much of the spring and has received rave reviews for her professionalism, work ethic and demeanor. But the more time passed without her appearing on the air, the more curious it became in regard to what the reason might be.

Dell had previously worked at ESPN, but had limited on-camera work, so perhaps NESN's caution is just a case of making sure she's ready for the relatively high-profile role.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

I've often wondered recently what it would take to knock Tim Tebow news (both real and the Skip Bayless-generated blather) from top billing during ESPN's daytime programming. Even during the 24/7 drama of the Peyton Manning Who-Wants-Me-Most? World Tour, Tebow proved a pivotal figure.

I really didn't think anything could do it save for a Brett Favre comeback or three, but I was proven wrong when I looked up from my Larry Bird sandwich (presumably not made from real Larry Bird parts) at The Fours Wednesday afternoon and noticed two breaking news headlines on the monitor tuned to ESPN:

The first and biggest: "Saints' Sean Payton suspended for one year."

Below it, in smaller type: "Tim Tebow traded to Jets."

Talk about your double-whammies. Turns out Roger Goodell dropping the anvil on the NFL's convicted-in-the-court-of-the-commish bounty hunters is one news flash that trumps Q-rating (if not QB-rating) darling Tebow being dealt to the world's biggest media market.

A couple more thoughts on Wednesday's dueling NFL bombshells ...

* * *

It's amazing how many truths have been revealed this week.

Foremost, we've come to realize that John Elway is uncommonly forthcoming for a professional sports executive, and his candor while pursuing Manning and explaining why he was going to trade Tebow was refreshing.

But it also confirmed the suspicion that it was extremely difficult for him to continue to praise Tebow even as he, perhaps the most talented conventional quarterback in league history, knew that the successes of a player so unconventional and flawed would be impossible to sustain.

To put it another way, I bet he saw what the Patriots did to him in the playoffs coming, and wouldn't you have loved to have heard his conversations with John Fox behind closed doors as Tebow and the Broncos pulled off improbable victory after improbable victory before he was increasingly exposed late in the season. They knew what they had, and even as they were bemused while their team was invigorated by it, they knew it could not last.

We've also gained insight on how players around the league really feel. The Broncos players, so supportive of Tebow during the season, reacted with glee when Manning chose to join them. Part of it is understandable -- it is Peyton Manning, all-time great. But the breakaway speed in which the likes of Willis McGahee moved on from Tebow while he was still on the roster told you that they too weren't entirely converted into Tebow believers.

Nor is at least one of his new teammates. Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie tweeted Tuesday ...

We don't need Tebow. We sell out every home game let him go to Jacksonville Tampa or Miami. Our wildcat offense can b ran by J. Kerley or Joe McKnight we straight.

Y bring Tebow in when we need to bring in more Weapons for @Mark_Sanchez let's build the team around him. We already signed to 3 year ext.

Pretty interesting stuff coming from a guy who wanted no part of tackling Tebow on his winning TD run against the Jets last season. But his sentiment is probably correct, his defense of Sanchez is an indication he's a loyal teammate, and his instincts on this deal suggest he might make a better general manager than Mike Tannenbaum.

* * *

But oh, Tannenbaum, you are the best. Manning shows no interest in coming, so you essentially say, pshaw, we never wanted him anyway and promptly sign flawed Mark Sanchez to a three-year, $40.5 million contract extension that had every opposing AFC East defensive back rejoicing.

Then you go out and trade for Tebow, providing Sanchez with a player numbskull fans will be loudly pining for every single time the incumbent throws an incomplete pass. Which, judging by his history, will be a whole lot of times.

And then you temporarily undermined your own masterstroke by not reading Tebow's contract, eventually costing your team $2.5 million when the deal was completed.

You cannot make this stuff up. Is the Jets' 2012 motto, "If you can't tackle him, trade for him?" At best, Tebow will be the new Brad Smith. At worst, new offensive coordinator Tony Sparano will be longing for his days with Pat White.

Part of the motivation for this deal has to be to seize the back pages of the tabloids. Instead, the Jets, yet again, ended up in the comics. Well-done, Tannenbaum. You've outdone yourself again.

* * *

Upon hearing the news that the Jets had traded for a player whom the Patriots' flawed defense dismantled in the playoffs last year, New England fans couldn't be faulted if they were the ones driving around while warbling, "Our God is an awesome God."

Had the deal collapsed, how would this have been for a hypothetical consolation prize: What if the Patriots had swooped in and sent Elway, say, a fifth-rounder in next year's draft to acquire him?

I didn't particularly want Tebow on the Patriots. But this is one of the few places in the league where the suggestion to ever play him at quarterback would be unanimously greeted as foolish, and I am curious how Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels might have utilized his odd collection of skills.

Ultimately though, it will be more fun watching him try to make his way amid the perpetual chaos in New York than it would have been watching him try to carve out a five-plays-per-game niche as a Jim Jensen/Andy Johnson amalgam here.

* * *

Well, at least Goodell didn't make the Saints return their Lombardi Trophy. Other than that . . . man, that's about as close to an NFL version of the death penalty a team can get.

Losing Payton, the best coach the franchise has ever had, for a year is obviously the biggest blow and the aspect of the punishment that deserves the huge headlines.

But the fallout may be just as catastrophic -- their locker room right now has to be more divided and tense than that of the Red Sox post-September collapse. It's so bad, Josh Beckett is currently on the hunt for the Saints' snitch. (Et tu, Shockey?)

It cannot be overstated how profoundly this affects their future. Which players will be punished, and for how long? Jonathan Vilma can probably go ahead and plan a nice, long vacation for September. And maybe October.

Will Drew Brees, whose frustration with being franchised probably grew when he saw what the Broncos gave Manning, still be with the Saints when Payton returns?

And how do they replenish their roster without picks in the first two rounds this year and lacking a No. 2 next year?

This much we do know: Goodell absolutely looked at this as a worse crime than Spygate. And given that the issue of player health is both his personal cause and a cause for litigation, the consequences, as harsh as they are, should surprise no one, especially the team's quarterback.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

For all of the words spent on it this spring, the argument for or against Daniel Bard and Alfredo Aceves as a starting pitcher is basically the same for either player.

[Bard/Aceves] is extremely effective as a reliever, but because a quality starting pitcher is far more valuable than a quality relief pitcher, you simply must find out whether [Bard/Aceves] can do the job in the rotation.

Though they may stand as the two best options to fill out the Nos. 4/5 spots in the rotation based on potential and merit in that both have a history of retiring major league hitters consistently, it is probably an either/or proposition. The bullpen can't afford to lose both of them, and Andrew Miller and Felix Doubront have enough relative promise (not to mention no remaining minor-league options between them) to justify an early shot at the No. 5 role, especially in April when a fifth starter doesn't always get a regular turn.

I've long been keen on the idea of Bard as a starter. Sure, I recognize there are concerns -- an inconsistent arm slot occasionally gets him in trouble, the repertoire isn't particularly deep, and he hasn't exactly quelled the doubts this spring (15 baserunners in 7.2 appearances) concerning whether he can make the transition. But that blazing fastball makes you imagine some grand possibilities, and at the very least the Red Sox need to find out once and for all whether he can do it. For his sake most of all.

Plus, on paper at least, Bard is easier to replace in the bullpen now that Mark Melancon is around. There's no one on the roster as far I can tell who is capable of providing what Aceves did last season -- didn't it feel like he pitched two high-leverage innings every other day last summer? For a guy who wasn't signed until February 2011 and who began the season with two rehab appearances at Pawtucket, he sure became essential in a hurry.

Yet I have to admit, I've come around this spring on the thought of Aceves being the choice for the rotation. This tweet from Peter Gammons ...

Scout: "For me, (Alfredo) Aceves is a number three starter. He's been hitting 94, knows how to pitch, in incredible condition.''

... didn't hurt his case. But it was when I went on a fact-finding mission through his career game logs on baseball-reference.com that I began wondering whether making him a regular part of the rotation really might be the right thing to do.

The argument I have made to keep Aceves in the 'pen is a fundamental one: Over the course of his four-year career, he's been better in relief than he has as a starter. In 192.2 relief innings over 105 games, he has a 2.62 ERA and 1.007 WHIP. In 47.1 innings spanning nine starts, the numbers are 4.18 and 1.394.

(His total numbers, by the way, are pretty much ridiculous: 24 wins, 3 losses, 2.93 ERA, 1.083 WHIP, and 167 strikeouts in 240 innings. Appreciate the gift, Cashman.)

Looking through his nine starts individually, however, it's apparent he was pretty good at it even under less-than-ideal circumstances at times. He made four during his rookie season in '08 with the Yankees, and New York won all four. He made one start in '09, having become a key member of the World Series champs' bullpen, then took the mound just 10 times, all in relief, in 2010 because of back problems.

Last year for the Sox, he had a 5.14 ERA in four starts, with a 2.03 ERA in 51 relief appearances. But neither statistical split tells the whole story. Here's my attempt to do so -- a look at Aceves's nine career starts and the circumstances that surrounded them.

2008
September 9: Yankees 7, Angels 1. Aceves was excellent and efficient in his first career start, allowing just five hits in seven innings while whiffing two and walking none. He threw 63 of 89 pitches for strikes, and the only Angel who managed more than one hit was Mark Teixeira (single, double), who'd become another extremely rich teammate in New York the next season.

September 15: Yankees 4, White Sox 2. Aceves pitched well but got a no-decision in this matchup with Mark Buehrle, allowing five hits, a walk and two earned runs in six innings. His only hiccup came in the top of the fourth, when he allowed a two-run homer to Dewayne Wise following an Orlando Cabrera walk. Not sure what's more improbable: walking Cabrera or getting taken deep by Wise.

September 20: Yankees 1, Orioles 0. The Yankees would finish in third place in the AL East with 89 wins (ah, fond summer memories); maybe they would have had meaningful baseball to play in October had Aceves been used in a prominent role sooner, but there was apparently nothing in Joe Girardi's binder telling him to do so. Aceves got a second straight no-decision here, but pitched masterfully, allowing five hits and three walks in six shutout innings. The Yankees scored the winning run with two outs in the ninth on a Robinson Cano RBI single, making a winner of Mariano Rivera.

September 24: Yankees 19, Red Sox 8. That score might be familiar, but the circumstances were not the same as in October 2004. The Red Sox (94-65 entering the game) had already eliminated the Yankees (87-72) from the wild card race, which probably explains why David Pauley, Chris Smith, and Devern Hansack were among those to take the mound for the Sox. As for Aceves, he ended his season on a sour note, departing after four innings with a 13-4 lead, having allowed nine baserunners and four earned runs, including first inning homers to Jacoby Ellsbury and Kevin Youkilis. He wouldn't make his next start until the following July.

2009
July 9: Yankees 6, Twins 4. Aceves, replacing injured righthander Chien-Ming Wang on short notice, entered his first and only start of his second season with a 2.02 ERA in 21 relief appearances. He would end it with a 2.49 ERA, having allowed four runs (three earned) in 3.1 innings, departing after 65 pitches. His final 21 appearances, just as those first 21, would come in relief for the eventual World Series champs, who had locked Aceves into a relief role with an offseason pitching splurge on CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.

2011
May 21: Cubs 9, Red Sox 3. Aceves made four starts for the Red Sox last year, three coming in a stretch from May 21-31. This, his first, was probably the best -- he permitted just three hits, walked two, and gave up a single run over 86 pitches and five innings. He was in line for the victory, but the Red Sox tripped all over themselves in the eighth inning, making three errors amid a Matt Albers meltdown as the Cubs overcame a two-run deficit with an eight-run frame. A good start spoiled, it's also the first Aceves start his team actually lost.

May 26: Red Sox 14, Tigers 1. Come to think of it, scratch the line in the last segment about his first start with this Sox being his best -- this is the best, at least judging by Game Score. (If you're not familiar with the metric, it's a Bill James creation that measures a pitcher's performance in a single start.) He finished with a GS of 62, better than the 57 from the previous start and tied for second-best in his career behind only the 65 he posted in his first career start in 2008. Aceves pitched six innings, allowing a single run on five hits and two walks. He whiffed six, and was backed by a Red Sox offense that pounded out 16 hits, including four by Carl Crawford. Yes, that last part really happened, though I don't remember it either.

May 31: White Sox 10, Red Sox 7. And five days later, here we have the start of his career (Game Score: 21). Aceves gave up four runs in the second and four more in the fifth, laboring through five innings in which he allowed eight hits and walked three. It was the second loss of his career -- he had 16 wins to that point -- ending a 12-game winning streak over 48 appearances dating to June 7, 2009. If Aceves's current desire to start at this point comes as a surprise, maybe it shouldn't. After this start, he was asked when he might expect to make his next appearance. "Next?" he asked. "What do you mean?" When asked again when he might pitch again, he said, "Every five days." The marching orders from Terry Francona didn't include that phrase, and instead, he returned to the bullpen, ceding the rotation spot to a starter who had just finished up a rehab stint in Pawtucket. In retrospect, the Sox should have just told John Lackey to enjoy the summer in Rhode Island.

June 21: Padres 5, Red Sox 4.
His final start for the Sox last season came in their 78th game, a no-decision in a 5-4 loss. He pitched five innings and left trailing, 4-3. It was his 19th appearance; he'd make 36 more, all in relief, pitching 65.1 innings, winning seven of eight decisions with a 1.80 ERA in that span. Five of his relief appearances from July 1 forward lasted longer than three innings. Perhaps he was too important to the bullpen move into the rotation, and maybe that remains the still case as the 2012 Red Sox are currently constructed. I still can't make up my mind on what they should do with him -- again, good starters > than good relievers. But he offered that rare combination of multi-inning effectiveness and durability, and I'm really curious to see what Bobby Valentine decides. At this point, I'm convinced of this: Aceves is going to be a tremendous asset no matter how he is utilized.

The latest tour stop on my tireless campaign to convince Red Sox fans that Jose Iglesias isn't ready and Mike Aviles '12 could produce a better season than Marco Scutaro '11 is this week's Red Sox podcast. Peter Abraham, host Daigo Fujiwara, and the pasty guy to the right over there discuss the Red Sox shortstop situation as well as topics including expectations for Andrew Bailey, the new wild-card playoff setup, and thoughts on the Yankees lineup. Check it out, and vote Aviles.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

While we keep an eye on the Red Sox against Giancarlo Cruz-Michael Stanton and the Marlins on ESPN, here are nine cowardly fearless Red Sox predictions for the season ahead. I'll come up with some more thorough thoughts on how the season might go as Opening Day nears, but feel free to have at these now, because I'm sticking to 'em ...

1. Because it wouldn't be spring without me making this prediction, I'll get it out of the way now -- Jon Lester will win 20 games. Mean it, too.

2. If Jose Iglesias starts the season with the Red Sox, he and his sub-.500 OPS will be back in Pawtucket by May.

3. Mike Aviles will have a better offensive season in Boston than Marco Scutaro will in Colorado.

4. Ryan Sweeney's excellent defense and the fact that's not named J.D. Drew will make him a fan favorite, and he'll even surpass his career high of six home runs.

5. Andrew Miller (pictured) will open the season as the No. 5 starter, but fellow out-of-options lefty Felix Doubront will eventually seize the role and thrive.

6. Bobby Valentine and Josh Beckett will bicker publicly at least once early in the season, but an angry Beckett is an effective Beckett and he'll have a strong season.

7. Kevin Youkilis will put up numbers similar to his career 162-game average (23 homers, 98 RBIs), but he won't come within 20 games of playing all 162.

8. Jenny Dell will eventually appear on NESN.

9. As for today's Completely Random Baseball Card:

I'll be conservative and put him down for 25 homers, but I have zero doubt what we saw last year was real.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

I'll presume you're already familiar with former Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon's comments comparing Philadelphia fans favorably to the Boston faithful by now. I've long suspected buzz-generating stuff like this actually trips a "hot topics" alarm at the two sports radio stations around here. This should keep the phones busy for a couple of days.

But what he actually said -- on sports radio, naturally -- really wasn't all that controversial, or surprising. During an interview on Philadelphia sports-talk station WIP Thursday, Papelbon, who signed a four-year, $50 million contract with the Phillies in the winter, compared the fans of his former team to those of his new employer. He came down on the side of the people whose patronage helps pay his eight-figure salary now. Shocking.

“The difference between Boston and Philadelphia, the Boston fans are a little bit more hysterical when it comes to the game of baseball,” Papelbon said. “The Philly fans tend to know the game a little better, being in the National League, the way the game is played.”

Maybe the comment was annoying or patronizing, but don't we know the source well enough by now? I'm not saying Papelbon should definitely refrain from commenting on others' intelligence, let alone the collective smarts of an entire fan base. But let's just say I like my chances against Papelbon in one of those ubiquitous online IQ tests. And if you've read this space for any length of time, you know I'm not all that bright.

This is a guy who closed out the clinching game of the 2007 World Series, and yet arguably his most iconic moment with the Red Sox might be doing a jig in bicycle shorts while wearing a Bud Light case on his head.

Papelbon wasn't doing anything more than awkwardly pandering to his new fan base -- heck, it's right out of the Johnny Damon this-place-was-meant-for-me playbook. In retrospect, you could accuse me of doing something similar when I tweeted this last night: You say the fans are smarter in Philly, Papelbon? Well, the closers are smarter in Boston.

Cheap jab? Guilty. But while I do think Andrew Bailey could probably whup him in one of those online IQ tests as well, Papelbon's words weren't that inflammatory. And he was not without praise for the place where he spent the first seven seasons of what has been, save for a few big-game hiccups in recent years that altered our perception of him too far toward the negative, a superb career.

“It’s a religion, it’s a way of life,” said Papelbon of Boston. “They come to the field and they expect certain things out of players. It’s an environment where you put up or shut up. I enjoyed that. It got my motor running.”

I am curious about his level of awareness regarding Philly fans at this point. Not to generalize too much, but it seems to me its fair to perceive their fanbase as similar to but edgier than Boston's. Or, as Hardball Talk's Aaron Gleeman put it, "You know, because Philadelphia sports fans have long been known for their calm demeanor and reasoned opinions about star athletes.")

Papelbon's transparent bid to win Philly fans over before he ever throws a meaningful pitch in front of them suggests he has at least a clue about what he's getting into. He may discover, though, that the zaniest thing he cited as happening to him at Fenway is probably just another day in the bleachers at Citizens Bank Park.

“I’ve had a guy take off his prosthetic leg and throw it in the bullpen in Boston,” Papelbon recalled.

Wait until he realizes in Philly they actually throw the prosthetic leg at you. Probably after ripping it off the woman sitting the next seat over.

It's understandable why he did it, but there really was no need for Papelbon to pander. He truly does feed off an intense atmosphere.

Provided his fastball moves a little and he doesn't have to face Robert Andino any time soon, he'll handle Philly just fine.

He would be wise, however, to keep an eye out for the random airborne limbs. Just in case.

During our always bountiful Friday chat, we discussed where Peyton Manning will wind up (the money here is on Miami), whether Jose Iglesias should start the season in Boston (nope), the Patriots' priorities in free agency (Williams! Wallace!) , and the usual media matters. Check in below to relive the fun.

(Also, today's media column can be found here.)

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By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

So you want Jose Iglesias to open the season as the Red Sox' shortstop, eh?

I get it. It's part of the charm of spring training, annually falling for some intriguing prospect or another. Sometimes it is even rewarded. Iglesias's glove does draw raves from anyone who has seen him, and watching him take infield practice is apparently becoming a trendy event in Fort Myers. Watching the flash and grace with which he plays the position, it's tough not to get caught up in that optimism of spring. Hyperbole? Why not: Is the 22-year-old Cuban with the magician's hands the next Omar Vizquel?

Well, maybe . . . at least if you're talking about the Vizquel who had a sub-.600 OPS for the first three seasons of his career with the Mariners. As spectacular as he was defensively then, I don't recall anyone ever mentioning him as a potential future Hall of Famer. The guy was traded for Felix Fermin (and Reggie Jefferson).

Maybe the Red Sox can get away with playing Iglesias and his weakling bat for a couple of seasons at shortstop, just as Seattle did with Vizquel in the late '80s. But I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do, and I don't think even Bobby Valentine's chatter will convince me. Iglesias hit .246, had a .289 on-base percentage, and slugged -- I should probably put that in quotes -- .310 last year at Pawtucket. He had one homer and 10 extra-base hits in 387 plate-appearances. His Triple-A OPS, .554, was .001 higher than Cesar Crespo's career major-league OPS. We did not much enjoy Cesar Crespo in these parts.

I'm not suggesting Iglesias is permanently hopeless at the plate. He turned 22 in January. He probably wasn't ready for Triple A last year, just his second year of pro ball. He battled injuries, including a concussion, and he was better in the second half than the first. But I can live with Mike Aviles at shortstop for the time being while Iglesias learns to hit International League pitching.

The player to whom he is most often compared is Rey Ordonez, whose entire Mets career (1996-2002) corresponded with Valentine's tenure as the manager. The comparison is accurate -- Ordonez's career line is .251/.289/.311, while Iglesias's ZiPS projection for '12 is a darned near identical .246/.289/.310.

Comparing him to Ordonez is not a compliment. Other than producing more than his quota of breathtaking Web Gems and making three outs per game as a hitter on a good night, the worst Sports Illustrated centerfold ever is Ordonez's true legacy:

(No, it won't ever get old. Ordonez couldn't look more uncomfortable if Derek Jeter offered him a gift basket.)

I do not want to watch the next Rey Ordonez -- Iglesias has to be better than that if he's going to play every day in the American League East. So in a quest to find some statistical or historical optimism about Iglesias's offensive potential, I dialed up my friend the B-R Play Index and took a look at some homegrown Red Sox shortstops over the past few decades to see how they produced in the minor leagues. They are in no particular order, and it includes only players who eventually had prominent roles with the Red Sox. So apologies are due to Steve Dillard, Julio Valdez, and Ed Jurak, who didn't make the cut. Maybe they'll get their chance in a Boston.com Obscure Red Sox Utility Players photo gallery one of these days . . .

Jackie Gutierrez, 1983: A smooth-fielding, hey-what's-this-wooden-bat-like-thingy? type who would seem a decent comp for Iglesias. But Gutierrez, who proved a feeble hitter (.547 career OPS) during his six seasons (only two full) in the majors, was better at the plate in the minors than Iglesias was last year. At age 23, he went .272/.354/.353 between New Britain and Pawtucket. Such adequacy never translated to the big leagues, though, and he's best remembered by Red Sox fans for his loud whistling between pitches. Hey, it's better than not being remembered at all.

John Valentin, 1992: Good 'ol Sunshine, a player Sox fans seem to remember more fondly with each passing year. With a righthanded swing made for Fenway, Valentin developed big-time pop in the mid-'90s, clubbing 27 homers in 1995 and leading the AL in doubles (47) in 1997. But when he arrived in the bigs midway through the '92 season, there was little in his minor league track record to suggest he'd be that productive. At age 24 at Pawtucket, he hit nine homers in 388 plate appearances with a .260/.358/.402 line.

Glenn Hoffman, 1980: Cannon arm, salami bat who made the Sox' Opening Day roster that spring after putting up .285/.332/.385 numbers at Pawtucket in '79. He was a genuine prospect, but you wonder, given the pitching success of his converted-shortstop kid brother, whether his career (.623 OPS in nine seasons) might have gone better had he been a pitcher.

Tim Naehring, 1990: Interesting to see John Castino on his career comp list -- that's exactly who he was. He could have been a cornerstone for a decade, but he suffered more injuries than a wild pack of Lowries. Went .269/.354/.486 with 15 homers in 290 at-bats at age 23 with Pawtucket before sticking with the Sox in '91. A .282 career hitter with a .785 OPS, an elbow injury ended his career in 1997 when he was just 30.

Jody Reed, 1987: Had no idea until I just checked out his baseball-reference page that he was 18th in the AL MVP voting in 1990. It's a nice reminder of what a quality player he was during his first four seasons with the Sox (1987-90), when he never had an adjusted OPS lower than 106 and led the majors in doubles in '90. He lost his range at short as he inexplicably decided to become more muscle-bound, and that wasn't even the worst career-altering decision he ever made. The 24-year-old's Pawtucket line: .296/.379/.388, 7 HRs in 510 at-bats.

Rey Quinones, 1986: Ted Williams thought he was going to be a star, but he was a world-class knucklehead who spent all of 62 games with the Sox before going to Seattle in Lou Gorman's brilliant Spike Owen/Dave Henderson deal in August '86. Went .264/.333/.425 as a 22-year-old at Pawtucket that season, with four homers in 98 PAs before coming up to the Sox. Finished his wasted four-year career with a .243 average and a .644 OPS.

Nomar Garciaparra, 1996 There's a better chance Iglesias someday marries Anna Kournikova than there is of him replicating Nomar's career, obviously. If you want to compare vintage Nomar to a current Red Sox infielder, make it Pedroia. Their demeanor couldn't be more different, but they are fellow righthanded-hitting line-drive machines who captured the imagination of the faithful soon after arrival. In Nomar's final minor league action before becoming a Boston icon, he put up a hellacious .343/.387/.733 line for the PawSox at age 22, with 15 homers in 172 at-bats.

Jed Lowrie, 2008: It's easy to joke about how brittle he is, and there's a good chance he gets hurt before I complete this sentence. (Told you it was easy. Never said it was funny.) Dealt by the Red Sox to Houston in the Mark Melancon deal in the offseason, he's a savvy buy-low flier for the Astros. Before coming up to the Sox in '08, he hit .268/.359/.434 for the PawSox with five homers in 198 at-bats. He's a lifetime .252 hitter in the majors, but there's pop in that bat. Bet he puts it together in the dim lights of Houston.

Rick Burleson, 1974: The Rooster is probably exaggerated in our memories as an offensive player -- six times during his seven years with the Sox, his adjusted OPS was 93 or below. But he did hit .291 in '76, and he was a marvelous defender with the best arm of any Red Sox shortstop I've ever seen. In his final year with the PawSox, the 22-year-old went .252/.312/.335 with six homers in 531 plate appearances. Don't rush Iglesias; hope he can surpass those '74 Burleson numbers at Pawtucket this season. It's not out of the question that Iglesias can have a similar career to Burleson, and wouldn't we all be happy with that?

Quick and late link to our most recent podcast, which includes some final thoughts from yours truly and Steve Silva on Jason Varitek's Red Sox legacy. Also, last week's media column, in which I hope ESPN doesn't Grudenize Terry Francona, is here. Finally, a new column on Jose Iglesias and how he compares to some other homegrown shortstops in Red Sox history will be posted in the a.m. As always, thanks for the patronage. Snacks are in the break room.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

Be sure to stop by our always analytical Friday chat, during which we'll discuss Camp Bobby V., why Danny Ainge shouldn't trade Rajon Rondo, which receiver the Patriots should pursue, and the usual media matters. Bring along a grilled cheese with onion (hold the tomatoes) and join the fun.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Yankees fans still yowling about his generous offering of a mitt-tasting to Alex Rodriguez in 2004 can stop now: Jason Varitek is finally taking off the mask.

The much-admired catcher -- at least in this corner of the AL East -- will announce his retirement today after 14 seasons and a single 1997 at-bat with the Red Sox.

The timing is right, and it shouldn't be taken as rude to suggest it may even be overdue. His effectiveness waned in recent seasons, his stay extended by a consensus belief in his intangibles and leadership, at least until the C on his jersey proved little more than a mocking decorative ornament as the season crumbled last September.

But even those who recognize the necessity of the moment know it just won't be the same without him around. His retirement feels like the end of something bigger than the end of a single admirable career. Like Carlton Fisk a generation before, Varitek was not just the backstop, but the ballclub's backbone. He will never join Pudge in Cooperstown nor should he, but he is a pivotal, beloved figure in Red Sox lore, so essential in the affirming championships of 2004 and '07.

The praise from ex-teammates -- particularly those who stood 60 feet 6 inches away -- has preceded his formal farewell, and it's more than just predictable platitudes.

Pedro Martinez told Tony Massarotti, "To be honest, half of my success in the big leagues is because of Jason Varitek." Now, whenever someone prefaces a comment with "to be honest,'' I'm instantly skeptical of what's to follow. But Pedro's respect for his longtime catcher is well-documented, heartfelt, and real, and one could compile a damned impressive staff who consider Varitek relevant to their own accomplishments.

"I never had a catcher before that I felt like cared more about wanting me to be successful even before he wanted to be successful,'' said Josh Beckett, an extraordinary bit of insight into what pitchers want from a catcher and what Varitek delivered.

We will hear more of these anecdotes and testimonials at 5:30 this afternoon and in the coming days, of course. We'll hear about the record four no-hitters he called and caught (Hideo Nomo, Derek Lowe, Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester), and since I wrote what I felt like was an appropriate tribute to Tek's place in Red Sox history back in December, I thought today I'd take a different approach and look at how close he came to catching another no-hitter or two. It's something had a fun time pulling together while considering Nolan Ryan's career, a chance to revisit Pedro Martinez's greatness, and one more tribute to Varitek's consistent proximity to greatness and history.

As it turns out, he came within a curveball here and a fastball there to catching more than four. With the assistance of baseball-reference.com's remarkable Play index, my accounting concludes that Varitek actually caught seven one-hitters -- two by Pedro, one apiece by Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, and Hideo Nomo (!), and combined efforts from Jon Lester and Jonathan Papelbon as well as Daisuke Matsuzaka (!!) and Daniel Bard.

Here's a quick look at each, in chronological order, while acknowledging I may have missed a combined one or two along the way:.

September 10, 1999: Objectively, the best-pitched game I ever saw might be Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout one-hitter against the Astros in 1998. Subjectively, nothing will ever top this, Pedro's 17-strikeout one-hitter against the Yankees at the Stadium. His fastball, curve, and changeup that night all might have been better than any pitch in the repertoire of any other pitcher in the big leagues at that moment. And I still say Chili Davis totally had his eyes closed when he connected for the Yankees' only hit, a solo homer in the second inning.

August 29, 2000: Pedro again, and this one was as bizarre as the one-hitter over the Yankees was beautiful. Devil Rays leadoff hitter Gerald Williams charged Pedro after he was hit with the fourth pitch of the night. The Rays retaliated by turning Brian Daubach into a human bull's-eye, drilling him twice. Three other altercations ensued, with eight Devil Rays eventually ejected. And through it all, Pedro was absolutely mesmerizing, retiring 24 batters in a row after hitting Williams. But John Flaherty, a career .252 hitter, led off the top of the ninth with a single. The hit came a pitch after Pedro's cross necklace broke and fell to the ground, something Red Sox fans read as a certain omen since we punished ourselves with such nonsense then. "I don't really care. I've achieved enough," Martinez said afterward when asked if he was disappointed he didn't get the no-hitter. "I've had enough achievement in my career. A no-hitter is not what's going to dictate what kind of pitcher I am. I think my career is more interesting than one game."

May 25, 2001: During his one year with the Red Sox, Nomo threw basically two pitches -- a hard, straight fastball, and a splitter that looked just like the hard, straight fastball until the bottom fell out of it as it approached home plate. Nomo was rather hittable if his command was off or the hitter laid off the splitter (which usually dipped out of the strike zone) or guessed right, which explains the 4.50 ERA, league-high 96 walks, and 26 homers allowed. But when he was on, he was a strikeout machine (he led the league with 220) who was all but unhittable -- and on one occasion, was unhittable. Ten starts after pitching an 11-K no-hitter in his Boston debut, Nomo was nearly as spectacular, whiffing 14 (including Carlos Delgado three times) while permitting just a fourth-inning double to Shannon Stewart.

July 18, 2006: In his eighth career start -- and fifth victory without a defeat -- the rookie Lester threw eight innings of one-hit ball before Jonathan Papelbon closed out the 1-0 win with a perfect ninth. This was an even more dreadful edition of the Royals than the one he no-hit in May 2008. The loss dropped them to 32-61. Esteban German was the DH and No. 2 hitter. Mark Grudzielanek hit third and Emil Brown cleanup. The lone hit was by No. 5 hitter Mark Teahen, a one-out single in the seventh. The Red Sox lineup wasn't without quirks, either. I'd kind of forgotten that Kevin Youkilis hit leadoff from time to time.

June 7, 2007: This game, a 1-0 Red Sox victory, went a long way toward enhancing Varitek's legacy and legend as a masterful caller of pitches. With two outs in the ninth, Oakland's Shannon Stewart -- yep, same dude who broke up Nomo's no-no bid six years earlier -- sharply hit the first pitch he saw from Curt Schilling -- a fastball -- for a single. "We get two outs, and I was sure, and I had a plan, and I shook Tek off," lamented Schilling afterward. "And I get a big 'What if?' for the rest of my life."

May 22, 2010: As maddening as he can be, Daisuke Matsuzaka sure had a knack for mixing in a true gem every now and then. Even last April, four starts before he'd be shut down and eventually undergo Tommy John surgery, he pitched eight innings of one-hit ball in a win over the Angels. That wasn't a one-hitter since Daniel Bard gave up a hit in the ninth, but this unexpected gem against the potent Phillies the previous May was, with Matsuzaka allowing just Juan Castro's single with two-outs in the bottom of the eighth before Bard's flawless ninth secured a 5-0 victory.

June 15, 2011: In the aftershocks from September, it was easy to forget how good Beckett was for much of last season. He had a 2.27 ERA in the first half, finished with 47 more innings pitched than hits, and had careers bests in WHIP (1.02) and adjusted ERA. (147). He was among the best, at least right up until they needed him to be at his best, and he was never better than during his 97-pitch, one-hit, no-walk performance against the Rays, the lone hit an infield single by .174-hitting Reid Brignac in the third inning.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Changing up my latitudes for a few days here, so I'm putting up the gone fishin' sign on the blog. No chat or media column Friday, either. Will be back next Wednesday. I know, I'll miss you guys too. Until then, when you speak of me, speak well.

Before I board the bird, a couple of quick thoughts . . .

I suppose it was reassuring hearing Jon Lester offer all the mea culpas that were cathartic to Red Sox' fans ears the other day; he seems genuine in having learned from his mistakes. More important, he looks like he's arrived in ready-to-get-after-it shape, a confirmation that he's motivated to put last season behind him -- and all bad seasons should some with 15 wins and a 3.47 ERA.

As for Josh Beckett, he's selectively accountable -- at least he always puts it on himself after he pitches poorly -- and that will have to be good enough. You can take the pigheaded fireballer out of Texas, but you can't take the Texas out of the pigheaded fireballer.

This post will stand as the final word from me on what happened last September, something I've said before but bears repeating. What happened last September with the booze in the clubhouse was nothing like what happened in October 2004, and it has nothing to do with the outcome. The offering of Jack Daniel's during the '04 postseason was a symbolic gesture of team unity. What Beckett, Lester and that oafish overpaid pitcher with the bum elbow whose name escapes me right now was form a clique that set them apart from the team.

Interesting hearing Bobby V. speak highly of Felix Doubront, and probably encouraging, though I'm still not always sure I know where the new Sox manager is coming from. Maybe I've underestimated Doubront -- he does have far and away the most upside of any of the fifth starter candidates (no offense, Vicente, sir), and he's out of options, so this is the time.

Get well soon, Carl Crawford. The corner outfielders in the interim on this roster are a bit concerning. Cody Ross has a .912 career OPS against lefties, but just .698 last year. And Ryan Sweeney has a career .378 slugging percentage. For perspective, Jason Varitek slugged .423 last year.

I'm with you in wondering if David Ortiz can repeat his offensive performance of a year ago -- he's 36, he's going to decline sometime, and we've already had prolonged clues that it's not going to be fun for anyone but opposing pitchers when it happens. And at 33, coming off two straight injury-altered seasons, and having seen his OPS decline last year for the first time in his career, there are questions about whether Kevin Youkilis will ever be the force he was from 2007 through 102 games of '10. But even if Papi slows signs of slipping (say, .270-24-80) and Youkilis doesn't approach a .900 OPS again, I'm still not sweating it about this lineup. The '11 Sox led the majors with 5.4 runs per game (the Yankees were second at 5.35), and I'd bet that two among Most Valuable Player candidates Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, and Adrian Gonzalez are better than they were a season ago.

Should Jason Varitek announce his retirement this week, well, it was a hell of a run, and I'll write an appropriate farewell when I get back. But until then, how about remembering how it began -- with a ninth-inning pinch-hit single off Tigers reliever Kevin Jarvis on September 24, 1997, his first at-bat in his major-league debut. Tek remained in the game to catch Mark Brandenburg for the final three outs of the Red Sox' 9-2 victory. It's too bad he didn't get into the game a bit sooner; the winning pitcher that night, earning his 12th of the season, was Tim Wakefield.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while presuming Josh Beckett's 50-pitch bullpen session took two hours and 45 minutes to complete . . .

1. My memories of Tim Wakefield's 17 seasons with the Red Sox can essentially be distilled down to two images from two postseasons and one grand redemption.

The first image is the look of sheer devastation on his face as he trudged off the Yankee Stadium mound after Aaron Boone took him deep to win Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. I cannot recall ever seeing an athlete look so terribly sad when the moment of defeat was barely complete as Wakefield did that night. Even while enduring your own disappointment, prolonged for another year, you felt for him.

Wakefield once said that one of his immediate thoughts was that he was now going to be regarded as a goat, like poor Bill Buckner. It never happened, in part because Grady Little rightfully felt the brunt of the wrath for that loss, and in part because Wakefield, whose steady success (he won 11 games or more in 11 of his 17 seasons in Boston), durability, and willingness to take the ball under virtually any circumstances had long since won him the enduring respect of Red Sox fans. His two victories earlier in the series -- Games 1 and 4, over the star Mike Mussina -- didn't hurt, either. He was poised to be the hero.

Nearly a year later, of course, came the redemption, for Wakefield and for all of us. You'll hear about this a lot today, but that's fine, because it deserves mention: His selfless performance in Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS, taking the ball, giving up a potential start, and saving the bullpen for 3 1/3 innings in a 19-8 loss to the Yankees, proved crucial in allowing the rest of the staff some semblance of rest just in case a miracle might happen. That just-in-case became delightful, long-awaited reality, as you may recall, and Wakefield's Game 5 contribution of three shutout innings in relief was one among many essential and improbable plot twists along the way.

Three years later, the Sox won it again, and that brings me to the second image -- or a video, really. In the celebration after the Red Sox' four-game sweep of the Rockies in the World Series, Wakefield was being interviewed on the field when reliever Mike Timlin approached with something to say:

The look on Wakefield's face after his teammate's expression of admiration wasn't that much different from the one he wore after the Boone homer. The emotion, of course, was entirely different. Wakefield knuckleballed his way to 186 victories for the Red Sox, and he desperately wanted six more to join Cy Young and Roger Clemens at the top. But no matter where he stands in the record books, he will always remain in admired standing with his teammates and the fans who knew better than to scapegoat someone who gave so much. He spent two years in Pittsburgh, and he's retiring today, but we know the truth. Tim Wakefield is a Red Sox for life.

2. If you didn't catch up on these already, a couple of great reads by great writers related to Dwight Evans (no, Wakefield did not play with him): Bill James on why Dewey belongs in the Hall of Fame, and this from Joe Posnanski revealing something I didn't know about No. 24, that Evans actually reached base more times than Lou Brock. I go back and forth on whether Evans belongs in Cooperstown, and if you have to vacillate on it, that probably means he's not quite good enough. But I do know it's absolutely absurd that he was on the ballot for just three years, receiving a high of 10.4 percent in 1999. His career deserved far more consideration than that.

3. Of all of the roster fodder the Red Sox have signed this offseason in an attempt to find a fifth starter before Daisuke Matsuzaka returns, the move I like best occurred yesterday. Ross Ohlendorf threw just 38.2 innings for the Pirates last season because of a shoulder injury, and an injury to that hinge of course can be much more damaging to a pitcher's long-term prospects than an elbow injury. But he did not require surgery, he's just 29 years old, and he pitched pretty decently for the Pirates in 2009-10, posting adjusted ERAs of 106 and 99. Plus, he's a Princeton guy, and we all know by now that Ivy Leaguers are the new market inefficiency in all professional sports.

4. Recommended reading from Bob Ryan this morning: Johnette Howard's clever piece on dealing with Bobby Valentine, titled "The Bobby V 5.0™ Owners Manual.'' Have to say, I'm encouraged after what we've seen so far. The reorganized, efficient workouts can't hurt after two consecutive sluggish starts for this team under Terry Francona, and while Bobby V.'s can't-help-himself candor about some players "frowning'' about the new setup may annoy his players, well, who really cares? Players like Beckett, who seems more concerned about exposing clubhouse leaks than admitting culpability in last September's disaster, could stand to be made uncomfortable every now and then.

5. Given that Xander Bogaerts doesn't turn 20 until October (he was born eight days before Wakefield's first postseason win) and hasn't played above the Sally League, I know I'm getting irrationally excited about this kid, who was rated 32d on Kevin Goldstein's top 101 prospects list at Baseball Prospectus. But it's been awhile since the Red Sox developed a legitimate power hitter (though we may need to start regarding Ellsbury as such), but Bogaerts's pop is expected to translate to serious production in the major leagues some day. Maybe he's not quite a Hanley-level prospect yet and won't stay at shortstop, but it's going to be a blast to follow his progression.

During which I make the case that Clay Buchholz -- and not Daniel Bard, the odd shortstop situation, or the already familiar plotlines -- is the key to the Red Sox' season. Also, Nick Cafardo, Daigo Fujiwara and I chirp about what to watch for at spring training, the status of Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield, and the new ballpark in Fort Myers. Give it an ear.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

A couple of observations/revelations from putting together one of my favorite recurring projects here, the preseason ranking of each player on the Red Sox roster from 25 to 1.

(I'll pause here while you complain about it being in gallery form. Hey, probably not my first choice either, but these are the days.)

Anyway, the one thing that jumped out at me in pulling this together and trying to decide the rankings was just how interchangeable some of the spots on the back of the roster are. I'm not saying this is a bad thing or a good thing (though I probably lean toward the former), but it's tough to gauge right now whether Vicente Padilla, Felix Doubront or Andrew Miller is the favorite to become the fifth starter, or whether Darnell McDonald deserves a roster spot, or how to estimate the intriguing but underachieving Ryan Sweeney.

And it is sort of weird to not have Jason Varitek or Tim Wakefield around to consider. Weird, but appropriate. The possibility of spring training invites, especially for Wakefield, is probably too deferential.

It does appear to be a top-heavy roster, with three players who finished in the top nine in the 2011 AL Most Valuable Player voting finishing in my top three spots. I had a hard time deciding between Adrian Gonzalez, Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury for the No. 1 spot.

Ellsbury's all-around monster numbers and his ability to play a key defensive position well and Gonzalez's potential to win a batting title or a home run crown are enough qualifications for either to be tops on the list. But I went with Pedroia, an extraordinary producer and superb defensive player whose personality is going to be essential in the transition from Terry Francona to Bobby Valentine. If you want to argue that, well, OK, it's a heck of a fun argument to have.

The top three starters -- Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, and Clay Buchholz -- take the Nos. 4-6 spots, accenting how imperative it is that all three have big seasons if the Sox are going to match up to the Yankees and the Rays on the mound. It's absolutely necessary for Buchholz, who made just 14 starts last year and did not throw a pitch after June 16, to stay healthy and pitch to the standard he set in 2010 when he won 17 games with a 2.33 ERA.

As for a sleeper among the 25, I had Mike Aviles at No. 15, but I think Ben Cherington has genuinely high hopes for him. It's debatable whether he has the range to handle shortstop every day, but his bat could be sneaky-good -- this is .288 career hitter who once hit 17 home runs in a season and has an .814 career OPS against lefthanded pitching. I'm not saying that with good health that he will be an upgrade on dependable Marco Scutaro. But I think there's a chance the Red Sox have a better player in Aviles than we realize.

Over the course of the season, I'll reshuffle the deck a couple of times here, and I'm sure a few names at the back end of the 25 will fall out while the season is still new. (I'm kidding myself with AnDrew Miller at No. 21, aren't I? I am.) With that in mind and just for the sport of it, here are the the next 10 on the list:

26. Daisuke Matsuzaka: Probably should have been in the top 25, because the plan seems to be to get some mileage out of one of the retreads before he returns midsummer.

27. Felix Doubront: Would love to see him seize the fifth starter spot, but after showing up out of shape last year, he has to prove he wants it.

28. Ryan Lavarnway: He'll be a factor before the season is through, probably as a bat off the bench, but he should start at Triple A to continue to work on his catching skills.

29. Darnell McDonald: Good story, good guy, but erratic all-around play last year revealed why he spent so many years on the fringe.

30. Aaron Cook: Let's put it this way: In his best season in Colorado, he led the National League in hits allowed.

31. Junichi Tazawa: All of the hubbub that accompanied his signing in December 2008 feels like a long time ago, but he's a bit of a sleeper coming off Tommy John surgery. Deep repertoire, just with he had a little more oomph on his fastball.

32. Ryan Kalish: In an ideal world, he'd be the starting right fielder. But his health record recently is anything but ideal; the versatile outfielder missed all but 24 games in the minors last year with injuries. He's expected to miss at least a good chunk of the first half after having shoulder surgery in December.

33. Michael Bowden: It's damning with faint praise, but couldn't he give them essentially what Tim Wakefield has the past two seasons?

34. Jesse Carlson: Non-roster invitee was a pretty decent lefty out of the 'pen once upon a time (2.25 ERA, 1.03 WHIP for the '08 Blue Jays).

35. Carlos Silva: The Red Sox list him at 280 pounds. They listed Rich Garces at 215 for years. You do the math.

During our always arbitration-eligible Friday chat, we discussed the Super Bowl with our usual 20/20 hindsight, where the Patriots go from here, the state of the Red Sox as pitchers and catchers begin to arrive, and the usual media matters. Check in below to relive the fun.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

In case you missed the note in today's media column, the longest-running Red Sox-related personnel saga of the offseason -- save for perhaps the search for a quality starting pitcher -- is about to be settled.

NESN is yet to make a formal announcement, but industry sources have confirmed that Jenny Dell is the choice to replace Heidi Watney as the in-game reporter on NESN's Red Sox telecasts.

Dell, a University of Massachusetts graduate, most recently worked at ESPN, where she had both on and off-camera duties.

She has been in Aspen to help with the network's coverage of the Winter X Games.

But all video of her on-air work for the network was removed from ESPN.com yesterday.

Be sure to stop by our always strike-throwing Friday chat -- note yet another shift to 2:30 p.m. -- during which we'll discuss Super Bowl 46, the Oswalt/Floyd/Jackson possibilities, why we should be encouraged by the Celtics, and the usual media matters. Bring along a crate of minneolas and check in below to join the fun.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while begrudgingly admiring Brian Cashman's stealth approach to major signings and trades ...

1. Oh, yeah, of course we have serious trade envy. That rascal Cashman did it again. The Yankees' stunning acquisition of soon-to-be 23-year-old Michael Pineda from the Mariners Saturday was a crusher to Red Sox fans who have spent the winter wondering how Ben Cherington will fill out the rest of the rotation beyond Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz. Pineda, a 6-foot-7-inch fireballer who turns 23 tomorrow, looks like what Jose Contreras must have looked like in the early '70s and, at his electric best, features a repertoire that makes you wonder if he's a relative of Pedro and Ramon Martinez. While no young pitcher is a sure thing, Pineda, who has uncommonly consistent command for a young, lanky hurler, seems to be a pretty secure bet, and it's frustrating to see the Yankees revitalize their rotation in one swift move. There's of course a chance that the deal turns out to favor Seattle -- some young hitters are sure things, and Jesus Montero appears to be one cut from that rare mold. But in an offseason in which the Red Sox notebooks have been filled with names like Aaron Cook and Carlos Silva and -- woo-hoo! -- Vincente Padilla, it's going to be difficult to see Pineda in pinstripes that first time and not mutter "damn Yankees" a time or three.

2. Hey, but at least they didn't get King Felix, right?

3. Obviously from that first item, I do get Red Sox fans' frustration that the Yankees were able to swing the Pineda deal. But the suggestion that Cherington could have trumped the package the Mariners received is a myopic one. To trade a pitcher like Pineda, the Mariners had to get back an elite bat, and by all accounts Montero will be just that. He may not catch long-term, but as arguably the best pure hitting prospect in baseball, one who has been the Yankees' top prospect for three years running according to Baseball America and who tore the cover off the ball with the Yankees in September (.996 OPS in 69 at-bats), he's exactly what the feeble Mariners need. It requires very little hyperbole to envision him as their next Edgar Martinez. Yes, Ryan Lavarnway is a promising power hitter. But he's more than two years older, less experienced, and not nearly as well-rounded at the plate. There's no comparison right now. Think a young Mike Napoli compared to a young Miguel Cabrera.

4. I'm confident in saying that Cherington, like Theo Epstein before him, won't be the reactionary sort when it comes to constructing a roster. Chasing what the Yankees do is the pathway to regrettable transactions. What I hope is that their interest in Roy Oswalt has been genuine from the beginning and that luxury tax be damned, they find a way to come to terms with him in the next couple of days. It's a smart move and the right one, independent of what the Yankees have or haven't done.

5. I'll admit, I'm still somewhat reluctant to expect Clay Buchholz to be everything he was in 2010, when he went 17-7 and battled King Felix right down to the finish for the ERA title. He's just 27 and obviously an outstanding pitcher when healthy, but "when healthy" is also the caveat. He hasn't thrown a pitch with meaning since June, has never thrown more than 173 innings in a season, and there has to be some concern about a prime-of-career pitcher who is in excellent shape having an injury as odd as a stress fracture in his back.

6. It seemed nonsensical to me at first, like they were pandering to the element of the fan base that wants Jason Varitek on the Red Sox roster even if he hits .221 and throws out 14 percent of base-stealers . . . which is exactly what he did last year. But I think I get why the Red Sox have apparently given him an open-ended invitation to spring training as a non-roster player. It gives them some depth and insurance should Jarrod Saltalamacchia or Kelly Shoppach suffer an injury, and should it appear he's not going to make the team, there's the possibility to give him a proper sendoff similar to the one the Patriots gave Tedy Bruschi before the 2009 season when he retired at the end of camp. Varitek could then ease in to a job in the organization, though the hunch here is that he ends up with the Orioles if he's adamant about playing another year.

7. I was initially intrigued by the Aaron Cook signing -- he was an All-Star not so long ago!. At least, right up until I took more than a cursory glance at his statistics. His K/BB rate is abysmal (below 2/1 each of the past three years), his career WHIP is slightly below 1.50 lifetime and trending ominously downward, and even during his All-Star season in 2006 2008 he led the league in hits allowed (237 in 211.1 innings). Getting out of Colorado probably won't matter -- his home/road splits are pretty much identical. He's nothing more than an extra arm. Maybe he can rent Kevin Millwood's old place in Pawtucket.

8. One of the fun sidebars from the 2012 season will be watching the Cubs from afar, not only to see how deftly Theo Epstein gets out from the bad contracts he inherited (there is no way the Red Sox should be interested in Marlon Byrd) or what he gets in return for his most appealing trade chip, Red Sox nuisance Matt Garza. Whenever Epstein makes a transaction for the Cubs -- signing David DeJesus, trading for Ian Stewart and Anthony Rizzo -- I find myself still looking at it through the prism of whether he'd pursue some of the same players if he were still in Boston. When he re-signed Kerry Wood last week, I couldn't help but think he finally got him, two years too late.

9. As for today's Completely Random Baseball Card:

Maybe this Kendrick Perkins will become familiar to Boston sports fans in a few years, though he's a long drive away right now. The other Perk -- the one already familiar and beloved -- returns to the Garden tonight, and I'm looking forward to his reaction to the rousing ovation he deserves.

Just a quick link to the back-from-brief-hiatus Red Sox Podcast, during which host Daigo Fujiwara, Nick Cafardo and yours truly talk about the Andrew Bailey trade (told you we'd been away awhile), what Ben Cherington could and should do to fill out the roster, and the additions of Aaron Cook and Carlos Silva. My mind was so blown by the recollection that Silva once hurled a 74-pitch complete game that I completely forgot to mention Justin Germano. It probably won't be the last time.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Last summer, I had a chance to chat with Barry Larkin for 20 minutes or so at Fenway when he was in town with ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" traveling road show. I wish I'd had the sense to publish the full Q&A; here on TATB, because he was just as friendly and articulate as you surely heard yesterday when he was getting his due praise for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He'd easily rank in my top five favorite interviews since taking over the media beat roughly three years ago.

When I asked Larkin then about his probable election this year, he wouldn't bite beyond some generalities-- I almost got the sense he was superstitious about it, like he didn't want to jinx himself. He deftly dodged that question like a runner barreling into second while he was in the middle of turning two, but he was engaging and insightful with every other question.

It was, however, his shortest answer that I'll always remember, and with a chuckle. When I asked him about any personal memories he has of Fenway, in particular the 1999 All-Star Game. That night Pedro Martinez was as good as he ever was, striking out five of the first six National League hitters, including Larkin leading off the game. Larkin considered the question, then, with a look on his face as if he were back in the batter's box and the moment, shook his head and smiled. "No. Chance,'' he said of his fortunes that night against Pedro. "No chance."

I'm happy Barry Larkin, a wonderful player who certainly seems to meet a similar standard as a person, is headed to the Hall of Fame. But we probably never would have figured 13 years ago, when Pedro blew away Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Jeff Bagwell in those first two innings, that he'd have been the first among that potent group elected.

Just for the sport of it, here are thoughts on nine other players who received votes in this year's balloting. Some will get in in the coming years. Others have ... No. Chance.

1. Lee Smith (50.6 percent of the vote): Closer referendum: Gossage, yes. Sutter, evict him. Rivera, unanimously if such a thing ever happened. Smoltz, yes, with some similarity to the Eck's case. Hoffman, yes. Smith? Nope. Just an above-average accumulator, and one whose career rWAR (29.7) is below that of one-and-done candidates Brian Jordan and Brad Radke, among many others who will not approach Cooperstown.

2. Tim Raines (48.7 percent): No, he wasn't Rickey. But he was the next best thing, and his leap from 37.5 percent this year is an encouraging sign that Cooperstown will eventually call. I'll start my lineup with his.294/.385/.425, 170 homers and 880 steals rather than Lou Brock's .293/.343/.410 with 149 homers and 938 steals every single game. Brock, by the way, was elected with 79.7 percent of the vote in 1985, his first year of eligibility.

3. Edgar Martinez, 36.5 percent: You don't see too many pictures of Martinez with a glove on his left hand, and his status as essentially a career-long designated hitter hurts him in the eyes of many voters. Which is a shame -- this is one of the best all-around hitters in the history of the game. Skeptical? OK. I'll spot you Martinez's name, and you go look up the other 19 hitters who had a batting average over .300, an on-base percentage over .400, and a slugging percentage over .500.

4. Fred McGriff (23.9 percent): When I mentioned who I'd vote for in yesterday's post, several of you wrote to plead McGriff's candidacy. He did surpass Mark McGwire in the voting this year, and maybe he deserves more consideration with 493 homers and not a hint of scandal.

5. Dale Murphy (14.5 percent): He might have been the best player in baseball at his peak from 1982-85, when he won two National League MVP awards and led the league in homers the two seasons in that window in which he didn't win the hardware. But after 14 years on the ballot, you know why he's not getting in: short peak, rapid decline.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

A Hall of Fame digression while presuming only Barry Larkin and possibly Tim Tebow will be elected to Cooperstown today ...

Perhaps you remember since more than 25 years later it stands as a reminder to pump the brakes on praising an unfamiliar young player too soon, or perhaps just because it was vintage Sparky Anderson. In spring training 1985, Anderson, the Tigers' manager, became instantly smitten with an obscure young infielder named Chris Pittaro.

While the Tigers were cruising to a World Series championship in '84, Pittaro was a 22-year-old infielder who hit .284 with a .797 OPS at Double A. But the following spring, he was so dazzling early in spring training that Anderson made the dubious (and brief) decision to move mainstay second baseman Lou Whitaker over to third to make room for Pittaro.

Explained Sparky with a heaping helping of hyperbole: "Chris Pittaro is the best young player I’ve had in 15 years.”

It wasn't long before Sparky saw through the mirage of spring. Pittaro had three hits on Opening Day. He had 12 more in his Tigers career. He had a Hobsonesque .881 fielding percentage at third base and did not play a big league game beyond June. The next season, he was traded to Minnesota, where he had 34 plate appearances over the next two years before retiring in 1988. While in the Twins system, he was teammates with another overhyped prospect who didn't make it. Guy with the "good face" named Billy Beane. You may have caught a fleeting mention of the name Pittaro in "Moneyball": He is Oakland's director of professional scouting. I suspect he's never talked about a prospect -- even one he deeply believed in -- like Sparky talked about him.

Even if Sparky's intent was to boost the kid's confidence, you'd think he'd know better to tout a prospect publicly with such over-the-top assuredness. Not only was he well aware of what greatness truly looked like, having managed the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine" of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Pete Rose in the '70s, but by the time he came to the Tigers (after a brief radio gig with WKRP in Cincinnati, I believe) 55 games into the 1979 season, Detroit had stockpiled a extraordinary cache of genuine young talent, and I've always been fascinated by those teams.

Most of the Tigers' late '70s talent influx arrived in the big leagues under Ralph Houk and either blossomed or regressed under Sparky, but what an influx it was. We all remember the words to the ballad of Mark Fidrych from the summer of '76. But do you remember Jason Thompson, a lefthanded-hitting first baseman with the perfect uppercut swing for Tiger Stadium who hit 31 homers at age 22 in 1977? Or Steve Kemp, Fred Lynn's gifted former Southern Cal teammate who went .318-26-105 with a .941 OPS in '79?

Or goofy junkballer Dave Rozema (15 wins, led the AL in walk rate at age 20 in '77) . . . or rugged catcher Lance Parrish (top two career comps: Gary Carter, Jorge Posada) . . . or Kirk Gibson (drafted in '78, debuted in '79, World Series MVP in '84) . . .

I wish Baseball America, founded in 1980, had been prominent in those days just to see what the Tigers' prospect lists might have looked like. While Gibson, the five-tool former Michigan State football star, was an elite prospect, and the same probably applied to Kemp and Parrish, I haven't even mentioned those developed by the Tigers in the '70s who went on to have the best careers. Two of them -- shortstop Alan Trammell and pitcher/mustache farmer Jack Morris -- are on the Hall of Fame ballot today. And a third should be.

That Lou Whitaker, who teamed with Trammell for 19 seasons as the Tigers' double-play combo, never had an OPS+ lower than 121 in his final five seasons, and had a career OPS+ of 116 -- same as Barry Larkin and Roberto Alomar and better than Ryne Sandberg (114) and Trammell (110) -- spent just one year on the Hall of Fame ballot, receiving 2.9 percent of the vote in 2005, is an oversight Hall of Fame voters should be ashamed of. I'm not saying he deserves to be in, though he has the highest career rWAR of any position player not elected. I'm saying he deserved so much more consideration.

I do hope Trammell, who in a beautiful bit of baseball symmetry debuted the same day as Whitaker at Fenway Park in September 1977, gets in when the results are announced this afternoon. And should the phone call come, I hope he immediately begins crafting a speech that acknowledges the absurdity of Whitaker's single year on the ballot. I also hope Edgar Martinez becomes the first designated hitter enshrined, that Tim Raines's voting percentage approaches his stolen base percentage (84.7 percent), that conjecture doesn't cost Jeff Bagwell, and that Jack Morris, who has the highlights but not the numbers, remains on the fringe.

The hunch, however, is that just one player is enshrined. Barry Larkin, who was essentially Derek Jeter without the New York backdrop, was deserving of the call last year. This year, it will come, and with it, a funny coincidence. Back in '85, when Sparky Anderson was seeing things in Chris Pittaro that were never there, there was a determined and remarkably talented 22-year-old infielder who was doing amazing things on a Michigan ballfield. Barry Louis Larkin hit .368 for the University of Michigan that summer, winning his second consecutive Big 10 Player of the Year Award before being drafted fourth overall by the Reds in the April draft.

One can only imagine what Sparky would have said about him. Chances are when it comes to Larkin he would have been right.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

If Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford are still ticked at Bobby Valentine for criticizing them during his role as an ESPN analyst last season, well, get over it, you thin-skinned babies.

Beckett does take an eternity between pitches, Crawford's stance was a tangled mess, and it was Valentine's job to say so if he thought so. Kudos to him for actually offering an opinion.

In part because those critical comments were brought up again after Valentine was named the Red Sox manager, and in part because I'm always looking for an excuse to watch a baseball game in January, I thought it would be interesting to go back and watch a couple of ESPN broadcasts of Red Sox games from the past season. I know, I should have done it sooner -- hey, it took the Sox five weeks to find a manager, so cut me some slack.

So did he say anything else controversial -- maybe criticizing Jarrod Saltalamacchia's pitch selection, or calling Dustin Pedroia "wee," or wondering what happened to John Lackey?

Well ... not really.

The No. 1 takeaway from watching this particular game -- a May 22 "Sunday Night Baseball" matchup with the Cubs at Fenway -- was the reminder that Dan Shulman is an exceptional baseball play-by-play man, and Orel Hershiser is an articulate and constantly insightful analyst, particularly when it comes to pitching. I'm convinced he could be a fine manager if he chose that path.

As for Bobby V.? His reputation as someone who tries to tell you everything he knows in a single broadcast was not in effect here. He was actually ... quiet. Understated. Sometimes to the point that you wondered if he'd sneaked out to teach the sausage guy how to make a wrap.

When he did chime in, it was often about the Cubs -- he's a big Starlin Castro guy. As for his comments on the Red Sox, there was nothing worthy of generating headlines, then or now. But there were some insights that offer a clue as to how he regards certain players on the team he is now managing, and his acumen for recognizing the small details was on display.

I'll probably do another one of these over the long winter -- I have a game he called between the Red Sox and Yankees as well. But here are a few Bobby V vignettes from the Red Sox' 5-1 victory, their 25th win in the 46th game of the season ....

* * *

Valentine gushes about Adrian Gonzalez, who is hitting .328 with 9 homers and 41 RBIs at the time. "[He's] a huge star, and before the season, I said a Triple Crown candidate."

After Gonzalez inside-outs a pitch to left field in the first inning, Valentine elaborates briefly:

"Well, that's exactly where you have to pitch him. If you bust him, you can get him out. But because he's such a good hitter and so strong, he hits this ball off the label and bloops it into left field for a base hit. He's a weapon. One of the best hitters in baseball."

Comment: Well, yes, he's a weapon, and one due to make $100 million less on his current contract than Albert Pujols is on his new deal. And Red Sox fans lamenting the makeup of the 2012 roster so far should remind themselves that Gonzalez, even with his diminished power in the second half, is one of three players from last year's lineup to finish in the top nine in the MVP voting. Valentine knows what he has here.

* * *

First inning, Kevin Youkilis is facing Cubs Lefty James (Son of Jeff) Russell. He lays off a pitch down and in:

"Lefthanders definitely have to throw inside to righthanders at this ballpark. You can't let that big wall in left field intimidate your pitching selection.

Then, during the same at-bat, after Youkilis fouls one off his foot:

"Came back inside there, exactly what you have to do as a lefthander. Bruce Hurst was always so successful doing that, pitching here, looking at the Green Monster, he would throw righthanders inside and then throw the changeup away."

Comment: A reference in appropriate context to Hurst -- forever a favorite at this address -- is always a fine way to endear yourself to Red Sox fans. Better yet is the recognition that lefties cannot allow themselves to be intimidated by the Monster -- and can even use the ballpark's dimensions against over-aggressive hitters.

* * *

Jarrod Saltalmacchia homers on the third inning to give the Red Sox a 3-0 lead. It's his third homer in four games after a brutal start.

"Terry Francona before the game said the game was spinning a little too quickly for him the first few weeks of the season. It's started to slow down. With it comes the production."

Comment: I'm curious whether Valentine will have similar patience with Saltalamacchia this season should he get off to another slow start. He did struggle late last season (.542 OPS in September), but there was plenty of reason for hope (16 homers, threw out 31 percent of basestealers) for the 26-year-old catcher.

* * *

Fifth inning, Jacoby Ellsbury is on first base after singling to shortstop:

"Ellsbury's swing right now, Dan, I think is really on time. He has the bottom half of his swing in synch with the top half of his swing, and I think if he keeps that, he'll be as productive a hitter as the Red Sox could want at the top of the order, with some power."

Comment: That's as prescient as Valentine gets during this particular broadcast, and it is pretty impressive. Ellsbury had four homers at the time. He finished with 32.

* * *

Seventh inning. Red Sox lead, 3-0. Tim Wakefield is still in the game:

"That contract that just keeps rolling over is just an insurance policy for the Boston Red Sox. He's there to protect the starting staff, to protect the bullpen in case something goes wrong. It went wrong -- Matsuzaka is out, and he's in. And doing a heck of a job."

Comment: Valentine (and Shulman, who brought up the topic) were actually wrong about Wakefield's contract -- he signed a two-year deal after the 2009 season. But the notable takeaway is that Matsuzaka is actually the probable insurance policy this season, provided he can make it back midsummer from Tommy John surgery. It will be fascinating to see how Valentine, having managed in Japan and with genuine knowledge of the culture and approach to baseball, will handle Dice-K.

* * *

Eighth inning, Kerry Wood buzzes Jed Lowrie, then hits him with the next pitch. Stunningly, Lowrie does not disintegrate on the spot. Wood's intent was obvious to Valentine, coming a day after the Cubs' Marlin Byrd was hit in the face with a pitch.

"It was interesting that the bullpen was loose when Kerry Wood went out there, just in case he got the ejection. I think that was a planned pitch on the first pitch, and a planned pitch on the second pitch. Kerry earns some stripes [with his teammates]."

Later, Valentine on same topic:

"I was managing here when Don Slaught was hit in the face by Oil Can Boyd. As we carried him off the field, I said, "Donnie, whaddaya think?" He says, 'Please get the first hitter.' The first hitter happened to be Don Baylor. My pitcher, Dwayne Henry, got Don Baylor, Baylor walked down to first base understanding what was going on, and we played the rest of the game."

Comment: Well, it's a nice anecdote, and a clue that Valentine values the unwritten rules of baseball. But who would have thought he was more into telling stories than making candid assessments during his broadcasting days?

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Ten free minutes for me, 10 free throwaway lines for you ...

1. I'm a long-time admirer of Rany Jazayerli's baseball writing. He was one of many terrific full- and part-time hires by Grantland, and his thoughtful Rany on the Royals blog actually makes me interested in, of all things, the Royals.

So it gave me pause yesterday morning when his assessment of Ben Cherington's job performance thus far was lukewarm at best. But upon further consideration, I'm going to have to kindly suggest he swung and missed. I don't think you can praise the Astros' acquisition of Jed Lowrie ("A switch-hitting shortstop with a career .252/.324/.408 line? Yeah, I'll take two.") without acknowledging his significant flaws. Lowrie's range is subpar (minus-17.4 UZR last season). His arm couldn't be trusted, in part because he seemed to be casual with his throws. He'll be 28 in April and has never played more than 88 games in a season because of recurrent injury issues. There's a not a lot of risk on the Astros' part in acquiring him, but there is a chance he never pans out there, either.

And while it's fair to be skeptical about the probability of Daniel Bard succeeding as a starter, citing his awful statistics the last time he was full-time starter (Single A, 2007) needs to come with the caveat that the Red Sox fiddled with his mechanics and his command returned when he was allowed to use the delivery that made him a first-round pick in the first place. It wasn't as simple as sending him to the bullpen and, presto, instant relief ace.

It's understandable to conclude Cherington should have done more so far this offseason -- a proven righthanded-hitting right fielder would be nice -- I like the way he's gradually filling in the roster around the core stars. I hated the Punto signing at first -- yes, hated is the right word -- but upon deeper consideration, he's a utility guy who knows he's a utility guy, and who has consistently excellent defensive metrics at three infield positions. If Bobby Valentine doesn't play him more than he should, he can be a valuable asset. Melancon seems like a worthy addition to a bullpen that is not yet complete, whether he's the closer or replaces Bard as the relief ace. Yeah, I'll take two of him.

It's apparent that Cherington is looking for useful -- and yes, inexpensive -- secondary pieces who fulfill a certain need, the belief being that the core of an excellent team is already in place. I wouldn't call his offseason "distressing." I'd call it a promising work in progress.

2. The seven-year contract extension Adrian Gonzalez signed with the Red Sox last April kicks in this coming season, and for those who wondered last year why the Red Sox gave up three fine prospects to acquire him from the Padres rather than waiting for him to hit free agency (other than the chance to get his bat in the lineup a year earlier), perhaps Albert Pujols's deal with the Angels helps provide some context.

Pujols is two years and four months older than Gonzalez, had a lower OPS last season (.906 to Gonzo's .956), will be under contract for three years longer, and will make $100 million more over the length of the deal.

If Prince Fielder ends up landing a deal in the $200 million range, the Sox's deal with Gonzalez has to be considered a relative bargain, even considering the talent they parted with to bring him here.

3. Not to belabor the point, but the Astros are going to discover what Terry Francona often hinted at but never said outright -- that Lowrie doesn't defend well enough to play shortstop on a regular basis. Brad Mills, who was Francona's bench coach before becoming the Astros manager for the 2010 season, probably has some idea what he is getting. But Lowrie has slipped defensively in the two years since he left.

But if he stays healthy -- yup, that's one Rauch-sized if -- he can be a productive super-utility player for Houston, a .280/15 HR/.775-OPS-type, especially if he realizes he's much better off hitting from the right side, The change of scenery was necessary, and the time is now, but he has the talent to do well, and I hope he does.

4. A victory over the Patriots would have brought the Tim Tebow hype to levels even beyond their current insufferable state. Even in defeat, I doubt the hype will die down -- the theme for this week on "ESPN: First Tebow Featuring Skip Bayless Based On The Novel By Sapphire" will be, "Can Tim Tebow bounce back?"

Yes, the saturation Tebow coverage got to be a little much leading up to the Patriots game, but the justification is in the numbers -- ratings, page views, and all of that stuff that nowadays influences content decisions. After watching him play from the first whistle to the last against the Patriots, I'm convinced the buzz will probably fade out early next season.

He's a fine football player, but does not throw well enough to play quarterback, and I think we'll eventually look back at Sunday and realize it was the end of his entertaining but unsustainable small-sample-size run of football miracles.

5. Mike Aviles can't really be in the picture as a righthanded-hitting option in right field, can he? Um ... I think he can, or at least will, and I'd love to see Jazayerli weigh in on that.

He's hit lefthanded pitching well (.299 average, .814 OPS) over the course of his four-year career, and while he looked shaky during his five games and 19 innings worth of cameos in the outfield last season, he's athletic enough to take to the position.

I'll keep saying it until you agree with me: If they weren't going to get involved on Carlos Beltran, Josh Willingham, or Michael Cuddyer (now an overpriced member of the Rockies), taking a shot at lefty-masher Andruw Jones would have been an appealing solution.

During our always fluctuating Friday chat, we discussed Tebow, Tebow, Tebow and the usual Tebow matters. (Other topics included the Red Sox' search for pitching, the state of the Celtics, and which Boston team is closest to a title.) Click the replay button below to join the fun.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Look up. Now look left, as if a Red Sox fan's eyes aren't naturally drawn there anyway.

And there you pretty much have Jason Varitek's Red Sox legacy, encapsulated in two iconic photographs. Making Alex Rodriguez eat the glove in perhaps the pivotal moment of the 2004 season. Then, rejoicing and hoisting Alan Embree a few months later, at last victorious in a must-win moment on the Yankee Stadium turf. One photo is pure toughness. The other, pure elation.

The first World Series in 86 seasons was secured a little more than a week later, and should you prefer a photo of Varitek bounding into Keith Foulke's arms after the final out of the World Series was recorded to the one of Embree, well, either is a fine choice for man-cave decor. The meaning remains the same: Faith was rewarded. History was overcome. And Varitek's role was so integral to that season of a lifetime that these images will immediately flash to mind when he's 57 years old and receiving a rousing ovation while throwing out the first pitch at Fenway during the 25th anniversary celebration of the '04 champs. Bet the coffee table book is already in the works.

But the photos don't tell the entire story. Words are required to address the nuances of Varitek's 15 seasons with the Red Sox, a run that began with one of the great heists in baseball history -- Varitek and righthander Derek Lowe arriving from Seattle in July 1997 for ignitable closer Heathcliff Slocumb -- and apparently ended Tuesday when the Red Sox signed Kelly Shoppach.

For a player who is assured of permanent reverence in New England, his departure is a complicated one. It's a day that's overdue -- he hasn't had an on-base percentage higher than .313 since '07 and threw out just 12 of 85 base-stealers last season -- and yet it's one that tinges you with melancholy now that it has come around. With Varitek moving on and fellow tenured favorite Tim Wakefield likely to follow, only two players remain from the '04 champs. (David Ortiz, the driving force of course, and Kevin Youkilis, a bit player then.) Was it really that long ago?

The calendar insists it was, and you get the sense that Varitek himself has had a hard time coming to grips with that. "At a loss for words," his wife Catherine wrote on Twitter Tuesday after the Shoppach news broke, and you imagine her sentiments are mutual with her husband's. But Varitek has seen hundreds of teammates come and go, the one-name superstars -- Nomar and Mo and Pedro and Manny -- and one-shot obscurities such as Walt McKeel, Ken Grundt and Dario Veras who never got that second cup of coffee. While it would be counterproductive for athletes to give much thought to the end of their run while they're still immersed in playing, the writing on the wall for Varitek was much closer than 310 feet. Yet he wants to stay longer still.

Maybe that mind-set is easier to comprehend when you consider what's he's accomplished, how long he's been revered and how that must affect his own perception of what he means to the franchise. He's the best and most beloved Red Sox catcher since Carlton Fisk, whose franchise record for games caught he now owns. The irony is that Varitek's decline reminded us of how difficult it is to find a catcher who could dependably do all the things he mastered in his prime -- call a smart game, whack 20 or so homers a season, win the trust and raves of the pitchers, block the plate like it was a precious personal heirloom. From the time he supplanted Jim Leyritz behind the plate in '98 to but a few seasons ago, he was damn good at his job, and often exceptional, having received Most Valuable Player votes every season from 2003-'05 and collected a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger award in '05.

But once his skills began to erode, his value became less evident on the field and in the box scores, and instead his loyalists began relying upon on that vague word often applied to admired players whose contributions are no longer easily quantified, if they exist at all: intangibles. That 'C' on his chest suggested his leadership was essential and unquestioned, justifying his salary when his production no longer could. It was the Tao of Tek, and the ballplayer himself was clearly a believer. But as the layers peeled away on the ugly details of how the Red Sox' September collapse came to be, it became apparent that Varitek was at least somewhat complicit in the borderline insubordination by the infamous trio of pitchers. During a radio interview in the season's aftermath, Varitek couldn't muster anything kinder to say about manager Terry Francona other than that he respected him as "his elder," and you got the sense his leadership essentially dwindled to recommending the chicken breasts over the wings when a beleaguered John Lackey couldn't make up his mind.

Still, it was a special run, and it will be strange not seeing that familiar mug, the granite scowl beneath that perma-brush-cut, when Opening Day 2012 comes around. Varitek still looked the part, even when he could no longer play it. No, it doesn't always end well for Red Sox icons, and it remains to be seen whether he'll depart gracefully, perhaps by retiring to accept a job in the organization, or spew some choice frustrations en route to his next destination. But there's no doubt it's ending appropriately. Here's hoping Varitek recognizes that you don't get to keep the roster spot forever. That's what the photographs are for.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

If you missed it, Friday's media column led off with a look at the MLB Network's "Clubhouse Confidential,'' the network's innovative, sabermetrically-oriented program hosted by Brian Kenny, the incisive and opinionated former ESPN anchor and host.

And if you read it and had a hunch that I was using my media forum on the occasion of the Albert Pujols-to-the-Angels blockbuster to not-so-covertly talk baseball, well ... maybe. Please don't tell my boss.

In all seriousness, I had a blast talking to Kenny, with whom I share a similar approach to evaluating baseball players: Ask the right questions, gather as much information as possible, put it into context, and draw informed conclusions from there.

During our interview, he provided plenty of informed conclusions that didn't make the column, including thoughts on Tim Raines, Dwight Evans, the meaning of relief ace, and how to make sabermetrics accessible to Harold Reynolds the fan who trusts their eyes more than statistics. We even somehow mentioned Wayne Garland.

Here's the (long but hopefully entertaining) Q&A; ...

* * *

The resistance from -- I guess you could call it the long-established media, since mainstream applies to the internet these days -- seems to be fading. Writers such as Keith Law or Dave Cameron at Fangraphs have BBWAA membership, which is a wonderful, progressive development. But there's still that challenge of making sabermetrics accessible to the those who are skeptical or intimidated. How do you approach that challenge on the show?

Kenny:"That's always the challenge in knowing where the line is. I want any baseball fan to be able to tune into the show and have a passing knowledge of statistics to be able to watch the show and enjoy it. So I really take my time and take particular care to explain the methodology and to explain what some of these new analytical tools are and how they are used and why they work.

At the same time, I stress this is not math class, a lot of times I try to say, hey, this is wins above replacement. Try not to get caught up in what goes into the number, just look at what the numbers are telling us. We can look at OPS, we can look at weighted on-base average, let's see what all the evidence is telling us. I don't get caught up in one number because there is no magic number. A fan is already looking at the numbers. How do you know someone is a good hitter? He hits .300. He drives in 100 runs. Those are metrics. They're just not the best possible metrics to analyze production and project future performance. There are other numbers for that and we're going to teach people what they are and how to use them."

But there are those fans who just will not believe that RBIs is a rudimentary measure of a hitter's production. And I've had people roll their eyes at me when I make Lou Whitaker's Hall of Fame case by noting he has the highest rWAR of any modern player not enshrined who has already been on the ballot. Is there a particular metric you favor, not only because it is telling and informative, but because it's a concept that is relatively easily grasped?

Kenny: "Well, you look at everything that's there. I do it with the researchers every day -- do we want to use WAR, do we want to use OPS ... the best way to look at it is to look at everything that's available. Because what makes up WAR are the guys singles, doubles, triples, and home runs, then in what context. Were there two guys on base? Were they down by a run? You can use that for leverage, clutch hitting. Statistics are shorthand. If you want to boil it down to one number, you really just can't, because you can find a flaw at every system. It's really about asking the right questions. It's about value.

"And I think fans are becoming more sophisticated. And any time they get back to RBIs and home runs. You're looking at numbers, too. You're thinking sabermetrically. Those are numbers everybody should look at. They're just not the best numbers."

You were known at ESPN for boxing as much as baseball. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard you on Bill Simmons's podcast sometime over the summer and your appreciation for and mastery of sabermetrics was evident. How long have you been interested in advanced metrics, or the application of statistics in baseball in general? For me, it's rooted in Strat-O-Matic, which taught the lessons of on-base percentage and WHIP. I get the sense you were into this well before Brad Pitt ever heard of Billy Beane.

Kenny: "Oh, yeah. I was charting statistics and the ERA leaders and all of that on my little notepad when I was 7 years old. On Jim Palmer and Mike Cuellar and Mel Stottlemyre and the wins leaders and all of that. And as I got older, like a lot of people, I started to read Bill James and other baseball writers and tried to rank the greatest baseball players of all time, I started thinking more analytically. It's funny, by the time 'Moneyball' the book came out in 2003 the guys I was talking to, all of the baseball analysts, thought, 'Wow, this is really behind the times. We already know all of this already.' Even through the '90s, I think we recognized what the Yankees were doing with guys like Wade Boggs on the team and Chuck Knoblauch and high on-base percentage guys who worked the count and didn't let pitchers get deep into games.

"On-base percentage, raising pitch counts, the exponential effects of that That was something I was studying by the early '90s and implementing it in everything I did in my sportscasting career, all through those years, through the '90s. It's just that fewer people were listening. No one wanted to hear it. The fans were not ready and the fans were not ready for the new applied intelligence. I was called Sluggo at certain times because I was talking about slugging percentage. You bring up this VORP, are you going to a Star Trek convention? Now, the intelligent fan knows this because young fans have grown up on sortable statistics and the industry is there implementing this. Now, fans who don't follow it realize they're kind of behind."

But would you agree that some don't realize it? There's more information than ever before when it comes to analyzing baseball and predicting future performance. But again, some people who have spent a lifetime around the game are resistant to change. That's understandable in some regard, because their approach worked for them, got them to the big leagues. But how to do you make your points to the I-know-what-I-see-types who will always trust their eyes and experience over hard evidence on a computer screen?

Kenny:"Well, when I first got with MLB and was on 'MLB Tonight' and we were doing those shows, I know Larry Bowa, for example, said, I love how the Diamondbacks are aggressive on the bases. They take extra bases but they run into a lot of outs. And that's something Larry was seeing with his eyes and all of his experience. The first thing I thought of was, 'Is that true?' We looked it up. There are ways of charting how often a player takes two bases on a hit when they're on first, when they're on second, and how often they're running into outs and what that general percentage is. Is a team hurting itself by being too aggressive? It's a very important thing to know. And Larry was absolutely right. And when you think you're seeing something, what you need to find out is, 'Is that true?"

So when Harold Reynolds says, 'Of course Albert Pujols is worthy of a 10-year deal, he's Albert Pujols!,' how do you get the point across that there's compelling evidence that being Albert Pujols won't be quite so impressive five years into a new contract? Or that there are a glaring signs of decline that can be found in his numbers already?

Kenny: "Well, if someone is seeing something such as, 'All I know is Pujols a great hitter, well, why do you know that?' Well, he hits home runs. That's reflected in slugging percentage. He has a high batting average and he has good plate selection. All of those things show up in numbers. The performance does get reflected by the statistics. Do they show everything? No. It helps to be watching as well and have your own eye on it.

"But your eyes will lie to you You see a guy make one great defensive play on a particular day, you'll have it stuck in your head, 'Wow, that guy is a great defensive player.' Even if he makes 50 errors in a season, you're going to remember that one play. It's better to look at the metrics, but yeah, try to follow up on what you're seeing on the field. Fielding statistics in particular are frequently conflicting. You try to take the weighted average of that, and use common sense. There is no one magic number. The key to it is asking questions and finding evidence. Someone says something: "This guy hits for great power. I saw him it one into the upper deck one day." These guys run into a lot of outs. In Larry Bowa's case with the Diamondbacks, it absolutely was true."

'Clubhouse Confidential' has dedicated a lot of time to determining Pujols's value, and the conclusion is pretty simple: The last half of a 10-year deal is going to be expensive and probably regrettable for the team that signs him and is paying for his decline. [Note: The interview was conducted the day before he signed a 10-year, $254 million deal with the Angels.] What are some of the ways the show has approached discussing and evaluating Pujols's value?

Kenny: "It starts by asking questions. Is Albert Pujols worth $30 million per year? What percentage of payroll can you pay one player? How can you project his performance based on his age going forward? When we do this every day, we get a much clearer picture of a player's value. Hidden value, and what that really means to a team and to the market place. We've drawn clear conclusions on Pujols in particular.

"We do one particular show on 'Clubhouse Confidential,' we do the essays called "High Heat,'' and we wanted to know how many good $100-million contracts have there been. And so we looked at the $100 million contracts, and when you put it into free-agent contracts, which means you're getting an older player, we did our own value system, and we found that of the 16 $100 million free agent contracts, four were what you could consider good contracts for the team. Actually doing the thought experiment and going through the exercise of looking at each individual one and let's rate them good bad or inclusive or somewhere in between, that's a telling stat. Only 25 percent were what you could consider good.

"What's the next question? Why? And we found that the why is usually a misevaluation of the player's skills, ignoring the evidence of the trends, or age. So what's the worst combination: A guy on the wrong side of 30, a big slugging first baseman, whose trends are going down. Who am I talking about?"

It's either Albert Pujols or Willie Bloomquist.

Kenny: "It's staring us in the face. I started to say said that on the show. Only after going through exercise of studying the big contracts, then considering the worst contracts of all time. Do you remember Wayne Garland, the first outrageous contract?"

Sure. I think Cleveland is still paying him.

Kenny: "Right, right. [The Indians paid him] $200,000 a year, it was kind of outrageous then, but it's still laughable now. It turns out they were rating him on a 20-win season, he was relatively young, but his WHIP was very high and his strikeouts were low. The underlying components of his production told you that he wasn't going to be a great pitcher. But they didn't know that then."

Whereas with Pujols, or any player nowadays, there's so much data available that if you mine it properly and ask the right questions, you'll recognize trends, and those predictors point you toward the answers, fair to say?

Kenny: "Absolutely. You look at all of the components and see where they are trending. And Albert Pujols not just his walks, his declining walk rate, his rising strikouts, and his declining power, but his chase rate. But he's chasing more and more pitches out of the strike zone. We saw that during the World Series, but you wonder, is that just one at-bat, a small sample, one game. Or is this true? It turns out he went from a 17 percent chase rate in 2007 to 31 percent. And these numbers that we're kicking around, is it fascinating to a fan? Well, it's worth 10s of millions of dollars, knowing this information and not ignoring this information. We've done a lot on Pujols, and everything points in a certain direction. And it's that the Cardinals got his greatest years already. His best half of his career is not to come. And stay away from big bodied, slugging first basemen on the wrong side of 30 for long free-agent deals."

History suggests signing relief pitchers to long-term deals isn't the brightest approach to team building, either. While there's lots of hand-wringing here in Boston over Jonathan Papelbon's departure, particularly regarding who will replace him, isn't their patient approach a more prudent one than, say, giving Heath Bell three years and $27 million, as the Marlins did?

Kenny: "Well, with Bell, we ran him through the shredder. Are you familiar with the shredder?"

Sure. You did a similar thing with David Ortiz recently.

Kenny: "Right. We break it down analytically, and we get the components of his production. The main thing you look at with a relief pitcher is the strikeout rate, or strikeouts and walks. I said on the show his decline in strikeout rate is alarming. It's alarming. It should not be ignored. And I think it's part of the old guard valuing and overvaluing saves. Looking at a guy and saying he's special, he saves games. And I would maintain that anyone who is effective in the seventh or eighth inning can be effective in the ninth inning as well. There might be some exceptions, but by and large, anyone who is excelling in the seventh or eighth can in excel in the ninth given enough repetitions. That is not the way it has been thought of, and there are still teams making that mistake saying, this guy is a quote-unquote proven closer. There's a value to experience, but you can overvalue that they way the Marlins just did Heath Bell."

It looks like Daniel Bard is going to get his chance to start for the Red Sox next year, and to me they need to find out if he can do that, because a 200-inning starter obviously has more value than a 75-inning relief pitcher. Conventionally, he's the most logical successor to Papelbon. Yet there's a notion here that he may not be cut out to close, despite the fact that he's essentially been the Red Sox' relief ace the past two years, being the guy to come in and face Robinson Cano and Mark Teixeira with two on and one out in a one-run game in the eighth. It seems absurd to me that a guy who has been getting tough outs since he's been here couldn't handle the ninth.

Kenny: "Yeah, you're right. It's funny, because now, the tail is wagging the dog where you rate a guy based on saves and whether he's a proven closer, whereas in the 1950s, that term you used, relief ace, that was how it worked. A guy could come in in the fifth, sixth, seventh inning and put out the fire. He was the 'fireman,' pitching the highest-leveraged situations. If the bases are loaded in the sixth inning and you're up by one, the game is being won or lost right then and there. Why keep your best pitcher in the bullpen? And yet that's still being done to this day. And there's still resistance to that, with people saying, "No, no, no, a reliever needs to know his role, you have to be a proven closer, and it's just not true.' "

"I know when Boston did the bullpen by committee several years ago [in 2003] ...

We don't speak of that around here ... even thought it was a reasonable idea with the wrong people on the committee, doomed from the start when Carl Crawford took Chad Fox deep on opening day.

"... exactly, and they were mocked. Had they just stayed the course on that ... teams should just stay the course on what they believe will work and not worry about what the rest of the league or fans or what anybody else is saying. It's funny, because Tony La Russa did a mix and match bullpen trying to apply the best guys in the best spots through the playoffs, and he was applauded for it. He got the best matchups, worked the percentages, well, why don't we just do that all the time?And your best pitchers should be brought in during the highest-leverage situations. Don't keep Mariano Rivera sitting out there waiting for the magical save opportunity. Bring him in when the game is on the line. Bring in your best pitcher at the biggest moments and then worry about later in the game if you're still competing later in the game."

Before I let you go, I have to ask since he's one of my favorite players and his Hall of Fame candidacy is cause of sabermetricians: Does Tim Raines belong in the Hall of Fame?

Kenny: "Tim Raines is two Hall of Famers."

That's what I like to hear.

Kenny: "Tim Raines is such an obvious Hall of Famer, a slam-dunk, first-ballot Hall of Famer in my book. His on-base percentage, his net steals, not just that he stole a lot of bases but he stole a lot of bases and didn't get caught, probably the best percentage of all time for people who stole as often as he did.

"I have a whole list of players that I use on what I call "Cooperstown Justice," a segment that I do on a regular basis. Raines is at the top of the list. Raines, Edgar Martinez, by the way, Dwight Evans, and Keith Hernandez. They are some of my pet projects that I say need to be reevaluated now that we're looking at."

The shame is that some of these guys fell off the ballot so fast. Whitaker got one year, Evans three ...

Kenny: "It's insane. I've said that too. With Dwight Evans and Keith Hernandez, they're not on the ballot anymore. [Hernandez was on for nine years, never receiving higher than 10.8 percent of the vote.] And the idea too, this is always puzzling to me, is that the baseball writers are on the beat, watching every game, so even if they're not doing the statistical analysis that one of us would do, at least they're watching the player every game. Well, if you're watching Keith Hernandez or Dwight Evans, shouldn't you be appreciating that defense that was so obvious? It was so obvious that no one ran on their arms, that they changed games with their defensive play, that they were simply among the greatest players ever to play their position. And yet it's those writers who wouldn't give them enough support to keep them on the ballot.

"Beyond that we, didn't appreciate Dwight Evans's ability to draw a walk, his on-base percentage, his power, which was not Jim Rice's but it was very good, and this was a great all-around player. And Keith Hernandez, he was the greatest fielding first baseman on all-time, and seven times in an eight year span he was in the top three in on-base percentage in the National League and also had doubles power. All of these things make a guy a Hall of Famer. But there's still that old thought of, 'How many home runs does he have?' and we haven't quite gotten sophisticated enough yet to make those judgments. But that's what we're doing on "Clubhouse Confidential." We're getting that out in the forefront."

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

... Tim McCarver was an outstanding baseball broadcaster once upon a time. Really. No punchline. Honest. He was.

What's that? No, it is the same Tim McCarver, I'm sure.

Yes, his heyday feels like a long time ago. And yes, I'm probably only writing this here because there wasn't room in my media column today. And yes, he aggravates with his dependence on and exaggeration of secondary, trifling details that run on so long that his alleged point often lasts longer than the batteries in your remote control. The man can filibuster a mute button into submission.

So it was unsurprising Wednesday when the consensus reaction -- via Twitter, e-mail, and terrific baseball sites like Hardball Talk and Big League Stew -- to the announcement that McCarver was was named the winner of the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence went something like this:

McCarver? Broadcasting excellence? Frick, who voted on this thing, Derek Jeter, Steve Carlton, and Joe Buck?

Hmmm. It appears my case on his behalf is rather lacking so far. Hey, he usually drives me crazy these days, too, especially when he's chattering about the Red Sox and expounding on minutiae we either already know or strikes us as dubious in accuracy.

But the key is these days. But -- and this is coming from someone who has made exceeded the appropriate share of McCarver-hearts-Jeter jokes -- would go too far to suggest that McCarver is undeserving of the honor. Because if you heard him when, during his pre-Fox days on NBC, CBS, and ABC, if you remember how original his voice the six-time Emmy Award winner was then, you understand why he'll be honored at Cooperstown this summer.

There was a time when McCarver was a master of instant, incisive analysis, when his catcher’s-view insight and folksy, pun-heavy style were refreshing and innovative. Listening to him, you understood how he managed to play four decades in the big leagues. His knowledge -- and his connection with Carlton -- kept him around when his ability waned. He knew the game, and he knew how to share that knowledge with the viewer.

OK, maybe the puns were always a little much. But the man knew his stuff. If you’re skeptical, try to catch a replay of the MLB Network’s recent look back at the 1986 postseason. McCarver called the Mets-Astros NLCS, and the program stands as a reminder of how sharp he was.

Like fellow Frick Award winner Tony Kubek, who was paired with Bob Costas in the '80s on NBC's Game of the Week (they were the second team; Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola were the No. 1 pairing), he elevated the role of color analyst to a new level of insight. It was the an overdue progression from the days when Howard Cosell shouting over Keith Jackson and Tom Seaver during big moments passed for analysis. That he ticked off Deion Sanders is another point in his favor.

He's lost few miles per hour off his fastball years ago, and a few more in recent years, which is neither a crime nor a surprise considering the man is 70 years old. Not everyone is Scully. But when he was 45, and not so far removed from active involvement the game, had that uncanny knack for telling you when something would happen, then after it inevitably did, he explained with impressive insight why he saw it coming. Jerry Remy used to do that quite often, too. I'd be willing to bet Terry Francona has the same knack.

Tito is an interesting variable in the current perception of McCarver. It was telling that when he filled in for McCarver for two games during the American League Division Series, the consensus among those who comment on such matters was that he was a natural despite being a relative novice.

It did not go left unsaid that his subtle humor and speak-only-when-there's-something-worth-saying approach felt like a refreshing break from McCarver's current style. Fox will lament letting him get away to ESPN, particularly if Tito's TV stay lasts more than a year. I hope he manages again, but when he does, I'm pretty sure we'll lament his departure from television.

We felt that way about McCarver once too. It would be argued here that fellow finalist and former Red Sox broadcaster Ken Coleman -- "Yastrzemski is going hard ... way back ... way back ... and he dives and makes a TREMENDOUS catch!" -- would have been a more deserving Frick choice this year, and pretty much any other year.

But that doesn’t mean McCarver doesn’t belong. Because he does. No matter how hard that might be to fathom now.

Now, should Joe Morgan ever gets nominated? I assure you there will be a far different reaction in this space.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

The idea of what in essence looks like a job swap would have seemed unfathomable in, oh, August. But tonight it's the reality.

Terry Francona has joined ESPN as analyst on "Sunday Night Baseball." The network confirmed the former Red Sox manager's hiring tonight.

He fills the vacancy left by Bobby Valentine, who left ESPN last week after two years as an analyst to become Francona's successor as the manager of the Red Sox.

Francona, whose eight-year run as Red Sox manager ended when his contract option for 2012 was not picked up following a disastrous 7-20 September, made his debut last night on "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight" from the winter meetings in Dallas.

He chose ESPN over Fox Sports, which had hoped to hire Francona as an analyst after his well-received two-game stint on the network filling in for analyst Tim McCarver during the American League Divisional Series matchup between the Rangers and Tigers. Francona was a novice -- he said he'd previously been part of one broadcast, more than a decade earlier in the Arizona Fall League -- but he was informative, understated, and funny, and came across as a natural.

Francona will join Dan Shulman and Orel Hershiser in the "Sunday Night Baseball" booth. He will also provide analysis for "Baseball Tonight,'' and contribute to ESPN's coverage of the Little League World Series.

"Ted Williams for Joe DiMaggio never happened," said ESPN executive vice president for production Norby Williamson in a statement, referencing a tale that the two legends were nearly swapped for each other before the respective team owners thought better of it in the morning, "but this is ESPN's version with Bobby moving to the Red Sox dugout and Terry replacing him on 'Sunday Night Baseball.' "

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

How dare you! Just because I started the thing last November and haven't posted a new entry since Pack 5 in March doesn't mean I forgot about it. It means I got distracted by other shiny Boston sports objects and subjects, including the Red Sox managerial search that finally culminates today with the introduction of wrap impresario Bobby Valentine.

While Topps has long since concluded the countdown with which this was to coincide, I'm going to peck away at it even if it takes me another dozen Novembers to complete. There's no timeline to this truth, one which you've probably suspected all along -- it's not so much about the baseball cards as it is one more half-contrived but earnest reason to write sentimentally about baseball. In fact, I'll probably continue this project beyond 60 since it's so damn fun to write.

For now, though, here it is at last -- a special-edition Pack 6, looking at some of those memorable multi-player rookie cards. My apologies, Cardell Camper, you just missed the cut . . .

1973 Mike Schmidt

No truth to the rumor Schmidt's mustache is part of a famous (and somewhat disgusting) facial hair exhibit at Cooperstown, along with Rollie Fingers's throwback handlebar, Bruce Sutter's neck beard, Ozzie Smith's sideburns, and Eddie Murray's ... well, his just about everything. But it should be. Schmidt is sans the famous mustache here -- looks like he went with the permanent Movember look sometime during the '74 season.

On his first card, Schmidt didn't bear much resemblance to the player who'd go on to be recognized as arguably the greatest third baseman of modern times. And on the field, he bore little resemblance to that player he would become, the one who walloped 548 home runs -- winning eight single-season crowns -- and collected 10 Gold Gloves; in 40 plate appearances in '72, he hit .206, then fell to .196 in 443 PAs the next season. Good things the Phillies didn't judge the early book on Schmidt by the cover.

(It should also be noted that Ron Cey, who made six straight All-Star games as part of the Dodgers' famed long-running homegrown infield that also included Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, and Bill Russell, was the second-best NL third baseman of the era, which was sort of like being the second-best member of the Jackson 5. Those glasses should have been the dead giveaway that John Dave Hilton probably wouldn't hack it.)

1978 Paul Molitor

Can't imagine there are many rectangles of cardboard that have as much lasting entertainment value as this one.

You have a Hall of Famer in Paul Molitor, coolly and perfectly nicknamed "The Ignitor,'' who used his short, quick righthanded swing to pile up 3,319 career hits and who might have made a run at 4,000 had he not missed approximately 500 games to injury early in his career; you have a should-be Hall of Famer in Trammell, who like his longtime double-play partner Lou Whitaker has had his accomplishments marginalized by voters; you have U.L. Washington, a marginal player on some memorable Royals teams whose ever-present toothpick stands as a symbol of '70s cool; and you have a dude named Mickey Klutts who, considering he was injured more often than even a young Molitor, was apparently doomed by the universe to live up to his last name.

Four players, two superstars, two airbrush jobs that look like they were done with fingerpaints, one toothpick, one Klutts, and what does it all add up to? One truly classic card from my all-time favorite set.

1973 Dwight Evans

So this is how it began for Dewey, playing center field between Orioles speedster Al Bumbry ("Team speed? Team speed?") and Sam Malone nemesis Charlie Spikes. But let's reconsider for a moment how it ended for one of the most beloved Red Sox players we'll ever see.

I've heard comments from Evans through the years suggesting he regrets hanging on for a final season with the Orioles. Lou Gorman, then the Red Sox general manager, made a difficult decision after the 1990 season, letting the 38-year-old Evans go after a year in which he batted .249 with 13 homers as the team's primary designated hitter. Evans, whose throwing arm was superior to every right fielder of the era, at least among those who did not play for the Pittsburgh Pirates, could no longer handle the rigors of the outfield, and his career trajectory indicated his bat wouldn't warrant a spot in the lineup by the time he hit his 40th birthday. With an outfield of young stars Mike Greenwell and Ellis Burks and dependable 30-year-old Tom Brunansky, and promising if low-voltage Carlos Quintana at first base, the time seemed right to say goodbye to Dewey.

The time wasn't right for him however, and the conventional wisdom is that his desire to stick around for one more year -- and maybe stick it to the Red Sox in the process -- resulted in little more the disconcerting image of a 20-year Red Sox star wearing a garish color that looks right only on a traffic cone. Maybe joining the Orioles was a sartorial mistake, and being a member of one organization for an entire career might have enhanced his legacy even further ... but Evans himself should never regret the decision from a baseball standpoint, because a review of the numbers suggest he did have something left to offer offensively.

While his power was all but a memory (he had a career low .378 slugging percentage), he had an adjusted OPS of 119, and his .393 on-base percentage with Baltimore in '91 was higher than every Red Sox regular he left behind other than Wade Boggs (.421). His .770 OPS was higher than Brunansky's .692, and while his replacement as the Red Sox' DH had a decent first season in Boston with 28 home runs, it's fair to say the majority of us would rather see 60-year-old Dwight Evans make the 2012 Red Sox' opening day roster than ever consider another moment of Jack Clark's Red Sox career. No regrets, Dewey. The '91 Orioles were terrible and their wardrobe hideous, but there's no shame in going out the way he did.

1965 Joe Morgan

I imagine it's been said before, on the late, greatest blog and elsewhere, but it's so amazing that it bears repeating every once in a while: Joe Morgan the baseball player was pretty much the polar opposite of what he was as a broadcaster, and that is to say he was so consistently excellent and efficient that he's probably underrated even though he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990 with 81.8 percent of the vote.

Morgan was still a useful player even when age had sapped his power and speed -- in 1984, his final season, he had a .356 on-base percentage for the A's at age 40. And when he was in his prime and at his best, there wasn't a better offensive player in the game.

In 1976, his second straight MVP season, he batted .320 with 27 homers, 111 RBIs, 60 stolen bases (in 69 attempts.) He walked 114 times against 41 strikeouts, and led the majors in on-base percentage (.444), slugging (.576), OPS (1.020), and adjusted OPS (186). He even led the majors in sacrifice flies (12).

I can't decide whether it's sad or hilarious that Morgan's stubbornness in adhering to his narrow view of the game as a broadcaster seems to have prevented him from recognizing the broad excellence of his own career. Joe Posnanski summed it up perfectly a couple of years ago with this anecdote in a Gelf Magazine interview:

"Bill James tells a great story about how one time Jon Miller showEd Morgan Bill’s New Historical Baseball Abstract, which has Morgan ranked as the best second baseman of all time, ahead of Rogers Hornsby. Well, Morgan starts griping that this was ridiculous, that Hornsby hit .358 in his career, and Morgan never hit .358, and so on. And there it was, perfectly aligned—Joe Morgan the announcer arguing against Joe Morgan the player."

1972 Carlton Fisk

A smaller tragedy of Thurman Munson's premature death: We missed out on the chance to watch the Yankees legend and his contemporary rival Fisk violently whack each other with canes Joe Kapp/Angelo Mosca-style at a banquet a dozen years from now.

Fisk, stoic and deliberate, looked like he was carved out of his native New Hampshire's granite, and his legend in New England would be permanent and secure even without the iconic home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. If you grew up here and didn't admire Pudge, chances are you didn't know the difference between Fenway Park and the Public Garden. It will always seem so wrong that he spent more years with the White Sox than the Red Sox. Thanks, Haywood.

Fisk isn't the only excellent player featured on this card who got away from the Red Sox. (Uh, not so fast there, Mike Garman.) Cecil Cooper was one of the finest hitters in the American League in the late '70s through the mid-'80s. In the 1980, he hit .352, finishing a mere 38 points behind George Brett for the batting crown.
From 1980-83, he finished fifth in the AL MVP voting three times, and eighth in another season. He led the league in RBIs twice (1980, '83). He won a pair of Gold Gloves and three Silver Slugger awards. And it did it all for the Milwaukee Brewers, who acquired him from the Red Sox for George Scott and Bernie Carbo following the 1976 season.

It was a trade that worked for the Red Sox in the short-term -- Scott hit 33 homers in '77 -- and was an absolute disaster in the long-term. Scott's bat slowed and his waistline expanded, and he was out of the majors following the '79 season. Carbo was run off the team by Don Zimmer during the '78 season. Meanwhile, Cooper, who arrived in Boston amid the extraordinary influx of home-grown hitting talent in the early '70s (including Dwight Evans, Ben Oglivie, Juan Beniquez, and a bit later, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn), never quite found his niche as an everyday player with the Red Sox, and his reputation was dented by his 1-for-19 performance in the '75 World Series.

Curious about the line of thinking that went into the trade, I stumbled upon a March 30, 1977 column by Will McDonough in which he spoke to Cooper in Brewers spring training about the trade. Let's just say that Cooper had a knack for candor:

On his reaction to the trade: "In Boston, I always felt the pressure because if I didn't do it, they always had someone else around ready to do the job. If I didn't do well for a few games, I'd probably be sitting down. Here, I know I'm going to play all the time no matter what happens. If I don't do a good job, I know I'll be right back in the lineup the next day. But I do miss the guys on the Red Sox. It was always like family to me. I had a lot of close friends, Jim Rice, Lynn. I came up through the organization with those guys and I guess I just assumed I'd always be playing with them."

On the Red Sox lineup: "The Sox are going to score plenty of runs with that lineup. I think they should put Jimmy Rice in left field and let him play every day. I think Yaz could be the DH for 162 games and do the job. I worry about Jim having a weight problem if he doesn't play every day. And I'd like to see [Dwight] Evans stop worrying. He's a worry wart, and if he'd just forget all the little things and go out and play ball he'd be a great player."

On playing against the team he came up with: "I know playing first base, and being right near their dugout, I'm going to catch plenty of flak. Luis [Tiant] will be all over me. But I'll tell you what. I'm going to bash the ball. Just bash it."

Cooper was right about that. In his 125-game career against the Red Sox, he hit .315 with 19 homers, 89 RBIs, and an .864 OPS.

Previously in this series:

Pack 1: 1952 Mickey Mantle, 1969 Nolan Ryan, 1978 Dave Winfield, 1956 Ted Williams, 1975 Oscar Gamble.

Pack 2: 1960 Carl Yastrzemski, 1952 Gus Zernial, 1956 Willie Mays, 1987 Barry Bonds, 1978 Reggie Jackson.

Pack 3: 1993 Pedro Martinez, 1957 Sandy Koufax, 1973 Vida Blue, 1968 Bob Gibson, 1985 Dwight Gooden.

Pack 4: 1978 Eddie Murray, 1985 Kirby Puckett, 1983 Wade Boggs, 1987 Mark McGwire, 1980 Rickey Henderson.

Pack 5: 1976 Robin Yount, 2001 Heritage Derek Jeter, 1982 Traded Cal Ripken Jr., 1962 Ernie Banks, 1979 Ozzie Smith.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

1. So almost two months to the day after Terry Francona's sad goodbye, after the weeks of parades and charades with Pete Mackanin and Dale Sveum and Gene Lamont and Sandy Alomar Jr., tonight we learned the man who will be the next manager of the Red Sox couldn't be a more polarizing choice if his last name were Steinbrenner.

Robert John Valentine -- the only 61-year-old I know of who not only answers to Bobby, but still looks like a Bobby -- is what sure appears to be the compromise choice of Larry Lucchino and Ben Cherington to succeed Francona. And the most relevant question we can ask tonight will be probably be a matter of fierce debate through his tenure: Is Bobby V. the right choice?

2. If he manages a team or two that ends its season with a collage of champagne celebrations and duck boat rides, the answer will have to be in the affirmative. But until then, Valentine, a brilliant baseball mind who somehow never finished in first place and made just one World Series in 15 seasons as a manager with the Rangers and Mets, a man who admits he's a know-it-all and still can't help himself, a mass of contradictions and conundrums occasionally hidden behind a fake mustache and glasses, will remain a polarizing figure in his new job just as he was in his previous two.

Again: Is he the right choice? I doubt even Lucchino and Cherington are certain of that now, particularly the latter, who knew what he was getting into when he accepted the Red Sox' GM job but probably didn't expect to be overruled publicly on his first major decision.
But Valentine was the most daring choice, the boldest option by far, and with apologies to Gene Lamont, whose previous managerial stints look better upon close inspection (two first-place finishes in Chicago, more wins in Pittsburgh than the feeble rosters merited), he's the one with the most potential to achieve great things.

Of course, he's also the most likely to spontaneously combust, then tell you he actually invented spontaneous combustion at the kitchen in his restaurant in Stamford, Conn. one fine afternoon. Boston may need four sports radio stations just to keep up with him.

3. Wouldn't we all love to know the process Cherington, Lucchino (and I suppose John Henry and Tom Werner as well) went through before deciding upon Valentine. I think we know Cherington compromised the most, that Sveum was his guy once the Blue Jays made it clear that John Farrell was unavailable without a ridiculous ransom.

That considered, it absolutely falls upon Lucchino to make sure the new GM isn't and does not appear marginalized. Valentine, who has been accused of being a relentless and transparent manipulator of more than just bullpens and batting orders, already has a relationship with Lucchino, and it would be a shame if that undermines the authority the impressive and capable Cherington has in the new manager's eyes.

Here's hoping it's made clear to Valentine -- by Lucchino, Cherington, Henry, The Eck, Wally the Green Monster, Mrs. Henry, anyone with any clout -- that his only job is to utilize his vast knowledge to get the most out a talented, expensive team that won 90 games last season and should have won about a dozen more.

4. Evidence that Valentine is some kind of hard-edged disciplinarian is hard to come by when researching past. In fact, I'm skeptical any exists considering his messy divorce with the Mets nine years ago is alarmingly similar to how it all went so wrong for the 2011 Red Sox. (You just have to substitute marijuana and limos for beer and chicken.)

It's apparent that those who occupy the Red Sox clubhouse are going to have some real responsibility in policing themselves, whether it's Dustin Pedroia, Carl Crawford, David Ortiz, or someone else taking on a more vocal leadership role. I think they are up for the challenge -- last year's embarrassment does linger with these guys -- but it's imperative that Cherington and Lucchino get this across.

Valentine's style wasn't to go all Dick Williams on his players, but rather to call them out in the press -- he's casually candid to the point it's sometimes counterproductive. It will be interesting to see if he's toned down that aspect of his personality in the nine years since the Mets fired him.

I'm skeptical that a man of Valentine's confidence and ego learns life-altering lessons between ages 52 and 61, but perhaps he has realized in the interim between his gigs in New York and Boston that he needs to tone down the ancillary nonsense and let his baseball acumen do the talking for him.

If he exerts his authority as the manager conventionally rather than passive-aggressively, all the better. But it would constitute a change in character that I'm not counting on.

5. There will be nights when he manages brilliantly and the Red Sox win, and there will be reasons he makes a move for no other reason than it could make him look smarter than the other guy. His matchups with Joe Maddon could be epic clashes in strategy and one-upmanship.

But look at it this way: You know that he knows this is his last, best chance to cement a baseball legacy, and that should work in the Red Sox' favor. And no matter what issues Valentine has in Boston -- disciplining the clubhouse, dealing with the media, criticizing his players (can't wait until he compares Crawford unfavorably to Timo Perez) -- he can't mess it up more than it was messed up in September.

That sounds like faint praise, I know, but I really don't mean it that way. He's the 45th manager in Red Sox history. The 44th was the best they've had in the modern era, and if Bobby Valentine approaches what Terry Francona accomplished, he'll receive all the accolades his heart desires. But no one, Valentine and his new boss(es) included, knows how it will go.

He could be brilliant and engaging and own this town, he could drive Josh Beckett to run him down with his Ford F-150 in a Fort Myers parking lot two weeks into spring training, and pretty much anything in between would be believable with Valentine.

Nothing should come as a surprise, good or bad. So buckle in. It's Bobby V.'s show, and before he ever manages a game from the home dugout at Fenway, we already know it will never be boring.

[Note: In an earlier edition of this post, I had Tito as the 43d manager and Bobby V the 44th. I'd like to say it's because I still refuse to acknowledge that the Joe Kerrigan experience ever happened, but it was really just a goof.]

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

I'm sure most of you saw PeteAbe's so-sensible-it-just-might-work post yesterday on how the Red Sox can settle the matter of Theo Epstein compensation with the Cubs and acquire a proven starting pitcher who would be a perfect fit in their rotation in one swift move.

If not, read it here and nod in agreement.

You bet I'm on board with Pete's idea of giving the Cubs a couple of legitimate prospects (no, Lars Anderson and Jed Lowrie do not qualify) for Matt Garza as compensation for Epstein.

We discuss the logic and likelihood of such a deal, as well as the Gene Lamont/Bobby Valentine tale-of-the-tape and David Ortiz's job prospects in this week's edition of the Red Sox Podcast.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and for those among us who dare brave the shopping malls today, I hope you get through it with only surface injuries.

Just a quick pre-chat note here to link to today's media column, which leads with NBC's attempt, beginning with today's Red Wings-Bruins matchup (1 p.m.), to make the "Black Friday'' matinee game as national tradition just as it has been in Boston since the early '90s. Mike Milbury, who is in his usual studio analyst role today, said he's extremely impressed with how the Bruins have recovered from their slow start.

"They're playing hard and they're playing with passion, and they've gotten back to playing the way they did during their run to the Cup last year," Milbury said. "And you can't really blame them for starting slow. Last season was so long, with three seventh-game victories, and they had the right to have a great time over the summer, to celebrate what they accomplished. But it was such a short time away -- what did they have, eight or nine weeks off, really? -- so the slow start wasn't unexpected, and the recovery from it has been impressive."

There's also an item on NESN's hunt to replace Heidi Watney as its in-game Red Sox reporter, noting that Molly Sullivan (a Las Vegas native, North Carolina graduate, and self-proclaimed Red Sox fan) is perceived to be the front runner at the moment.

Playing a special Red Sox Managerial Search edition of Nine Innings while wondering what our old friend Maurice thinks of Bobby V. ...

1. Bobby Valentine, Red Sox manager? With only a hint of trepidation that comes from hiring such a force of unfiltered personality, I like it. I do. Given his polarizing nature, perhaps it's not an easy decision to come to, particularly when there were other appealing candidates. John Farrell would have been ideal, but his current employers seem to appreciate his work. Dale Sveum, who would have provided some element of continuity from the Epstein/Francona years and their organizational philosophies, would have been a fine choice. Sandy Alomar Jr. is going be a smart hire for another franchise soon. Gene Lamont? He's about as appealing as someone named Gene Lamont can be. In a perfect world, the Red Sox would have woken up before September ended, personal circumstances wouldn't have been a factor, and Terry Francona would still be here. But he's been gone for nearly two months now, and the Red Sox are overdue in finding his successor. Bobby V. has some similarities to Tito -- he's a skilled tactician who has seen the game through various prisms, from a promising prospect to an aging journeyman to a young manager and much more. And in other meaningful ways, he's nothing like Tito at all -- whereas Francona protected his players even beyond the length of their loyalties, Valentine is incurably and almost offhandedly candid, and those postgame media sessions will be must-watch on NESN. The Bobby V. Era will be different than the relative peace of the Tito Years (April 2004-August 2011, anyway). He will be unnecessarily controversial at times, he will say and do quirky things, and he's not the disciplinarian some perceive him to be (2011 chicken and beer Red Sox = 2002 pot and limos Mets). But Bobby V. is a bright, skilled manager who will draw good things out of this team. Works for me. Here's hoping he works for the Sox.

2. Ben Cherington has been with the Red Sox organization since 1998. He predates the current ownership, which suggests he's both extraordinarily capable and adaptable. He's worked with Larry Lucchino for nearly a decade, and he knows the details of his tumultuous working relationship with Theo Epstein. There is no doubt that when Cherington accepted the general manager's job that he knew the precise balance of power between ownership, Lucchino, and the baseball ops people. He knew what he was getting into, that Lucchino was going to have an increased role in the aftermath of Theo's departure and that he wouldn't have the clout as a general manager that Theo had. It could lead to some awkward situations beyond the Sveum situation, particularly if the rapport between Lucchino and Valentine pushes Cherington to the margins. But Cherington knew the circumstances when he accepted the job, and he knows the map of the land. This is Lucchino's show, Cherington knew it when he took the job, and he'll be fine. I just hope that Lucchino doesn't change the organizational philosophy of compiling as much useful information as possible -- via scouting and sabermetrics -- while trying to build that perpetual "player development machine" that Epstein emphasized and Cherington surely favors. Changing that approach would be a far bigger shame than any suggestion that the general manager has been marginalized.

3. If you're searching for further clues on what makes such a complicated and contradictory guy tick, I give you two terrific reads, one from the Sports Illustrated Vault, one new in this digital neighborhood this morning: First, Leigh Montville's 1992 SI article on Valentine and his seven-year run without a playoff berth as the Rangers manager. Also, if you somehow missed it yesterday, here's PeteAbe's insightful recollections on the fun, contradictions, and learning experiences of covering Valentine on a daily basis during his years on the Mets' beat. Good stuff.

4. Loved PeteAbe's tidbit that Valentine banned sliding into first base. I cringed every time Mike Greenwell did it, I cringe every time Dustin Pedroia does it, and I cringed every time any useful Red Sox player in between attempted it. It's not false hustle in most cases, but it is dangerous -- remember Kenny Lofton popping out his shoulder in the playoffs against the Red Sox years ago? -- and it's not the fastest way to get to the base.

5. Valentine is an icon in Japan from his managerial days there, and so it's natural to be curious whether he might be able to connect with Daisuke Matsuzaka in a way that Francona and his staff seemingly couldn't, at least for any length of time. Valentine has said that the thought the Red Sox tried to Americanize Dice-K's approach to pitching too much. I spoke to Valentine in July for my media column as well as a Five Questions feature here, and this is what he said when I asked him about Dice-K:

"He's that hard-headed guy who I felt had to get into the perfect scenario and be in the perfect spot to be the pitcher he could be. At times it was that in Boston, but that's a tough place for anyone to change teams and go to and be successful."

Matsuzaka is expected to return from Tommy John surgery sometime this summer. I suspect he'll respond to Valentine to the point that he's not just salvageable, but an actual asset to the Red Sox' pitching staff.

6. If/when Valentine is offered the Red Sox job, is it too much to hope that it ends up looking like a job swap with his predecessor? While Terry Francona has talked to Fox about a role on its broadcast team next season, I'd love to see him end up in the ESPN booth as Valentine's replacement alongside Orel Hershiser and Dan Shulman. Francona was witty and insightful during his two-game stint with Fox during the ALDS, and I'm convinced Tito, Hershiser, and Shulman would be a fantastic trio.

7. I've mentioned this before, but I still can't get over how he casually pointed out, with corresponding video, during an ESPN Red Sox broadcast this year that J.D. Drew isn't the hitter his flawless swing suggests he should be because he very rarely squares up the ball. Never heard anything like that from the analysts, some pretty astute, who watch the team every day. His knowledge is legit, even extraordinary. That should matter more than anything else.

8. Riddle time! If Bobby Valentine and Larry Lucchino both have the reputation as the smartest guy in the room, what happens when ... they're in a room together? Boom. Mind blown, right? Oh, all right, so Lucchino gets the title by default since he's the boss, I suppose. But man, there is the potential for some serious collisions of ego should this happen. Even if you're enthusiastic about the potential hiring, it's logical to believe given Valentine's history that it will end badly. But that's the risk that comes with hiring such a polarizing, vivid personality. The Red Sox will win plenty of ballgames and maybe even a trophy or two while he is here.

9. As for today's Completely Random Baseball Card:

Sure, the timeline is off by 30 years or so. But excuse me while I presume Bobby V. is mocking Derek Jeter's range here. Wouldn't put it past him to claim to have invented a time machine.

Yankees fans: Feel free to insert "Jed Lowrie" for Jeter.

Fans who are appalled at Evan Grant's MVP ballot yet again: Feel free to insert "Michael Young" for Jeter or Lowrie.

And if you're '80s old-school, Jody Reed is always an acceptable synonym for range-challenged.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

It doesn't require a Boomer Scott-long stretch to come up with four or five players who have a real, legitimate chance of winning the American League Most Valuable Player award this afternoon. Nor is it difficult to make a case why each of the prime candidates won't win.

The Blue Jays' Jose Bautista was the league's top slugger ... but some voters will hold it against him that his team never was in contention. Jacoby Ellsbury had a borderline historic offensive season . . . and while he had a monster September individually (1.067 OPS, eight home runs), the Red Sox' hideous finish will linger in the mind of some voters. Miguel Cabrera continued his career-long homage to Hank Aaron, leading the league in batting and on-base percentage . . . and yet, he wasn't the most valuable player on his own team, the AL Central-champion Detroit Tigers.

That was Justin Verlander, the laser-armed righthander with the most dazzling repertoire in the league and the results to match. Despite the day-to-day brilliance of Ellsbury, Bautista, Cabrera and a ballot full of other players (Dustin Pedroia, Adrian Gonzalez, CC Sabathia, Curtis Granderson, Ian Kinsler, Evan Longoria ....) who will justifiably receive plenty of support, Verlander should win. Whether he will depends upon how many voters willfully ignore the instruction this year that pitchers should be considered for the MVP.

Save for maybe the 2006 Morneau/Jeter showdown, the last time I recall anticipating a MVP announcement so eagerly was 1999, when a peak-of-his-powers Pedro Martinez lost to Rangers catcher Pudge Rodriguez despite receiving more first-place votes when a pair of writers -- George King from New York and LaVelle Neal from Minnesota -- left him off their ballot entirely. King proved the more duplicitous of the two when it was revealed he had had the Yankees' David Wells on his ballot just the previous season. Hey, but we remember their names, right?

Ignoring Pedro then looked foolish. It's become even more ridiculous as the years have passed and the evidence mounted that the massive hitters with the massive numbers never quite found the performance enhancer to help them solve Pedro, who arguably put together the greatest multi-year stretch of dominance by any pitcher in the history of the game during the steroid era.

Verlander's 2011 season doesn't stack up to the vintage '99 Pedro -- few do. But Verlander's superb season is strikingly similar to one that kept Red Sox fans mesmerized from April through September 25 years ago, when Roger Clemens went from the daybreak of his career to the ace of a generation:

Here's Verlander, 2011:

24 wins, 5 losses, 2.40 ERA, 34 starts, 251 innings, 174 hits, 57 walks, 250 strikeouts, 170 adjusted ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 6.2 H/9, 2.0 BB/9, 9.0 K/9

And Clemens, 1986:

24 wins, 4 losses, 2.48 ERA, 33 starts, 254 innings, 179 hits, 67 walks, 238 strikeouts, 169 ERA+, 0.969 WHIP, 6.3 H/9, 2.4 BB/9, 8.3 K/9

The similarities are uncanny, practically mirror images. Verlander led the the league in wins, winning percentage, innings, starts, ERA, Ks, ERA+, WHIP, and H/9. Clemens led the league in wins, winning percentage, ERA, ERA+, WHIP, and H/9. All Verlander is missing is a 20-strikeout game. (Update: And as astute Twitter follower @CusePulp points out, Verlander threw a no-hitter this year, something Clemens never accomplished.)

I'm not sure whether this is an indication that the view on pitchers winning the MVP award has changed over the years, but Clemens cruised to the award in '86 despite having formidable competition among a couple of everyday players. Clemens was first on 19 of 28 ballots, with runner-up Don Mattingly (.352, .967 OPS, 31 homers, 238 hits) receiving five first-place votes and Clemens's teammate Jim Rice (.324, 20 homers, 110 RBIs, .874 OPS) earning the other four. (According to baseball-reference.com's version of Wins Above Replacement, it was another Red Sox hitter, Wade Boggs, who deserved genuine consideration. He led the AL in bWAR after hitting .357 with a .453 on-base percentage. Then again, as Over The Monster's excellent Marc Normandin pointed out, bWAR also had the Brewers' Teddy Higuera as more valuable than Clemens that year, due in part to ballpark factors. Go figure.)

By winning the award this afternoon, Verlander would be the first starting pitcher since Clemens 25 years ago to be named MVP. The last pitcher to win it was A's closer Dennis Eckersley in 1992. Should Verlander not prevail today, it opens up the question as to whether a starting pitcher will ever win it again going forward. This much is already certain: Statistical advancements and more critical thinking in recognizing player value have all but guaranteed no closer will win it again. As dominant as the Eck was in '92 -- 51 saves, 1.91 ERA, 93/11 K/BB ratio -- he threw just 80 innings. Even if you view bWAR skeptically, his 17th overall ranking -- behind teammates Mark McGwire and Mike Bordick -- isn't hard to fathom. Coincidentally, it was Clemens who led the league in bWAR that season, with Frank Thomas close behind.

Should you have any further doubt about the brilliance of Verlander's season, baseball-reference's Play Index provides some amazing perspective. The following is a list of pitchers in the past 50 years who have won 22 games or more, had an ERA+ of 169 or better, whiffed at least 230 batters, and had a WHIP of 1.05 or lower. It reads as a list of the greatest seasons I've been fortunate to see, accompanied by a few legendary ones I wish I'd seen:

The list of a dozen includes three MVPs (Clemens '86, Vida Blue '71, and Bob Gibson '68, the last NL pitcher to win the award), two runners-up (Pedro '99, Ron Guidry '78, Sandy Koufax '66).

Dwight Gooden, during his meteoric 24-4, 1.53 season in '85, was fourth in the voting. Steve Carlton, during his 27-win '72 season for the miserable Phillies, was fifth. Gaylord Perry '72 was sixth, Randy Johnson '02 seventh, and Marichal '65 was ninth. (Koufax, who went 26-8 with a 2.04 ERA and 385 strikeouts in '65, was second in the voting, but somehow didn't fit our criteria because of his Mark Portugal-like 160 adjusted ERA. He did beat out Marichal for the Cy Young, though, making the Giants legend the only pitcher among the dozen not to win the award in that particular season.)

All right, at the rate I'm going here, they're going to announce this thing before I finish the post. So forgive me just one more whimsical spin through WAR to try to guess who will win. Verlander and Bautista were tops in the AL in baseball-reference's version of WAR; Ellsbury was tops in Fangraph's version (9.4), while Verlander was seventh, and second among pitchers to CC Sabathia.

Recognizing that they both measures have their hiccups, here's list of the of the top eight players in the AL when their individual fWAR and bWAR are combined:

Bautista, 16.8; Ellsbury, 16.4; Verlander, 15.5; Pedroia, 14.8; Cabrera, 14.4; Sabathia, 14; Adrian Gonzalez and Alex Gordon (tie), 13.5

So that settles it, right? It's Bautista, who didn't play for a contender, by a check swing over Ellsbury, who played for a contender that famously collapsed, with Verlander, who submitted a classic season on the mound for a playoff team, a relatively close third.

OK, so that settles nothing. All we know for sure is that we'll know for sure at 2 p.m. And no matter the outcome, another great baseball argument will rage on.

(Related: Give the award to Pedro, Pudge. We're not letting this go. It's not too late. Oh, and about that 2002 Cy Young, Barry Zito ...)

No media column or chat this week. On a bit of a mini-vacation. No truth to the rumor I'm interviewing for the Red Sox managerial opening right after Stump Merrill, Maury Wills, and Terry Bevington get their chance to genuflect in Larry Lucchino's general direction.

In the meantime, if you missed it, here is this week's podcast, during which I chat with Tony Mazz and Daigo Fujiwara about the managerial merits of Dale Sveum (yup, so much for that), the departure of Jonathan Papelbon, and Jacoby Ellsbury's MVP chances.

Be back Monday morning with a column on the AL MVP race. Enjoy the weekend. Also: Hire Alomar.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Even when a popular player's departure comes as no surprise, there's often an element of sad finality that whacks you when he's trotted out for the obligatory introductory press conference by his new team. Seeing Jonathan Papelbon, a signature and essential member of the Red Sox for a half-dozen years, decked out in another team's gear looks about as weird as you thought it would. And not just because of the jarring realization that in this photo he looks way too much like a certain combustible Jim Carrey character. An empty Bud Light case would look more familiar atop his head than that Philly hat.

But so it goes. Those tinges of wistfulness will fade soon enough. The Dropkick Murphys will be just fine, and the cop who always gave Papelbon a fist-bump upon departing the bullpen for the mound will find another friend. It's not as if free agency is a new concept -- an excellent if specialized player received an absurd amount of money, and he moved along. Yup, we've all heard that one before, with both arrivals and departures.

Papelbon was already gone before he left, and newbie general manager Ben Cherington and the Red Sox recognized the inevitability of his departure. They've moved on, too, and in the big picture it couldn't happen soon enough. September was ugly, the aftermath was worse, and only now, with the impressive Cherington at the wheel and free agency underway, does it feel like the 2011 season is in the past.

The task Cherington faces is similar to the one facing Theo Epstein in November 2002: fill in quality secondary players around an enviable core of stars. He must solve 40 percent of the starting rotation, find someone to close, and possibly add a righthanded-hitting bat in the outfield . . . oh, and hire the right manager to bring it all together. While Cherington's first acquisition of a name player will should work out better than Theo's did -- when will Ramiro Mendoza be exposed as a double agent? -- here are five items that should be atop his to-do list:

1. Hire Dale Sveum as manager: To put the state of the Red Sox' managerial search in terms "Swaymer'' (copyright Terry Francona, 2007) can understand, it appears as though he's being windmilled around third and is heading for home with the winning run.

The Red Sox have interviewed five candidates for the opportunity to be Tito's successor, and Sveum will be the first to have a second meeting with Ben Cherington and the Red Sox' brain trust when they gather today. It sure looks like he's the leader in the clubhouse to be the leader in the clubhouse.

I've become convinced that is a good thing. While Sveum was an arm-flapping debacle as a third base coach -- I think he was directly responsible for one-third of Rocco Baldelli's career assists, conservatively -- he earned what sounds like genuine and universal respect from players and management alike. He was praised as both a teacher and tactician, and his willingness to pore over statistical breakdowns to find any advantage endeared him to the front office.

He may not be the most charismatic personality, quick with a quip or gifted in seeming candid without revealing too much as Francona was, but those things will only matter to those who put the ancillary stuff ahead of a manager's ability to run a baseball team.

I think Sandy Alomar Jr. is going to be a hell of a manager some day, and he'd be a daring and perhaps rewarding choice for the Red Sox. But I'm buying it -- Sveum is the right manager for the Red Sox right now. Just tie his arms down any time he's near a coach's box.

2. Find a right fielder who can hit from the right side: All right, I'm tapping the brakes on the Michael Cuddyer bandwagon.

While the longtime Twins corner outfielder/infielder would be an ideal fit in a few ways -- he mashes lefthanded pitching (.869 career OPS vs. southpaws), he's regarded as a great teammate, he's defensively versatile though extremely unlikely to be honored with any gloves made of precious metals -- he will be 33 on Opening Day. He's a nice complementary piece, and the Red Sox sure are in need players in his mold . . . but the depth of their interest should be dependent upon length of contract. It's neither good business nor savvy roster-building to give a player who's No. 1 career comp is Troy O'Leary a three-year deal through is mid-30s.

If the Red Sox are going to make more than a mid-level financial commitment to a right fielder, put me down for signing Carlos Beltran. He'll be 35 in April and doesn't run as well as he used to, but the switch hitter remains an excellent offensive player (.910 OPS last year) who has fared slightly better from the right side of the plate than the left over his career, a benefit for the lefty-heavy Red Sox lineup.

I presume the Red Sox' interest in Beltran is tied to David Ortiz's status, since Beltran would be best served by more than an occasional day as the designated hitter, with Ryan Kalish/Josh Reddick getting time against righthanded pitching.

It says here it would be swell if the Red Sox retained Ortiz and signed Beltran, but should Cherington go the redemption/reclamation route, I rather see him take a flier on Andruw Jones (.923 OPS, eight homers in 146 plate appearances against lefties last year) rather than make any kind of commitment to Grady Sizemore, whose knee problems are likely to prevent him from showing anything more than occasional flashes of the player he was in 2008, the last time he hit at least .248 or played more than 106 games.

He's going to get a financial commitment elsewhere, even if it's a one-year deal, that exceeds what an injury-prone 29-year-old whose top career comp is Trot Nixon should receive. Beltran is the best bet. Get him.

Weird how Sizemore (Trot), Cuddyer (O'Leary) and Beltran (Fred Lynn) all have ex-Red Sox as their top comps. Maybe it's a hint that Cherington should sign all of them.

3. Move Daniel Bard to the rotation: Cherington's toughest challenge is to find No. 4 and 5 starters behind Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, and --- burrrrrpppp --- Josh Beckett. The longer one stares at the list of free agent pitchers, the clearer it becomes that the answers are probably not going to be found among those names.

C.J. Wilson's accomplishments look small compared to his expected price tag. Yu Darvish is intriguing, but there's a perception, hopefully a wrong one, that the Daisuke Matsuzaka experience may lead to the Sox sitting out a dance or two when it comes to high-priced pitching from the Far East. Edwin Jackson looks like a gem only in comparison to the junk in this free agent class of pitchers. Mark Buehrle is as dependable as the sunrise, which is why he's drawing a ton of early interest. Bruce Chen? Chris Capuano? Obviously, you only break the glass on those guys in one-game playoff situations. Der.

Chances are Cherington will have to fill those slots either through a trade -- and any affordable, target-worthy names beyond Chicago's John Danks are well off the radar here -- or more likely, internally. Alfredo Aceves wants to start, and anointing him the No. 4 guy does solve one problem, though it must be noted that he's better in relief (2.62 ERA) than in his relatively small sample as a starter (4.18 ERA) during his career. Is it worth creating another void in the bullpen to appease him while hoping his stuff fully translates to starting? Well ... maybe.

But if someone is going to move from the bullpen to the rotation, I'd rather see Daniel Bard get the chance. Forget that he faltered as a starter when he first entered pro ball -- he had severe command and mechanical issues (75 walks in 78 innings), and he's a far more polished product now, four years later.

I'm sure there's no need to rehash why a quality pitcher who throws 180 innings is intrinsically more valuable than one who throws 70. And purely from a whimsical standpoint, Bard's current career numbers in relief -- 197 innings, 132 hits, 213 strikeouts, 1.06 WHIP, 2.88 ERA -- look like one hell of an exceptional season for a starting pitcher ... you know, if you squint a little and take context in how those numbers were accumulated out of the equation.

They need to try this at the very least when they get to Ft. Myers. Bard is 26 years old. He has an electric arm. Sign Francisco Cordero, Joe Nathan, Matt Capps and another half-dozen relief types, and find out whether he can be something considerably more than a No. 4 starter. He could be excellent. I say he would. And if he is not, just do what you do with everyone else who can't cut it in the rotation. Stick him back in the bullpen.

4. Sign enough middle-relief types and minor-league free agent pitchers that not even Dusty Baker could burn through all of their arms in one season: The conventional wisdom, especially after the miserable September, was that Theo Epstein didn't provide Francona with enough pitching depth. In the vacuum of that single month, when Kyle Weiland, Tim Wakefield, and Andrew Miller wouldn't have thrown a meaningful inning in an ideal world, well, yeah, it was true. Theo should have picked up a Chen or a Capuano early in September. And their timing on letting Kevin Millwood go to Colorado couldn't have been worse.

But also remember that the Red Sox did have what seemed to be extraordinary depth to begin the season. Buchholz was healthy and coming off a 17-win season. Lackey hadn't proved completely useless. Aceves wasn't even on the Opening Day roster. Wakefield was deep in the bullpen, hoping he could give Red Sox fans all the milestones they desire he desires.

Rich Hill, Scott Atchison, Brandon Duckworth and a handful of other pitchers with big-league experience were at Pawtucket. And yet . . . in the end, the staff was battered, tired and depleted. The lesson, known as the Bronson/Wily Mo Corollary, is that when you're starting to believe you have enough pitching, bring three more arms just in case.

Baseball America has a comprehensive, sortable list of minor league free agents. It's imperative that Cherington and his player personnel underlings sift through the likes of Mark Prior, Manny Corpas, and Billy Buckner to find a spare arm or three to help the 2012 Red Sox along the way.

5. Re-sign Papi: There are few players in Red Sox history who deserve to go out on their own terms, and fewer still who actually have. (Yaz, Ted Williams, Hipolito Pichardo ...) Whatever frustrations you may have with Ortiz -- the disappointment that came when his name was reported to be on that list of players who failed a performance-enhancing drug test, his hypersensitivity about how much respect (read: $) management shows him, his casual undermining of Francona in September -- all it takes is a few minutes of watching "Faith Rewarded" to jostle those memories of how much he has meant to the Red Sox organization. He may not have come up with the Red Sox, but his special legacy belongs to Boston forever.

I recognize that nostalgia and public sentiment belong a long way down a list of reasons a franchise should retain or pursue a player, presuming they belong on the list at all. But emotion is as relevant in Ortiz's case as it can be with any modern Red Sox player; I want it to end well for him here even if I know it's probably not likely given that his ability to get worked up about slights real and imagined is about equal to his ability to hammer a hanging slider. But that's also the catch -- he still can crush the baseball better than all but a dozen or so hitters in the American League, and there's no need for it to end for him here now.

One fan favorite is already gone, and the roster is weaker for it. But Jonathan Papelbon got ridiculous money to put on that Phillies hat, and Ortiz won't get his own Godfather offer elsewhere (though I'm beginning to wonder what Dan Duquette is up to in Baltimore).

Here's hoping he's presented with a contract offer of suitable length and salary to both his ego and the Red Sox, and he's back in the middle of the lineup next season and maybe another beyond. In an offseason of enormous change, it would be a nice bonus to keep the player most responsible for bringing Boston the best of times. Especially when his still capable of making good times seem so good again.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Manny: "Just to be clear, man. It's $160 million, right? Plus my own Skee-Ball machine? Moorad said you promised the Skee-Ball machine. He said he could get you to agree to anything. Then he laughed and laughed, kind of like the bad guy always does in the cartoons."

Duquette: "Yes, $160 million. Plus Skee-Ball. Correct. Now please, if you could, stop asking if you can bring Tavarez with you from Cleveland. I told you Julian is not a free agent, and besides, he frightens me. John Hart told me small animals won't even look him in the eye."

Manny: "No worries, man. For $160 million, Manny will hit many, many baseballs over this green wall. [Looks up.] Say, you know what you should do? Put some seats up there. A couple of rows. Make them exclusive, man. Fans will love them."

Duquette: "Eh, glorified bleachers. Plus, I don't want any drunks toppling over and falling on your head. Stick to hitting and counting your millions. I'll handle the public relations around here. Repeat after me: More days in first place ..."

Manny: "Hey, man, know what else you should do? Put a bathroom inside that wall! Man, I've got all kinds of ideas for this place . . ."

* * *

Well, that's how it could have gone, though I suppose we'll never know. What we do know for sure is that signing Ramirez to that eight-year, $160 million contract a week before Christmas 2000 was one of the best moves in franchise history. The first thought that crossed my mind when news broke of Duquette's hiring -- or return from exile, depending upon your perspective -- as the general manager of the Orioles was this: Wonder who his new Manny will be as he tries to make a splash in Baltimore. Albert Pujols? Or Prince Fielder? He's says neither. Once he surveys the landscape, I bet it's one or the other.

As important as it was, the Manny deal ranks just third among Duquette's savviest transactions during his complicated and controversial eight-year stewardship (1994-2001) as the Red Sox general manager. Sending flammable closer Heathcliff Slocumb to the Seattle Mariners for a couple of minor leaguers named Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe at the July 1997 trade deadline might be the biggest 2-for-1 heist in baseball history, and it matters not at all that Duquette reportedly preferred pitcher Ken Cloude to Lowe. And any trade for Pedro Martinez is automatically a brilliant one -- especially one in which the featured prospect heading in the other direction is future punchline Carl Pavano.

(To think the November 1997 trade with the Expos was the second time he had traded for Pedro. During Duquette's acclaimed stint as Montreal's general manager, he swiped the most electrifying pitcher of this and possibly any generation in November 1993 from the Dodgers in exchange for second baseman Delino DeShields. The deal was initially but very briefly perceived as a jackpot for Los Angeles since Tommy Lasorda told anyone with a notepad that Martinez was too small to survive as a starter. I don't believe Lasorda rehashes that particular interpretation much anymore, at least not without a couple dozen expletives mixed in.)

Signing Johnny Damon before the 2002 also proved funds well-spent, both in terms of on-field production and off-field image. Duquette even found a future superstar with the first draft choice of his tenure in Boston: With the No. 13 selection in the 1994 draft, he chose a skinny Georgia Tech shortstop with an unusual first name. I imagine it didn't take long for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who used the No. 12 pick on a shortstop named Mark Farris, to regret passing on Nomar Garciaparra.

Duquette's greatest accomplishment with the Red Sox had nothing to do with the three playoff berths (1995, '98, '99) and one American League East title won during his tenure, and it was only tangentially related to his collecting of the right superstars. For the first time in Red Sox history, the roster was a true melting pot. With Mo Vaughn crushing homers and emerging as the vocal leader, Pedro anchoring the pitching staff, Nomar emerging as the imitated idol of a generation of Little Leaguers, and the end of the bench no longer the exclusive domain of the scrappy white guy, the race issues that had lingered over the franchise long after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier were finally in the past. The Red Sox may have had other color blind executives prior to Duquette, but none of their rosters reflected an absolute lack of prejudice like his did. Forever and always, he should be commended for that.

* * *

My issue with the perception of the Duquette era is that recently, he's been commended for a little too much. Specifically, his role in putting together the 2004 Red Sox' World Championship team, which I've been told was the franchise's first in 86 years. In the greasy aftermath of the 2011 Red Sox' historic September collapse, there seemed to be a rush to revise history in his favor while discrediting his departing successor, Theo Epstein. To suggest that Duquette's smart trades and signings -- Pedro, Manny, Damon, Varitek, Lowe -- built the foundation for the core of that special team is fair. But any notion that he was more responsible for it than Epstein goes beyond a case of selective memory and suggests either a lack of context or an outright agenda.

The reasons Duquette has not until now had a real shot at a GM job in the nine years after he was fired by the Red Sox ownership fall into two categories: Personal and personnel. The latter is less severe, so Iet's address that first with this question: What is a more difficult task for a general manager? Signing and trading for established stars, or constructing a deep team around those stars, whether by finding the right veteran role player in free agency or having talented low-cost help arrive from the farm system?

Duquette acquired the stars that were at the core of the 2004 team. Epstein finished the job with sizable helpings of both preparation and luck, signing Bill Mueller, David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, Mike Timlin, Todd Walker and Mark Bellhorn among others in that 2003-04 window. I think you know where I stand on the Epstein-Duquette debate: leaving behind roughly half the pieces for a World Series champ doesn't make you the architect. Someone else had to use their own blueprint to complete the unfinished job.

That's not to suggest their strategies were mutually exclusive through their respective tenures. Epstein traded for Curt Schilling and signed Keith Foulke, both established stars. He paid high prices for established or coveted players who underachieved or outright flopped (Daisuke Matsuzaka, Edgar Renteria, and Carl Crawford, Year 1). He saw something in Julio Lugo that does not exist. He made the biggest mistake on either general managers resume by giving a B-level pitcher and an F-level personality A-list money when he awarded John Lackey $82.5 million dollars following the 2009 season. He had his flops, his flaws. And Duquette put together some likable Sox teams -- particularly in '98, when Mo was still in the neighborhood, Flash Gordon was untouchable in the ninth inning, and The Eck was in his final season -- by finding dependable secondary players such as Tim Wakefield, Troy O'Leary, Rich Garces, and Brian Daubach at other teams' consignment sales.

Ultimately, though, those were Duquette's chief attributes as a general manager: He picked the right superstars to pursue. And he could find an occasional bargain that had staying power. That is not nearly enough to suggest he's superior general manager to Epstein, who may have been spotty in his targeting of high-priced talent, but who was far superior in other important aspects of franchise-building. He built more complete rosters with more organizational depth (though it must be said that Cherington faces a similar task to the one Epstein faced in his first season), character was a factor worthy of serious consideration, and most importantly, he lived up to the vow he made on the day he was introduced as the Red Sox general manager, to build a "player development machine.''

* * *

Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Jonathan Papelbon, and Clay Buchholz were drafted and signed by the Red Sox during Epstein's time, and all but Buchholz contributed significantly to the 2007 World Champions. Epstein did benefit from having a few morsels Duquette left behind in the otherwise bare cupboard -- Kevin Youkilis, who was the organization's 29th-ranked prospect in 2002, or 18-year-old Hanley Ramirez. But neither of those players had played above Single A when Duquette was fired; they were developed by the next regime.

Given Duquette's belief that big-market teams should use prospects to acquire established players, you bet it's fair to wonder how many of the ones who eventually made it -- Youk, Hanley, Anibal Sanchez, Freddy Sanchez -- would have developed here had he somehow been spared once the new ownership took over, and how many would have gone the way of Steve Lomasney and Donnie Sadler, straight to obscurity save for a pit stop in the Northern League. Not many developed in the 1999-2001 range when the Red Sox were widely perceived to have one of the most barren farm systems in baseball. Duquette couldn't have neglected it more if he ordered Ben Mondor to disband the Pawtucket franchise. According Baseball America, the top three prospects he left behind in the Red Sox organization in 2002 were Seung Song, Tony Blanco, and Rene Miniel. Fair to say you won't be paying for your kids' college education with proceeds from selling their rookie cards.

Duquette hit it big early in the amateur draft in '94 with Nomar. His top selections the following seasons weren't quite so successful. (Note: I had previously credited him with drafting Lester in 2002, but as kindly reader Mike M. points out, Duquette was dismissed in March of that year. Mike Port was the interim GM and David Chadd the scouting director when Lester was selected.)

1995: P Andy Yount (two picks before the Blue Jays took Roy Halladay).

1996: P John Garrett.

1997: P John Curtice (a pick after the Astros selected Lance Berkman).

1998: SS Adam Everett (traded for Carl Everett; no relation).

1999: OF Rick Asadoorian (first pick of the second round: Carl Crawford).

2000: P Phil Dumatrait (eight picks before the Braves chose Adam Wainwright).

2001: C Kelly Shoppach.

There's a good-field, no-hit shortstop and a decent backup catcher in there -- it could be worse, but it's not nearly the draft proficiency Epstein and his player development staff showed. But then Duquette's priority was not the draft, but his forward-thinking but horribly executed idea of pursuing talent in foreign markets. Tomo Ohka was a so-so back-of-the-rotation starter, but Jin Ho Cho, Sang-hoon Lee, Sun-Woo Kim and Robinson Checo totaled five wins and 11 losses in 65 career appearances with the Red Sox. Those Pacific Rim expenses might have been better off earmarked for their 1998 ninth-round selection, a slugging Baltimore-area high school first baseman named Mark Teixeira. Teixeira and his family were famously put off by the tenor of their negotiations with the Sox, and that botched negotiation stands as a prime example of the fatal flaw of the Duquette regime: personal and institutional arrogance that led to the alienation of so many outsiders who had to deal with the organization. A malignant side effect to that approach was the sense of entitlement that pervaded the final, hideous team of Duquette's reign.

* * *

Think the 2011 Red Sox was the most unlikable Red Sox team in recent history? You must be too young to remember the Red Sox of a decade prior, or you've simply eliminated any recollection of that feral pack of .258-hitting egomaniacs from memory. Good for you if it's the latter. Carl Everett, Dante Bichette, Jose Offerman, Mike Lansing (who enjoyed ripping up the lineup card when his name wasn't on it), Shea Hillenbrand ... what a world-class collection of miserable, self-absorbed jerks. No wonder Manny wanted to stay in Pawtucket once his rehab stint was up. No wonder Pedro ripped off his jersey after toady manager Joe Kerrigan -- who took over for Jimy Williams after he was fired in part for feuding with the despicable Everett -- tried to make him pitch through a shoulder injury that all but put his arm slot down in Dan Quisenberry territory. John Lackey would have seemed a charming rogue on that team.

Duquette's worst personnel mistakes through the years -- believing Wil Cordero could play second base, believing Kevin Mitchell could play right field, sacrificing continuity to run other teams' failed Rated Rookies (Arquimedez Pozo, Rudy Pemberton, Dwayne Hosey) in and out, believing in minor league journeymen with long-revealed flaws (Morgan Burkhart, Izzy Alcantara, Dwayne Hosey), signing burned-out Steve Avery, scrambling for Steve Ontiveros, trading Jamie Moyer for Darren Bragg (OK, understandable at the time), firing Johnny Cumberland after the epic Mussina-Cone matchup against the Yankees, never finding a No. 2 starter behind Pedro who wasn't a rehab project, alienating Mo (OK, he was right about Roger), naming Kerrigan manager -- might have been easier to overcome had he recognized the benefits of accountability and character both publicly and privately. A lot of people wanted to see him fail, he brought the enmity upon himself, and ultimately the prolonged hiatus tells you all you need to know about how he treated people when he wielded power.

Hearing Duquette's words as he was introduced in Baltimore last week, it didn't seem as if he'd had a particular moment of epiphany -- "Damn, why didn't I just let Jimy tase Everett like he wanted to?" -- but he acknowledged that he had plenty of time to think about what he would and should have done differently. He said he'd be kinder and gentler this time around, and you got the sense he honestly learned from his mistakes in the interim.

* * *

It's possible he realized his mistake the very day he lost his dream job. He was the local boy who made good as the home team's general manager before any of us had heard of Theo Epstein, and his awkward and tearful press conference in Ft. Myers when he was fired -- he really was the last to know -- was a reminder of how much he cared about the Red Sox. He elaborated on those feelings during a June 2002 interview with the Globe's Stan Grossfeld: "How would you feel? It's like if you spent a lot of your time building up an antique car and making it nice and then, you know, you don't have a chance to drive this to be part of all the work you've done. It leaves a real empty feeling, so . . ."

So . . . maybe fulfillment comes in Baltimore, though it won't be easy. The joke is that their mantra is "more days in last place" thanks to meddling owner Peter Angelos, and they play in a division with the Boston and New York financial superpowers as well as the Rays and Jays, the former baseball's best-run franchise and the latter showing signs of similar organizational intelligence. He's going to need to find his Manny (Pedro, of course, cannot be duplicated) while avoiding the Checos and building a real farm system. It's a tall order, which is one reason he's getting this chance in the first place; candidates with more recent accomplishments and brighter prospects surveyed the situation and bowed out, which says a lot. It's tempting to suggest the Orioles and Duquette settled for each other, but the sharper point is that they both needed each other under the circumstances. Call it a marriage of convenience. But it's a marriage that could work if Duquette still has his old knack for signing the right stars and making clever trades while having the wisdom to avoid repeating his past mistakes.

It's going to be fascinating to see whether or not he reverts to old habits. I do believe him when he says he'll be more personable, that he's changed his abrasive ways. I was amused a few weeks ago, right around the time Epstein started hanging around a Starbucks near Wrigley Field, when I was bickering with some patrons on the internet sports bar known as Twitter about Duquette's accomplishments and failings here. After five or six references to Steve Avery and the dustbowl of a farm system and Checo and his other faults and blunders, I received a simple message from the handle @danduquette: Thanks :) Hey, an emoticon would have been an unthinkable expression of emotion for the old Duquette. Of course, last time he had a GM job, Twitter and emoticons and such didn't yet exist. The times have changed. Here's hoping Duquette has too.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Though I'm perceived as the resident stats guy around here by some peers, I'd argue that I'm more nostalgic about baseball than anything else. Come to think of it, I'm long overdue for another misty paean to Fred Lynn or Butch Hobson and the summer of '78. ("In the cool autumn shade beneath a monstrous wall of green, Jack Brohamer hit a routine grounder to third base ...")

But even with that awareness of my incurable sentimental sensibilities and the knowledge that this day was going to arrive, I'm surprised by my initial reaction to the news that Jonathan Papelbon, the Red Sox' closer through six full seasons and a feature film's worth of good times and bad, is set to join the Philadelphia Phillies: I'm much more bummed than I thought I'd be. It's sort of similar to the feeling you get after your team's trusted closer blows a save, actually, watching another one get away.

Practically -- sabermetrically -- the decision to let the soon-to-be-31-year-old closer depart is a logical one, particularly if the terms of his deal with Philadelphia approach the fiscally ridiculous four-year, $44 million offer they reportedly made to incumbent closer Ryan Madson, a player three months older than Papelbon and not nearly as accomplished. [Update: If the reports of four years and at least $50 million are accurate, good for him for hitting that free agency jackpot he long coveted with an organization that is apparently unaware of Wins Above Replacement.]

It's been well-established that closers not named Mariano Rivera typically have a short shelf-life, are often volatile from season to season, and for the workload that they handle, really should not be paid much more than $5 million per season. Given that the Red Sox got the best of Papelbon at reasonable rates (though he did throw strikes in arbitration, earning $12 million in 2010) and the Phillies are likely to be overpaying for his decline whether it's steep or subtle, letting him go now will probably prove a prudent business decision by the Red Sox.

Eventually, it will prove a prudent baseball decision as well. But right now, on November 11, it doesn't feel that way, and it probably won't for a while. After the Red Sox' historic September collapse -- a meltdown in which he can't claim innocence, given that it's now assured that the last image of Papelbon in a Boston uniform is one him trudging off the mound, ashen-faced and staring daggers through the ground, after getting Andinoed yet again in the 162d and final game of the season -- we entered the offseason with the quaint notion that the priority should be bringing in more high-quality players who thrived in the spotlight.

Despite his ugly final scene -- Papelbon must still catch himself muttering, "Robert [Expletive] Andino?" every now and then -- a high-quality player who thrived in the spotlight is an accurate description of his time in Boston. A more colloquial way of putting it: It was a hell of a ride, Pap. He arrived in 2005 as a starting pitcher who answered to Jon, and 6 1/2-years later he departs a decorated if recently dented closer whose request to be called Jonathan never quite jibed with his goofy and informal manner away from the mound.

On the mound, he was poised from the beginning, showing promise as a starter from his 2005 debut against the Twins that bizarre July day when his arrival was overshadowed by the rumors that Manny Ramirez would be traded. But it soon became evident that his calling -- and his preference -- was to be a closer. He came to the rescue after all the evidence was compiled that his predecessor, Keith Foulke, would never be the same after sacrificing his career for a championship during the 2004 postseason, and he was electric and elite from the beginning. As a rookie in 2006, he compiled a season that fell somewhere between '78 Goose Gossage and Vintage Eck on the Unhittable Closer Scale, finishing with a 0.92 ERA, 35 saves, and 0.77 WHIP, and an ungodly 517 adjusted ERA. His famous glower wasn't nearly as menacing as his fastball.

The next season, he struck out 13 batters per nine innings, saved 37 games with a 1.85 ERA ... and created the image that will stay with us long after those snapshots from September 2011 have faded. It was Papelbon who got the final out to clinch the Red Sox' second World Championship in four years. And it was Papelbon who got the party started, and no doubt kept it going long after the champagne-soaked cameras had been dried off and put away. He carried himself in those ninth innings as if invincibility were his birthright, and his record suggested he might have been onto something: In his first 26 postseason innings, spread over four seasons, seven playoff series, and 17 games, he did not allow a single run.

Of course, invincibility never lasts in sports if you're around long enough, and just glance toward Foxborough if you need confirmation. There was a time not so long ago when Tom Brady was 10-0 in playoff games. Now he gets asked why he hasn't led his team to a playoff win since 2007. Papelbon's rude awakening that flawlessness was only temporary came during the Game 3 of the 2009 American League Division Series against the Angels, when he gave up the tying run in the eighth, melted down in the ninth, and took the loss in the final game of the season. He hasn't had a chance to redeem himself in the postseason since.

That chance will come with the Phillies. Philly is an excellent place for him, a big, high-pressure market with a stacked rotation and a talented veteran team. It probably won't feel much different to him from Boston, though he'd be wise to trade in the Bud Light for Yuengling.

But Fenway will feel different without him, and not only because stand-up closers who dance around with 12-pack boxes on their heads and weren't shy about breaking out the kilt every now and then tend to leave a lasting impression. He's going to be difficult to replace on the field. The days of perfection are gone, but he was still pretty damn good in 2011, trusting his secondary pitches more, lowering his WHIP to below 1.00 while striking out more than 12 batters per nine innings. Robert Andino may disagree, but he's still one of the toughest closers around, and whoever replaces him -- Heath Bell? Jonathan Broxton? -- has a lot to live up to.

Should it be the obvious in-house option, Daniel Bard, that leaves a significant hole in the relief ace role he filled so well (again, until September, the caveat for every pitcher not named Alfredo Aceves). It also probably eliminates the chance of Bard converting to a starter, an appealing possibility given his outstanding stuff and the need to eliminate any possibility that Tim Wakefield will be getting a regular turn in 2012.

Ben Cherington has said all the right things since taking over as general manager. He's done a remarkable job, with his openness and candor, of revealing his baseball acumen and allowing fans put the ugly fallout of September behind them. But the most important part of his job is ahead: supplementing a talented but flawed roster. Papelbon is gone, and the Red Sox are not a better team than they were yesterday. Knowing that, all we can do is wait to learn his what Cherington's plan is, to discover through his transactions whether he can do the right things as well.

Practically, yes, letting Jonathan Papelbon go is the right move. Sentimentally, it stings to know that jersey of one the players responsible for a championship here will be found on the 75-percent-off rack come spring. But all the answers won't be available until the games begin. Or more accurately, when they need to be finished.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

OK, maybe that's four words of pure crazy talk considering the $142-million left fielder is coming off an inaugural season with the Red Sox so aggravating that after watching him for prolonged stretches, some of us might have begun wondering whether Troy O'Leary's ugly 2001 season was actually worthy of a 10-year anniversary celebration.

But it's not that crazy if you're adept at fiddling with the context. Crawford did finish ninth in the American League in batting in 2010 at .307, and he has the 29th-highest batting average among active players at .2927, .0004 behind teammate Adrian Gonzalez for 28th place . . . and Gonzalez nearly won the batting title this year. How about that for pretzel logic? Keep this up, and I'll be debating Skelator Bayless on "Whatever Cold Pizza Is Called Now'' in no time.

What's that? Why yes, there is a point here. It is this: After Ben Cherington's acknowledgment during his introductory press conference that he was the biggest advocate in the front office of signing Crawford -- a particularly canny step toward repairing the outfielder's psyche as well as a counter to owner John Henry's ill-considered admission that he didn't want to sign the longtime Ray -- and with the encouraging knowledge that Crawford at least tried to lead this unaccountable band of chicken aficionados as their season slowly drowned in gravy, there is reason to believe that his second season in Boston will go a whole lot better than his first.

That's a long way of saying I feel much better about Crawford's future with the Red Sox now that September is in the rear-view mirror and the memories of him flailing away puzzled and lost are fading into the haze of the offseason. It may be wishful thinking to suggest he'll approach the numbers of his career-year, age-28 2010 season when he had that .307 average, an .851 OPS, 90 RBIs and 62 extra-base hits. But it's certainly a wish worth having, though a more productive exercise is trying to gauge what a reasonable expectation for him is in 2012.

Reader Scott D. spurred this post when he checked in last week with an interesting comp:

Is Carl Crawford the new Willie Wilson?

Speed, good D wasted in left, not a typical lead-off guy (BA-centric OBP).

I look for Crawford to approach Wilson's 1982 bounce-back season - increased OBP due to higher BABIP, a bounce-back in steals (40ish) and triples.

Now, if you're a Red Sox fan of my generation, hearing the name Willie Wilson might lead to the return of a long-dormant tic. I can't find confirmation on baseball-reference.com for some reason, but it's the absolute truth that he average two triples per game against the Red Sox whenever they'd play the speedy Royals at Kaufmann Stadium. Come to think of it, it might have been three triples per game. Tormenting the Red Sox is one thing he absolutely has in common with the pre-Boston Crawford.

But is the suggestion that Crawford could duplicate Wilson's '82 season work? In some ways, absolutely. Wilson had a .796 OPS in '82, when he was 26 years old. Crawford has surpassed that number five times since 2005. Wilson's OPS+ was 118, the best of his 19-year career. Crawford's OPS+ in 2010 was 135, the fifth time he has equaled or surpassed a 111 adjusted OPS. Wilson swiped 37 bases in 48 attempts. Crawford was 47 for 57 in '10.

Oh, yes -- and Wilson won the batting title, hitting .332. (See, now the headline makes sense! Well, it does.)

While Crawford has more power and Wilson might be a twitch faster, it's a reasonable comp, and one that comes with an interesting juxtaposition: In 1983, Wilson had an 85 adjusted OPS -- exactly the same as Crawford's during his first year in Boston. (Wilson was also caught up in a drug scandal that season.) That considered, maybe the '84 version of Wilson is worth considering as well, and it should be of some encouragement that he had a very good bounce-back season, hitting .301 with 47 steals, a .740 OPS and a 105 adjusted OPS. Now that right there strikes me as a very reasonable expectation for Crawford in 2012.

It should be noted that Wilson's name does not appear when we plug some key numbers from Crawford's 2011 season into baseball-reference's Life-Altering Play Index Tool in a quest to find players who had similar seasons -- and how they fared after the misery. Searching for outfielders over the past 50 years who were 28-29 years old, qualified for the batting title, had an OPS lower than .700, 11 or fewer home runs, 18 or fewer stolen bases, and a batting average below .260, the BRLAPI gave us these 18 names:

Now there's an interesting mix. There are lousy second-generation ball players (Gary Matthews Jr., Brian McRae), an array of good-field, no-hit types (Paul Blair, Rick Manning), someone named Turner Ward (Turner Ward), the original Tito (Tito Francona), and 3-4 names that provide some genuine hope that Crawford will get this right. Lou Piniella was traded to the Yankees after that brutal '73 and proceeded to hit .295 over 11 seasons in the Bronx. Beniquez, who began his career among the Red Sox' influx of outstanding young talent in the early '70s, had four straight seasons in his mid-30s with an batting average above .300.

But Van Slyke is the name that offers the most cause for optimism. In the three seasons following his miserable '89, he had consecutive OPS numbers of 132, 126, and 151. He finished fourth in the Most Valuable Player voting after that '92 season in which he hit .324 with 14 homers, 89 RBIs, and 12 triples. You don't have to squint to see that it looks a lot like Crawford's last season in Tampa Bay.

Yep, I've talked myself into being encouraged. So tell me: What do you guys think? Is '82 Willie Wilson a reasonable expectation for '12 Carl Crawford? How about the '84 version? Will Crawford enjoy a post-lousy-season run of excellence like Van Slyke? Can he be a reasonable facsimile of the Rays dynamo who stole 35 straight bases against the Red Sox without getting caught? How's it going to be?

Please, at least assure me he'll be better than Omar Moreno.

Late in posting this, but I promise that in the interim since recording it Tuesday I've learned how to pronounce Pete Mackanin's last name. (Ma-KAN-in, ma-KAN-in, ma-KAN-in . . .) Still have no clue how you get "swaym" out of Sveum, however.

FYI, no chat Friday. Working a couple of things I need to get done. So bring set aside your best questions and most painful but dead-on insults for next Friday.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

A couple of squibbers while waiting for Bud Selig to reveal his old Brewers allegiances and award the Red Sox Starlin Castro and Matt Garza ...

Three friends noted almost simultaneously in my Twitter feed this morning that Red Sox managerial candidate Pete Mackanin is a dead-ringer for the "Bored to Death'' version of Ted Danson.

It's a better "celebrity lookalike" than most of the delusional comparisons that show up in the popular Boston.com gallery ("Absolutely, dear, send it in -- you look just like Tom Brady, you know, in the right light . . .''), though I say young Mackanin looks less like Sam "Mayday" Malone and more like Toby from "The Office.'' We should all age so well.

I'm not ready to declare Mackanin the ideal post-Tito manager of the Red Sox just because he showed up at his interview with an iPad and a carmine-colored pocket square. (Wait. That's exactly why the computer is called Carmine, isn't it? Theo, you . . . am I the last one to pick up on this?) Given John Henry's fanatical well-known appreciation of numbers, it was savvy of Mackanin to note his appreciation of using statistics to gather information. Grady Little he clearly is not, though the ultimate test of his true commitment to sabermetrics would have been to ask him if he has heard of Fangraphs. If he replied, "Yes! And do I love Eno Sarris!,'' then and only then would we'd know for sure his depth of devotion to advanced metrics.

What we do know for sure about Mackanin is that he has a dry sense of humor, understands the issues that divided the Red Sox clubhouse, recognizes that there needs to be some authoritative distance between the players and their manager (looks like no more cribbage with the boss, Dustin), and that the first candidate the Red Sox have interviewed in this process is a viable and appealing one. They're one-for-one so far, with several more at-bats ahead.

Pete Mackanin fun facts, and by fun facts I mean minutiae interesting to me and probably only me: In 98 plate appearances as a 21-year-old rookie with the 1973 Texas Rangers, he batted .100 with a minus-22 adjusted OPS. He had 13 more at-bats that season than future four-time batting champion Bill Madlock, who hit .351 ... Since the Rangers had three managers that season -- Whitey Herzog, Del Wilbur, and Billy Martin -- I'm not sure who to blame. But it's a good thing Ted Williams quit following the previous season. Can't imagine he had much patience with .100 hitters . . . His best season as a player came with the 1975 Montreal Expos when he played 130 games, hitting .225 with 12 homers in 130 games. That 75-win Expos team was led by a 21-year-old rookie who played a different position than the one he played during the majority of his Hall of Fame career. If you remember that Gary Carter played 92 games in right field as a rookie, you probably still aren't over the Expos leaving . . . He has some vague similarities in background to Francona: He played for the Expos and worked for the Phillies, but the most interesting near-overlap with Tito came in the minors. Mackanin managed the 1988 Iowa Cubs. Two years earlier, Francona played for the same team, where his teammates included Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer, and Rafael Palmeiro . . . He's been an interim manager twice: With the 2005 Pirates (most interesting name on that roster: Jose Bautista) and very interesting 2007 Reds (where he had, among others, Ken Griffey Jr., Josh Hamilton, Adam Dunn, Bronson Arroyo, a Joey Votto cup of Dunkin's, and, obviously, Norris Hopper.) . . . Finally, I can't recall is Mackanin is mentioned in it, but one of the funniest baseball books of all time -- "Seasons In Hell,'' by Mike Shropshire -- covers those chaotic early '70s Rangers. Read it. You'll laugh your Del Wilbur off, and it might just make you feel better about the chaotic 2011 Red Sox.

The more I hear about Dale Sveum's dedication to poring over statistical data during his days on Francona's staff, the more I wonder whether he is the pre-interview favorite for the job. Of course, given his flaws as a third-base coach -- I'd rate him somewhere between Tim Bogar and Wendell Kim on a does-this-dope-think-home-plate-is-only-60-feet-away? scale -- I'm skeptical that he can get through a nine-hour interview without his right arm twitching uncontrollably before he finally begins pinwheeling the thing and yelling, "Run, Mirabelli! Dammit, run!" Which would be quite awkward and very likely frighten Mr. Henry.

If Kevin Youkilis is a finalist for the Gold Glove award at third base this year, then I say Butch Hobson deserved at least an honorable mention in 1978. And I refuse to listen to your counterarguments. No one dove into a bat rack in pursuit of a foul ball 20 rows into the seats like ol' Clell.

I'm not saying I'm skeptical that the Red Sox will attempt to replace J.D. Drew in right field with a player who is even less durable, but . . .

GAMES PLAYED, 2009-11
J.D. Drew: 357
Grady Sizemore: 210.

To be fair, Sizemore was durable early in his career -- during his first four full seasons, he never played fewer than 157 games, playing all 162 twice. But he's played 104 games total the last two years, barely averages more games played per season since becoming a regular than Drew (121.3 to 119.4), and just had another knee surgery. He's not a broken man, but he might be a cracked polystyrene man. And sadly given his early promise, he's definitely damaged goods.

Yet he's just 28 years old, and his talent is such that it wasn't so long ago that we thought it was unrealistic to expect Jacoby Ellsbury to be his equal. He's an interesting gamble, and I'd like the Sox to take a shot at him, but I doubt Ben Cherington is considering him as an everyday right fielder. The hunch here is that if the Red Sox do sign Sizemore, it will be as an occasional outfielder and frequent lefthanded-hitting designated hitter, with Kevin Youkilis also getting some time in the DH slot. Yes, I do think Sizemore's arrival would indicate the end of David Ortiz's legendary run in Boston.

I miss the World Series. Can't the Cardinals and Rangers keep playing until the NBA returns? Yes, I miss that too.

As for today's Completely Random Baseball Card:

Heard Gerry Callahan say on WEEI this morning while discussing Sizemore that players who are injury prone don't become dependable as they get older. It's a fair presumption. It's also one more reason why Paul Molitor's career was remarkable.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while hoping the manager who outwitted Tony La Russa in 2004 will be his replacement in 2012. Terry Francona does know how to win in St. Louis, as you may recall . . .

1. So far, so good with this Ben Cherington fella, huh? Less than a full week on the job officially, and already he's solved the John Lackey problem (would it be cruel to hope the Tommy John surgery is done against his will and possibly without anesthesia?) while saving a few bucks in the process, let Carl Crawford know that the biggest advocate in bringing him to Boston is now his boss, and picked up the option on Marco Scutaro, a steady and dependable shortstop who was one of the few Red Sox who swam against the current in September (.387 batting average, 1.019 OPS). Of course, the real tests are ahead: Finding a manager, of course, and coming up with some roster depth and a couple of decent pitchers from a free-agent class that doesn't appear to have a lot of quality at the Red Sox' areas of need. Bruce Chen, anyone?

2. It doesn't take a whole lot of research to recognize La Russa's legacy. As the third-winningest manager of all-time -- he'd have passed John McGraw before midseason next year had he chosen not to retire today -- his place in Cooperstown would have been secure even without winning a third World Series title a few days ago. And somewhere on the plaque, possibly in the first sentence, it will be acknowledged that he's the architect of the specialized modern bullpen. Whether you like it or not (yes, Mr. Maddon, we know you're in favor), La Russa's matchup-based approach will be remembered as a pivotal innovation in the way the game is played and managed. But for all of his accomplishments, I'll best remember him -- because it is always about us around here, right? -- in relation to the Red Sox. His jacked-up Oakland teams mauled the overmatched Sox in the 1988 and '90 ALCS before going on both seasons to lose in the World Series to heavy underdogs. I'll remember him for kindly managing the Cardinals to a runner-up finish in 2004. And strangely, but perhaps because this game is on the MLB Network from time to time, I'll remember him for managing Carlton Fisk's debut with the White Sox at Fenway on Opening Day '81. For the fun of it -- and because it's beyond impressive that he's managed in the majors for 33 years -- I looked up his first game against the Red Sox. It was a 7-5 Red Sox win on August 16, 1979. Fisk hit second for the Red Sox, ahead of Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, and Yaz in a lineup made out by Don Zimmer. Judging by the box score, it's apparent that La Russa hadn't yet perfected his managerial style. He used just two pitchers.

3. I'm just going to assume that Cherington's thinking in bringing in Pete Mackanin and Dave Sveum as the first two candidates to interview for the vacant managerial job is to find out first-hand if any of the less-inspiring candidates might surprise him before he moves on to the legitimate candidates to succeed Terry Francona. Mackanin has had two interim gigs -- with the 2005 Pirates and 2007 Reds -- but apparently didn't do enough to warrant keeping the job, having been replaced by Jim Tracy and Dusty Baker, respectively. As for Sveum, I want documented evidence that he's mastered coaching third base first before he gets a shot at piloting the team from the dugout. That man is entirely capable of getting a player thrown out at the plate while walking from the on-deck circle to the batter's box.

4. Pitching coach extraordinaire Dave Duncan is under contract with the Cardinals for the 2012 season, but with La Russa retiring, I'm curious whether the former catcher will have any interest in managing in St. Louis or elsewhere. If he's at all interested in Boston, Boston should be interested in him. After last season, it would be nice to see some Red Sox pitchers overachieve for once.

5. Enjoyed this post-World Series find by Peter Abraham on the Red Sox' twice-foiled plans to acquire David Freese before and during the 2006 draft. The Sox' plans to sign Freese before the draft -- he was a fifth-year senior at South Alabama -- were nixed by the commissioner's office, so farm director Jason McLeod went to Plan B, which was to draft him in the sixth round. McLeod decided to postpone picking him until the ninth round when scouts touted other prospects. It would go down as an opportunity lost. The Padres plucked Freese 10 picks before the Red Sox planned to, dealt him to his hometown Cardinals in December 2007, and the rest is World Series history.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Today's media column, on the oddity of the World Series teetering on record-low ratings and yet beating two consecutive prime-time NFL games, can be found here.

After last night's epic Game 6, any talk that this year's World Series would be the lowest-rated ever has gone the way of Ron Washington's common sense: The Cardinals' 10-9 victory in 11 innings earned a 13.8 overnight rating, topping all of the previous five games this year and every game from the 2010 World Series between the Rangers and Giants.

One other media note that I didn't have room to include in today's column: A number of you asked -- actually, asked probably isn't the right word -- why NESN didn't broadcast Theo Epstein's introductory press conference with the Cubs live on Tuesday afternoon, while other local stations, including Comcast SportsNet New England, did.

Here is the explanation I received Thursday from NESN spokesman Gary Roy:

While NESN decided not to cover the Theo Epstein Chicago Cubs press conference live, NESN did show the relevant excerpts of the presser during our special NESN Daily coverage that aired throughout the afternoon and evening. We anticipated that Theo would be addressing Chicago Cubs issues to fans in Chicago rather than speaking about Red Sox issues to fans here in New England.

As you know, Theo did speak to Boston fans directly through a print ad and Boston Globe op-ed piece which we had already covered in-depth on NESN Daily.

We decided it was of more interest to our fans to look forward to the future of the Red Sox.

And here is an explanation from CSNNE executive vice president and general manager Bill Bridgen on why the network did carry the press conference live.

Theo Epstein's press conference announcing his move to the Cubs--and his departing words to the Red Sox organization and Sox fans--was an important story to New England sports fans. We knew fans would want to see it, so we carried it. That's what we do. Having our friends at Comcast SportsNet Chicago on the ground helped us cover this saga from the beginning and the press conference punctuated our week long coverage from the ground in Chicago."

The thought here: Of course NESN should have showed it. Epstein may have been in Chicago, but it was a huge Boston story, and if the network wants to shake the perception that it's more interested in promoting Fenway Sports Group properties and making money than given Boston sports fans what they desire, it needs to deliver in circumstances like Tuesday's, even if the ratings may not justify it.

To NESN's credit, an interview with new general manager Ben Cherington, conducted by Tom Caron and Jerry Remy in the 6 p.m.-7 p.m. hour, was very well done, thorough and informative. The network didn't cover the entire scope of a pivotal day in Boston sports, but it did good work on the most important part -- helping Red Sox fans get a read on the new GM.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com Staff

The new guy sure sounds an awful lot like the old guy, doesn't he? And not just in terms of voice, cadence, inflection, or sense of humor, but what's most important for the Boston Red Sox going forward: organizational philosophy.

Three hours after the old guy -- and yes, that is meant entirely in the figurative sense when it comes to 38-year-old Theo Epstein -- had what sure came off like a coronation as the Chicago Cubs' president of baseball operations, officially ending his excellent but hardly flawless nine-year run as the Red Sox' general manager, his successor was introduced at Fenway Park.

And though Ben Cherington's tenure with the Red Sox dates to 1998, four years before Epstein arrived beneath Lucchino's wing via Brookline, Yale, Baltimore, and San Diego, his similarity to his friend and predecessor in all of the aforementioned ways was striking and reassuring all at once.

Cherington, who was hired by fellow Amherst alum Dan Duquette in 1998, is hardly unfamiliar to Red Sox fans, particularly those who have been known to bury their nose in a copy of Baseball America. But he kept a low profile during his brief stint as co-GM with Jed Hoyer in 2005, and so if today's festivity was your formal introduction to him, you had no choice but to come away impressed with the Red Sox' new GM.

Just as Epstein did three hours earlier in Chicago, he owned his press conference, presenting himself as prepared, focused, confident and informed, but with appealing asides of self-effacing humor, such as when he noted that, no, he does not own a gorilla suit, Epstein's famous disguise during his escape from Fenway during his 2005 hiatus. And anyone who begged his mom to buy the Sunday Globe as a kid so he could read the baseball notes is all right around here. Me, I stole it from my dad.

Cherington may not play guitar, but he hit all the right notes. He spoke of collaboration with the baseball operations staff, of hiring a manager willing to have tough conversations with players who flout the rules, of striving for a unified, diverse clubhouse (a hint at a pursuit of Yu Darvish?), and of having similar theories and principles to Epstein in roster building, whether it comes to finding well-rounded position players, developing a "core group of young players,'' and emphasizing player development.

It was impressive, and it struck me sometime in the middle of the press conference that the Red Sox are incredibly fortunate to be able to have it both ways here. They get a seamless transition to a well-rounded, dedicated executive that Epstein said today he began preparing to be his successor in 2010. And they also get a new voice and face of the organization after the humiliating September collapse and the aftermath.

I was skeptical that such change was necessary. In a perfect little Red Sox world, Lucchino and Epstein could co-exist, Terry Francona's personal issues wouldn't have emboldened a rudderless clubhouse that turned irresponsible, and the manager/GM tandem that led the Red Sox to their greatest run of prolonged success in most of our lifetimes would still be here. Watching Epstein win over the softball-tossing Chicago media today with his poise and familiar words and philosophies was a bit melancholy; it was the formal end of a rewarding era.

If you find your way to this corner of Boston.com more often than the occasional accident when you meant to click on the Tom and Gisele gallery, you're probably aware that I'm an unabashed admirer of the job Epstein did during his nine seasons as the general manager.

Of course he wasn't flawless. There have been too many burdensome long-term contracts lately, though in a couple of instances they were awarded to high-quality, proven players who faltered beyond anyone pessimist's worst expectation. And he constructed a 2011 team that at the brutal end felt like it was paying a 10-year-anniversary tribute to the miserable 2001 club.

But with the nine years considered in historical context, it's impossible not to come to the conclusion that he did one hell of a job running the team he rooted for as a boy. I disliked Julio Lugo, too, and dislike isn't a strong enough word when it comes to John Lackey, but there were many more good times during the Epstein Era than bad. I'll remember him well and wish him well, and that's what he deserves.

He was the general manager who found the supporting players -- the Ortizes, Muellers, Foulkes and Millars -- to support the Pedros and Mannys that Dan Duquette left behind, who delivered six playoff berths in nine years and two championships in four, who desired to collect the most information possible -- whether it was from sabermetricians or scouts -- before coming to a decision, and who lived up to his November 2002 vow to build a "player development machine." Other than the events that led to a pair of parades, the latter accomplishment may be his lasting legacy.

Watching the deftness with which Cherington handled the transition today, I'm now wondering whether an era really ended. I am -- well, not worried, but at least wary -- of what Lucchino's role in baseball matters going forward. His jousts with Epstein led to the GM's brief departure following the 2005 season, and I've always wondered if his daring swap of Hanley Ramirez and prospects for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell was as much an attempt to take the focus off the front-office follies and put it back on baseball as it was a move made solely for the ball club's benefit. (It ended up being a prime example of a win-win trade.)

He's extraordinarily accomplished and bright in his own right, but his lawyerly gifts for putting spin on any curious situation leaves even an occasional skeptic with the sense that there's an ulterior motive or double meaning to just about everything he says. So when he makes a prolonged and somewhat uncomfortable introduction of Cherington that notes he's a "team player'' who "eschews the spotlight and accolades,'' it's fair to wonder if those are taken as direct shots by the former protege now being celebrated at Wrigley. They have, after all, seemed to poke at each other recently with a duel of compliments that may or may not have been delivered with a hard backhand.

It was Lucchino who noted that Cherington was the member of the front office who fought to sign Adrian Beltre -- currently starring on the World Series stage -- to a one-year deal before the 2010 season. It's a mild upset that he didn't suggest that Cherington is the one who actually discovered that John Lackey needs Tommy John surgery, essentially putting the recurring villain-in-residence's sneering face out of sight and out of mind next season, and that he's so darned versatile that he'll perform the operation himself.

But there did not appear to be any puppet strings attached to Cherington today. While Lucchino was touting his attributes, Cherington actually went out of his way to acknowledge that he was a strong proponent of the signing of Carl Crawford, a perceived disaster one season into the deal. Kudos to him for both the honesty and the clever way of letting Crawford know he has his advocates in the organization after owner John Henry's too-candid comments on The Sports Hub recently.

It was a subtle bit of damage control, something you could see Epstein doing. It was also a reminder that new beginnings don't always mean an era has ended.

Epstein has found a sweet home in Chicago. And yet when all of the microphones were turned off, it felt like a good day for the Red Sox.

Never thought his farewell would feel that way, at least right up until today's second press conference, when his successor sounded so familiar, another savvy young baseball man more than ready to take advantage of a chance he deserves.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

I suspect, based on local television ratings, feedback, and a lifetime spent among Red Sox fans, that some among us checked out on the baseball season right around the time Robert Andino's line drive narrowly avoided Carl Crawford's glove in the ninth inning of the 162d game of the season.

It's hardly breaking news that we can turn parochial around here, especially when there's off-the-field melodrama to fill the Red Sox void once the season is complete.There's been so much going on with the Sox, both crucial to the franchise's future (the departure of Theo Epstein and Terry Francona) and more or less meaningless beyond 2011 (the antics of the Popeye's Three) that a spellbinding World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers has been relegated to an afterthought, an unnecessary punctuation mark on a baseball season that for many ended 26 days ago in Baltimore.

But all of the bones from the Red Sox' collapse have been picked clean at this point. And with the capable, deserving Ben Cherington set to be named general manager tomorrow and reports surfacing that demanding John Farrell is coveted as Francona's replacement, the Red Sox appear to be on their way to recovering from this mess in an encouraging way.

So forget about them, if you can, until . . . well, at least tomorrow, when the Epstein/Cherington press conferences will take place, and set aside a few hours tonight to watch the fifth game of this World Series between two fascinating and similar teams. I guarantee that if Game 5 is anything like the first four, when we've seen such feats as Albert Pujols channeling Mr. October '78 and Derek Holland channeling Steve Avery '91, you'll be hooked for the duration. And if you must have a Red Sox angle to it all, well, there is an intriguing one, and it comes with a delicious side dish that many Sox fans can't resist: a large helping of hindsight.

With retrospection as part of my defense, I'll admit it: I wish the Red Sox still had Adrian Beltre. I recognize that there are several reasons why they don't, and they are virtually all sound reasons. Their Plan A was to acquire Adrian Gonzalez and move Kevin Youkilis back to third base. Youkilis was arguably the better bet entering the 2011 season, a slightly older, slightly more durable, equally hard-nosed player who had seven consecutive years of trending upward in OPS. And for all of the suggestions late this season that the two departed lineup anchors from 2010 -- Beltre and Victor Martinez, another admirable ball player and teammate -- were superior alternatives to Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, the two high-priced stars who were brought in during the offseason, the reality is that Gonzalez is the most valuable player of the four (which is supported by Gonzalez's 6.9 to 5.2 rWAR advantage this season).

Beltre was just a special guest star here in Boston. Given that Epstein has coveted Gonzalez since he scouted him in high school while working for the Padres, it's apparent in retrospect -- as it was at the time, really -- that Beltre was a one-year bridge to getting Gonzalez. As fun as it was to watch Beltre ferociously play third base and bash 32 homers and look like he was going to maim Martinez when he rubbed his head, the Red Sox' reasoning in letting him go was logical. Had the Sox dealt Youkilis, whose value was lowered by the Greek God of Increasingly Weird Injuries' thumb ailment, and signed Beltre to the five-year, $80 million contract the Rangers gave him, there would have been a lot of puzzled fans in Boston, and they would have been puzzled loudly.

But watching Beltre for his one year with the Red Sox was a blast, and should you need a reminder of that, you'll almost certainly get one if you tune in for the remainder of the series. During his season with the Sox, Beltre was very good defensively, but not quite as spectacular as advertised or as his first-place finish in the 2008 Fielding Bible awards and runner-up finish in '09 would suggest. But he has been at his dazzling best defensively in the Series -- one got the sense last night that Holland would have been perfectly content with having every righthanded hitter pull the ball in the direction of Beltre or shortstop Elvis Andrus. Since they actually benefit from it, his teammates must love watching him play third base more than fans do, right?

The guy is such a unique player -- there are countless sluggers who swing from their heels, but I've never seen anyone but Beltre swing from a knee. He's nothing at all like his top comp in baseball history, Vinny Castilla. Any similarity is due entirely to Castilla's Coors Field-padded statistics. Conversely, Beltre's numbers were stunted during his five seasons playing at Safeco Field, a graveyard for long drives hit by righthanded batters. Yet he hit at least 25 homers three times for the Mariners, and during each one of his five seasons there, his road OPS surpassed his home OPS, twice by more than 110 points. If anything is to be gathered from his Mariners numbers, it's that the notion that he plays well only in contract years has always been a myth -- his worst season was his last, which is one reason he became the Red Sox' bargain. The truth is that he's an exceptional player when he's healthy, but he's not always healthy because he plays so damn hard.

Forget the Castilla nonsense. There's a more interesting comparison to Beltre on his list of players who are most similar by age. Ron Santo is Beltre's top comp from each from ages 21-29 and again at 31 and 32. Many baseball aficionados regard the former Cubs third baseman as one of Cooperstown's most egregious oversights -- in his 15 years on the ballot, the most support he received from writers came in his final year of eligibility, when he got 43.1 percent of the vote in 1998. It's possible that Beltre sometimes finds himself in a similar situation.

While the perception of his career at the moment is that he's not in the Hall of Fame class of player, he has 2,033 hits and 310 homers at age 32. Perhaps his career will be shortened because of his fearless style of play, but if he's close to the player at the end of his contract that he is now, he's going to approach 400 homers and 3,000 hits, and those numbers are back to being the benchmarks for historical greatness in the post-steroid era.

From afar, it will be fun to watch Adrian Beltre in the coming years to see if he carves his place in history. Just as it was fun to watch him do his thing for a year here, and everything he can to become a champion now.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Perspective comes with time and knowledge. I apologize for leading off the inning with an aphorism, but "hell yeah, I like beer" was already taken. Come to think of it, saying that perspective comes with time, knowledge, and beer is probably even more fitting, especially when the 2011 Red Sox are the subject.

But we'll keep the beverages out of this particular clubhouse today, because time and knowledge are doing the trick just fine when it comes to figuring out why it all went wrong last season -- and why optimism for the season to come isn't exclusively the territory of a blind fool.

It's been three weeks since the season officially slipped away, Jonathan Papelbon walking off the mound in Baltimore mere moments before Evan Longoria sent the Rays walking off with an opposite set of emotions in St. Petersburg.

It was a crash that managed to be both agonizingly prolonged and shocking in its finality, a once-secure 9 1/2 game lead in the wild-card race evaporating until all that remained was an offseason stacked with insecurities.

The maelstrom hasn't stopped since. Popular manager Terry Francona parted in a mutual decision that didn't feel mutual at all, and only Monday did one of the players who betrayed his trust begin to offer some explanation, though Jon Lester's words stopped somewhere short of apologetic.

General manager Theo Epstein, the son of Brookline, has decided that Chicago is his kind of town. He will take the Cubbies' helm and take on their brand of tortured history just as soon as Larry Lucchino can extract Trey McNutt -- a decent prospect and a future Fenway favorite based on name alone -- as compensation.

Whirling around it all were the reports of a dysfunctional, borderline insubordinate clubhouse almost began to make the wretched 2001 Red Sox look like a merry band of misunderstood gamers. At least those clowns were sober.

OK, it didn't quite get so miserable as to make Carl Everett sympathetic, but for a Red Sox fan, it's been an awful October marked by fallout and finger-pointing, an outcome that might have seemed unfathomable as recently as August. The lasting image we carry into the offseason is one of the season's final play, when a ball Carl Crawford should have caught eluded him as the winning run scored, leaving the outfielder with a dazed look that became all too familiar during his first season in Boston.

But with that missed catch . . . there's a catch. Because the farther away we get from the ending, the more time that passes and knowledge we accumulate, the clearer the big picture becomes, not only in terms of what happened, but what's ahead.

It's with that thought and the evolving perspective that I submit a different picture, the one above, as a suggestion if not outright evidence that it was pretty damn good around here this summer. And despite the still-smoldering wreckage of the 2011 season, there's an excellent chance it will be pretty damn good next summer, too.

Just look at that photo. It's the final scene of a May 1 victory over the Mariners, when the best days of the season was commencing. There's Crawford fitting in perfectly and delivering the winning hit. There's David Ortiz, in full, jovial Big Papi mode, leading the celebratory charge rather than lamenting the "drama" and kidding himself that there would actually be less of it in the Bronx. There's Adrian Gonzalez, who at his very worst was very good, and Jacoby Ellsbury, who's no loner in this image, and Dustin Pedroia, who like Ellsbury never allowed his effort to waver, and . . . is that Jon Lester? Can that be him? One of The Popeyes Three was actually in the dugout in case a celebration ensued?

This must be from a different season. And in a way it was. But it's also a telling snapshot of what the 2011 Red Sox were like at their best -- they went 72-39 from that victory until September 1 -- and what they can be again in 2012. Once the voids have been filled and the necessary alterations made.

And one alteration is more necessary than the others.

* * *

Ninety-wins never felt so miserable, but the final total is remarkable given that just seven of them came in September. I know, small consolation, especially when confronted with this particular photo of three pitchers offering a spring training preview of what they would do in September: turn their collective backs on the rest of the team.

But look at it this way: Barring the extreme unlikelihood of similar catastrophe next season, the Red Sox should get back into that 95-victory range with relative ease.

As I documented in last week's gallery of 20 offseason predictions, the recipe for a redemptive 2012 season is pretty simple. It's a matter of keeping the superb Gonzalez-Ellsbury-Pedroia-Lester core healthy, re-signing Jonathan Papelbon and David Ortiz, filling in the holes in right field and the bullpen, and, yes, making sure whoever remains from the Tres Pollo Amigos lay off the beer and gravy during that four-hour window when they're on the clock. It'll be difficult -- from what I hear, there's no detox quite as torturous as the "chicken shakes'' -- but they must stop treating the clubhouse as their personal playroom.

The expectations are all reasonable. But to ensure that the ghosts of 2011 don't linger beyond the first few February days in Ft. Myers, there is one thing owner John Henry must do: He load fill the dinghy on his yacht with one John Derran Lackey, $45 million, a handful of Roush Racing Hot Wheels to keep him occupied and a Liverpool jersey to keep him warm, then drop the whole damn thing overboard, have Larry Lucchino give it an extra shove, and wave bon voyage. And he needs to do it as soon as possible.

Someone needs to take the hit for what happened this September, and a declining pitcher with an ugly 6.41 ERA and an even uglier attitude is a fine place to start. Lackey simply cannot return to the Red Sox next season. Because he is the embodiment of everything that went wrong with this one.

Josh Beckett once said during the summer that Lackey is his hero. At the time, that seemed a generous gesture, his way of praising his teammate for continuing to take his turn every fifth day despite the weight of some heavy personal problems. Now, you have to wonder whether Lackey is his hero for no other reason than he's held the high score on their skeet-shooting game on xBox for a really long time. He's clubhouse poison disguised as a batting-practice pitcher. If Henry wants to prove that what happened in September will never occur again on his watch, swallowing the rest of Lackey's contract is imperative.

I have previously suggested shopping Beckett, and Peter Abraham has written a thoughtful post on why the Red Sox should not trade him. I do not think they will -- it's difficult if not impossible to get equal value or replace him in the rotation at this point -- but as an injury-prone pitcher who will be 32 in May and seems more likely to go to the cooler than the treadmill, I can't help but wonder how much longer he'll be a top starter.

And not for a second do I believe that "I cannot let this allegation go without response; enough is enough" -- his words from the Red Sox' statement denying that players drank in the dugout -- came from his mouth. For one, there's not a single curse in there, and I'm pretty sure "allegation" isn't among his favorite words. I believe the theory of one of my co-workers is spot-on: The Red Sox issued that release because major league baseball told them to get their house in order before the World Series began.

Please, spare me the comparisons between the 2004 Idiots and the sips of Jack and these 2011 Bud Light-swilling sloths. The intent in imbibing seven years ago was unity, a symbol of the us-against-the-doubters mentality that was absolutely necessary to overcome the franchise history thrown in their faces after every tough loss. This was a clique, a faction, and it was a clique and a faction that fell on his engorged faces when the team needed the players involved to deliver. It's not the same thing; it's the opposite.

No, I don't buy any of the words attributed to Beckett and Lackey in last night's press release. As for Jon Lester, his comments about the issue were admirable in their accountability but dotted with rationalizations; at least there seems to be recognition on his part that what went down this season wasn't right and that amends next season are necessary.

It's a good start, and isn't that something we haven't said about any of these guys for far too long?

* * *

One more photo to consider, one more reminder that the best manager the Red Sox have ever had has moved on and the general manager who put together two champions is right behind him, fleeing his hometown.

The exodus is still a bummer. But perspective has come with the details that have emerged in the past three weeks, and I am beginning to understand the argument that it was time for Francona to cede the manager's office to someone else, even if I'm not quite ready to nod in agreement.

The realization that Lester, who used to refer to Francona as his second dad, no longer had the manager's back was both disappointing and telling. But it's apparent now that he was among a vast majority who tuned out Francona this season -- et tu, Tek? -- and the dots between the manager's personal issues and the players' willingness to take advantage of their distracted boss should be easily connected.

Those like Lester who said this year's Red Sox lacked leaders -- really, are we supposed to believe you've been reduced to pining for Alex Cora? -- apparently have a character flaw that prevented them from being leaders. I can't help but wonder whether the epilogue might have been different had John Farrell and Brad Mills still been around. But ultimately the disarray reflects on Francona. He's gone, and that stinks, but maybe it had to be.

In bidding farewell to Epstein, it's appropriate to remember what he delivered before considering any problems he left behind. But the disappointment of his departure is tempered by the belief that the front office is in capable hands, whether or not he smuggles Carmine out with him.

While I like to imagine Lucchino is currently trying to help the organization save some face by extracting genuine value from the Cubs ("RANDY BUSH? IT'S ME, LUCCHINO. LISTEN TO ME, YOU POOR EXCUSE FOR A GENE LARKIN. GIVE ME #*#*#* * MCNUTT AND JACKSON OR I'LL HAVE BOY WONDER PUSHING A HOT DOG CART UNTIL THE LAST #*#*# SECOND OF HIS CONTRACT. I BROUGHT EPSTEIN INTO THIS WORLD AND I CAN TAKE HIM OUT OF IT!! [Click]"), it is Epstein's successor that serves as a source of optimism when it comes to the franchise's direction.

The transition to bright, prepared Ben Cherington, who joined the organization in 1998, a year after Jason Varitek, should be seamless. I trust that his philosophy in building a roster, farm system -- an organization -- doesn't deviate far from his predecessor's. Coincidentally, his immediate task is similar to what Epstein had to do after taking over for Dan Duquette (with a one-year Mike Port interlude): Supplement a roster rich in star-caliber talent with some high-quality role players.

The debates about the merits of Josh Willingham and Michael Cuddyer can't commence soon enough; here's hoping it gets back to baseball soon, that the personal issues give way to chatter about personnel issues.

I presume that's a perspective all of us share at the moment, none more so than those who have worked through the disarray at 4 Yawkey Way.

. . . or where me, Peter Abraham, and Daigo Fujiwara gab about GM-in-waiting Ben Cherington, the World Series, and pretty much everything other than what brand of beer Red Sox pitchers prefer. I give it two days until we find out that they actually had a keg in the dugout.

A massive and possibly coherent Red Sox column will be posted tomorrow morning. In the meantime, a couple of recent links I neglected to post here:

-- 20 offseason predictions for the Sox: Forgot to include the prediction that Varitek, who really should be moving along now, would deny everything.

-- Last Friday's media column on Terry Francona's two-game cup of coffee in the Fox broadcast booth. The strong hunch here is that he does TV for a year before getting another managerial gig. He was very good and enjoyed it much more than he thought he would

-- Two recent Patriots postgame sidebars -- one on Aaron Hernandez's return against the Jets, and this week's on the Cowboys' costly conservative offensive approach -- that I don't expect you to read but I'm posting anyway.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Let's see, it says here I started pecking away on this goofy post about the Arizona Fall League on September 2. That also happens to be the day the Red Sox fell out of first place in American League East for good with a 10-0 loss to the Rangers. The reason for pushing it aside had something to with a hunch that no one gives a damn about autumn baseball in Arizona when the big league team in Boston is spectacularly blowing its chance of playing into October. I'm perceptive like that.

Actually more than a few half-formed posts and columns or whatever you call them get lost in the shuffle along the way here -- I'm beginning to think my look at each of the Orioles' 21 straight losses to begin the 1988 season, which I began at some point during the Red Sox' miserable start in April, will never see the light of day. Unless, I suppose, the Sox start 0-6 again next year. After the shocking and miserable bookends to this season, I don't dismiss anything as a possibility anymore.

I'm resuscitating this one, however, for a couple of reasons, most relevantly the original one: I thought it was pretty cool when it was announced back in early September that Bryce Harper and Mike Trout -- the consensus Nos. 1 and 2 prospects in the sport -- would be teammates this year for the Scottsdale entry in the AFL, where they'd be joined by the excellent Red Sox third base prospect, Will Middlebrooks. And that got me wondering which team in the 20-year history of the AFL might have had the most talent.

(Update: For the moment, we'll have to limit it to the 1992 through 2007 seasons. The chunk of text for 2008-10 has unwittingly been sacrificed to cyberspace, so I'll need to do the research again. Hopefully I'll have it posted sometime tomorrow. Rats.)

So, I looked. The search wasn't as simple as I thought it would be. If there's a thorough historical accounting of stats and rosters in the AFL, I couldn't find it. The all-time AFL player list on MLB.com sufficed, though, and through 20 years of prospects, suspects, and dudes named Lou Pote, these are the three most talented teams I came up with:

2003 Peoria Sagueros: Featuring Adrian Gonzalez, David Wright, Rickie Weeks, and Josh Willingham.

2004 Scottsdale Scorpions: Featuring Dustin Pedroia, Rickie Weeks, Russell Martin, Carlos Quentin, Rickie Weeks, James Loney, and Conor Jackson.

2005 Phoenix Desert Dogs: Featuring Jonathan Broxton, Stephen Drew, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, James Shields, Kurt Suzuki.

Mesa wasn't shabby either in '05, with Curtis Granderson, Joey Votto, and Brian Wilson.

Honorable mention goes to a 1994 Scottsdale Scorpions squad that had a supreme shortstop (Nomar Garciaparra), arguably the best basketball player of all-time (Michael Jordan, playing not just out of position but out of sport as an outfielder), and was managed by Terry Francona.

Anyway, those are the highlights. And if you're into this sort of thing, I show my work below by looking at the most familiar names -- and for the fun of it, a few obscurities -- on each team through every AFL season beginning in ...

1992
Chandler: Mike Lierberthal, Greg Pirkl, Kevin Stocker
Grand Canyon: Billy Ashley, Mike Kelly, Ryan Klesko, Mike Lansing, Grady Little (Mgr.), Tony Tarasco, Rondell White
Phoenix: Carl Everett
Scottsdale: Bob Hamelin, Scott Hatteberg, Brad Pennington, Troy Percival, Kevin Rogers, Ken Ryan, Dusty Baker (Mgr.)
Sun Cities: Tim Bogar, Rico Brogna, Mike Piazza
Tucson: Paul Shuey, Aaron Small, Ryan Thompson

I don't even want to know how Baker handled -- or mishandled -- all of those power arms in the Scottsdale staff.

1993
Chandler: Mike Matheny, Justin Thompson
Mesa: Greg Blosser, Ray Durham, Scott Hatteberg, Todd Hollandsworth, Jeff McNeely, Larry Thomas
Scottsdale: Garret Anderson, Shawn Green, Charles Johnson, Paul Shuey
Sun Cities: Derek Lowe, Tanyon Sturtze
Tempe: Cliff Floyd
Tucson: Rich Aurelia, Rusty Greer, Darren Oliver, Eric Wedge

That Scottsdale lineup had two of the sweeter lefty swings of their era in Anderson and Green.

1994
Chandler: Derek Jeter, Charles Johnson, Jason Kendall, Mike Myers
Mesa: Doug Glanville, Curtis Pride
Peoria: Jason Giambi, Ruben Rivera
Scottsdale: Terry Francona (Mgr.), NOmar Garciaparra, Michael Jordan, Lou Pote, Joe Randa, Michael Tucker
Sun Cities: Brian Giles, Jeff Sellers, Chris Stynes, Chris Weinke
Tempe: Garret Anderson, Rich Aurelia, Tony Clark, Ken Macha (Mgr.)

Tito, Nomar, and MJ? I think I'd enjoy reading a book about that Scottsdale team. (And no, I have no idea what Jeff Sellers was doing in this league.)

1995
Mesa: Aaron Boone, Cory Lidle, Pokey Reese, Aaron Small, Tanyon Sturtze, Antone Williamson
Peoria: LaTroy Hawkins, Matt Lawton, Derek Lowe, Chan Ho Park, Mark Sweeney, Jason Varitek, Todd Walker
Phoenix: Jason Kendall, Lou Merloni, Trot Nixon, Lou Pote
Scottsdale: Rich Aurelia,
Sun Cities: Alan Benes, Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye, Derek Lee, Mike Myers
Tempe: Darin Erstad

Lots of core members of the Red Sox' 2003-04 team spread out around the league here.

1996
Mesa: Adrian Brown, Donnie Sadler, Shane Spencer
Peoria: Todd Helton, Raul Ibanez, Jason Varitek
Phoenix: Chris Carpenter, Ben Grieve, Sidney Ponson
Scottsdale: Aaron Boone, Doug Mirabelli, Richie Sexson, Jaret Wright
Sun Cities: Lance Dickson, Geoff Jenkins, Paul Konerko, Derek Lee, Paul LoDuca, Mike Sweeney, Antone Williamson

Fifteen years later, the three Peoria players listed are still in the big leagues.

1997
Grand Canyon: Jeremy Giambi, Travis Lee, John Rocker, Scott Sauerbeck, Enrique Wilson, Preston Wilson
Mesa: Sean Casey, Justin Speier, Dmitri Young
Peoria: Rolando Arroyo, Orlando Cabrera, Mark Kotsay, Paul LoDuca, Ryan Minor, Mike Scioscia (Mgr.)
Phoenix: Mark Bellhorn, Michael Coleman, Cole Liniak
Scottsdale: Aaron Boone, Scott Schoeneweis
Sun Cities: Geoff Jenkins, Corey Koskie

I'm just going go ahead and say that the Grand Canyon team is the most annoying, particularly from a Boston perspective, in the history of the league.

1998
Grand Canyon: Brett Abernathy, Morgan Ensberg, Roy Halladay, Shea Hillenbrand, Ryan Minor, Chris Singleton, Alfonso Soriano, Dernell Stenson, Wilton Veras
Maryvale: Bronson Arroyo, Julio Lugo, Warren Morris, Scott Williamson.
Peoria: Ryan Anderson, Mark Bellhorn, Eric Chavez, J.D. Drew
Phoenix: Matt Anderson, Torii Hunter, Gabe Kapler, Carlos Lee, Doug Mientkiewicz, A.J. Pierzynski, Jeff Weaver
Scottsdale: Mark Mulder
Sun Cities: Michael Barrett, Brett Billingsley, Randy Wolf

I don't know if the AFL has a disabled list, but that Drew/Chavez/Anderson Peoria team probably would have found a way to invent one.

1999
Grand Canyon: Michael Cuddyer, Jody Gerut, Scot Shields
Maryvale: Aubrey Huff, Jim Morris
Mesa: Paxton Crawford, David Eckstein, Adam Everett, Steve Lomasney, Corey Patterson, Aaron Rowand
Peoria: Ryan Anderson, Pat Burrell, Paul LoDuca, Vernon Wells
Phoenix: Milton Bradley, Kevin Gregg, Jake Westbrook
Scottsdale: Brad Penny, Calvin Pickering, Jason Tyner

The Jim Morris on the Marydale roster was the inspiration for the movie "The Rookie.''

2000
Grand Canyon: Joaquin Benoit, Kevin Mench, Ryan Vogelsong, Michael Young
Maryvale: Brad Lidge, Darnell McDonald, Tony Pena (Mgr.), Jimmy Rollins
Mesa: Marcus Giles, Brian Roberts, Jayson Werth, Dan Wheeler
Peoria: Juan Uribe, Jack Wilson
Phoenix: Danys Baez, Jin Ho Cho, Casey Fossum, Shea Hillenbrand, Steve Lomasney, Ryan Ludwick
Scottsdale: Heath Bell, Stubby Clapp, Brian Cole, Lyle Overbay, Albert Pujols, Ty Wigginton

Pujols led a talented Scottsdale team that included Cole, a promising Mets outfielder killed in a truck accident that spring.

2001
Grand Canyon: Freddy Sanchez
Maryvale: Erik Bedard, Bill Hall, Brian Roberts
Mesa: Miguel Olivo
Peoria: Scott Atchison, Hank Blalock, Carl Crawford, Chone Figgins, Travis Hafner, Josh Hamilton, Drew Henson, Kevin Mench, Francisco Rodriguez
Phoenix: Ryan Ludwick, Scott Proctor
Scottsdale: Orlando Hudson, Brandon Phillips, Francisco Rodriguez, Kyle Snyder

Not many more teams in league history more interesting than the Peoria squad of Crawford-Hamilton/K-Rod/Henson.

2002
Grand Canyon:Rocco Baldelli, Jung Bong, Jorge Cantu, Kevin Cash, Michael Cuddyer, Nick Green, Adam LaRoche, Chase Utley, Jerome Williams
Maryvale: Mike Adams, Bill Hall, J.J. Hardy, Corey Hart, Drew Henson
Mesa: Garrett Atkins, Clint Barmes, Matt Holliday, Cody Ross
Peoria: Mark Teixeira, Shane Victorino
Phoenix: Jhonny Peralta, Brandon Phillips
Scottsdale: Chone Figgins, Wily Mo Pena, Kevin Youkilis, Kyle Snyder, Brandon Webb

Pretty accomplished crop of hitters in the 2002 AFL class, including Utley, Teixeira, Holliday, and Youk.

2003
Grand Canyon: Merkin Valdez
Mesa: Dewon Brazelton, Jonny Gomes, Brad Hawpe, Matt Holliday, Kelly Johnson, Luke Scott, Kelly Shoppach, Adam Stern, Nick Swisher, Ryan Theriot, B.J. Upton, Delmon Young, Charlie Zink
Peoria Sagueros: Adrian Gonzalez, David Wright, Rickie Weeks, Josh Willingham
Peoria Javelinas: Matt Thornton
Scottsdale: Casey Kotchman, James Loney, Jeff Mathis, Sergio Santos, Dernell Stenson

I don't know who pitched for that Peoria team, but with that hitting talent, I don't think it matters.

2004
Grand Canyon: David Aardsma, Scott Baker, Jason Bartlett, Jeff Francoeur, Curtis Granderson, Brian McCann, Ryan Raburn
Mesa: Geovany Soto, Adam Wainwright, Delmon Young
Peoria Jav: Shin-Soo Choo, Mike Morse, Seung Song
Peoria Sag: Aaron Hill, Ian Kinsler, Nate McLouth, Freddy Sanchez
Phoenix: Jeremy Brown, Jeremy Hermida, Ryan Howard, Mike Napoli, Carlos Ruiz, Huston Street
Scottsdale: Conor Jackson, James Loney, Dustin Pedroia, Russell Martin, Carlos Quentin, Rickie Weeks

Scottsdale gets the nod over Grand Canyon for the most talented. What, you thought we'd side against Pedroia?

2005
Grand Canyon: Robert Andino, Lastings Milledge, Denard Span
Mesa: David Aardsma, Curtis Granderson, Joey Votto, Brian Wilson
Peoria Jav: Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy, Corey Hart, Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, Ian Stewart, Dan Uggla
Peoria Sag: Adam Lind, Brandon Moss, David Murphy, Ryan Roberts, Neil Walker, Chris Young, Ryan Zimmerman
Phoenix: Jonathan Broxton, Stephen Drew, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, James Shields, Kurt Suzuki
Surprise: Michael Bourn, Billy Butler, Howie Kendrick, Kendry Morales, Matt Tupman, Jered Weaver, Brandon Wood

Mesa and Peoria were deep . . . but Phoenix probably had more talent than any team in league history.

2006
Grand Canyon: Troy Tulowitzki, Neil Walker
Mesa: Matt Albers, Fernando Martinez, Mike Pelfrey, Hunter Pence, Kevin Slowey
Peoria Jav: Jacoby Ellsbury, Yunel Escobar, David Pauley, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Gaby Sanchez
Peoria Sag: Brett Gardner, Gio Gonzalez, Chase Headley, Brendan Ryan
Phoenix: Dustin McGowan, Jeff Niemann, Ben Zobrist
Scottsdale: Ryan Braun, Mark Reynolds

That Braun/Reynolds combo must have made for some batting practice fun in Scottsdale.

2007
Mesa: Sam Fuld, Craig Hansen, Matt LaPorta, Jed Lowrie
Peoria Jav: Brett Gardner
Peoria Sag: Cameron Maybin, Ricky Nolasco, Will Venable
Phoenix: Andrew McCutchen, Nyjer Morgan
Scottsdale: Evan Longoria, Ricky Romero, Sergio Santos, Max Scherzer, Travis Snider
Surprise Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison

Comparatively thin year talent-wise, though Scottsdale again had an elite hitter in Longoria.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Terry Francona is in between managerial jobs after taking the fall for the Red Sox' 20-loss disaster in September. But he's found some high-profile work to keep him busy in the meantime.

Francona, whose tenure as the Red Sox manager ended Friday after eight seasons, five playoff berths, and two World Championships, and one epic collapse, will view the postseason from a different perspective this October -- he will join Fox Sports as a color analyst during the American League Championship Series, the network confirmed this afternoon.

He will fill in for at least games 1 and 2 of the ALCS between the Texas Rangers and the winner of the ongoing Tigers/Yankees series on the network telecasts. Analyst Tim McCarver will miss at least the first two games of the series with what the network called a "medical issue'' but is expected to return for Game 3.

It's uncertain whether Francona, who will be paired with play-by-play voice Joe Buck, will continue to contribute to the telecasts once McCarver returns.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while waiting for John Henry to park the yacht, turn off Roush Racing Liverpool FC Network NESN, and hustle over to Fenway to explain this mess . . .

1. Seriously, I still can't get over the utter tone-deafness of Linda Pizzuti's tweet Saturday about the condition of her husband, John Henry, who as you may have heard suffered a fall on his yacht Friday at roughly the same time Terry Francona was made the fall guy for September's sunken ship.

Happy John is home! He slipped down stairs, injuring his neck. Kept at hospital as a precautionary measure, but was home for the derby.

Home for the derby. That's just swell. The update on his condition was appropriate, even a relief. But those last six words? Exactly what Red Sox fans wanted to know in the aftermath of the awkward departure of the most successful manager modern franchise history -- that the boss made it home to watch the soccer match. As if suspicions that the Red Sox were no longer the top priority in his portfolio weren't strong enough. Yet so much was still left unsaid. Hey, any word how Carl Edwards is doing in the Chase for the Cup. AND WHO WON "SCHOOLED"? MICHAEL SHOWALTER IS A MAJOR STAR. Sheesh, did Friday really happen?

2. Read the spin any way you want, but the bottom line to me is that if John Henry wanted Francona here, that option would have been picked up sometime over the course of what looked through the summer to be an extremely promising season.

Never happened. Never was rumored to be happening. Tells you all you need to know.

Now that Francona has departed -- a somewhat friendlier word for scapegoated, I guess -- there has damn well better be some fallout on those most responsible for messing up this season. The starting rotation was historically inept in September -- and if presuming the yet-to-be-denied reports of in-game beverage consumption are true, it turns out they let the team down more than we even suspected.

John Lackey has to go; I can't believe it's possible that he's a worse influence than he is a pitcher, but that seems to be the case. Josh Beckett should be ashamed, and they should shop him, though it's hard to figure right now how he would be replaced.

As for the everyday players, I don't doubt for a second that Kevin Youkilis's temper and sarcastic attitude are issues at times. David Ortiz didn't have his manager's back . . . ah, you know the list of suspects.

All we can hope at this point is that as the transgressions keep leaking out -- and they will -- those guilty of submarining this season from within are held accountable for their gross entitlement.

3. If Jon Lester is among the "Hell, Yeah, I Like Beer (In The Clubhouse During The Game Don't Mess With Texas Or Tacoma Redneck Remix)" crew, man, that must feel like the biggest betrayal of all to Francona.

I keep thinking back to Lester's no-hitter against the Royals in May 2008 -- a moment that came with an additional layer of emotion because of his battle with lymphoma two years earlier -- and Francona's obvious pride in and happiness for the pitcher.

"He's a wonderful kid, not just because he threw the no-hitter," Francona said that night. "To watch him do that tonight was beyond words. What a story. You feel like a proud parent."

The admiration was reciprocated by Lester.

"It's something I'll remember for a long time. "[Francona] has been like a second dad to me. He cares a lot about his players. It's not just about what you can do on the field."

It would be a shame if something changed in their relationship along the way.

4 My first choice to replace Francona as manager among the rumored candidates?

Actually, I can't think of a realistic one at the moment, particularly since there's no chance of getting John Farrell or Joe Maddon.

My last choice: Trey Hillman, whose issues in Kansas City indicate he's not a great bet to learn from his mistakes as Francona did in Philadelphia.

My best guess as to who will get it: A.J. Hinch, the former D-Backs manager who has sabermetric bona fides and is working for Jed Hoyer in San Diego.

Of course, I'm the same person who thought they'd hire Glenn Hoffman over Tito before the 2004 season.

5. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced the Red Sox should make Daniel Bard a starter. He has enough of a repertoire beyond his blazing fastball to be a very good rotation regular, perhaps an excellent one. As valuable as he was as the relief ace before his September nosedive, he'd be even more valuable as a 200-inning starter.

While keeping in mind that he'd probably pace himself more in the rotation -- at his best, he can come in and let it fly Gossage-style in his current role -- his career numbers right now look like one extremely impressive season for a starting pitcher: 197 innings, 132 hits, 76 walks, 213 strikeouts, 1.06 WHIP, 2.88 ERA.

During this week's Red Sox podcast/postmortem, I gripe about the injustice of Tito's departure and the uselessness of John Lackey while Nick Cafardo graciously plays the voice of reason. Hey, it's nothing if not cathartic.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

It's all over but the finger-pointing, the whispered anecdotes of behind-the-scenes dissension, the internal bickering over the divvying of the blame pie. Terry Francona, the best manager the Boston Red Sox have had in my lifetime, yours and your granddad's, will no longer be the manager of the Boston Red Sox.

There was no sudden and stunning change of heart. All those mysterious returns to Fenway this afternoon didn't keep him from driving away. Tito is already gone, and all that's left to do is settle in, await the weeks of aftershocks, and try to spot the precise moment where the Red Sox ownership lost its way.

The sad rumor that Wednesday's season-ending debacle would stand as the final game of Francona's tenure took a sharp turn toward the inevitable during the postmortem press conference yesterday at Fenway. The tenor was even grimmer than expected after the evaporation of their season, a feeling of finality in the words and expressions of Francona and general manager Theo Epstein.

Now that his departure is confirmed, make no mistake: the moment it became official is the moment it should be declared that the first major decision of this crucial offseason has been as botched as badly as the Red Sox players botched September.

Call Francona's departure after eight seasons, five playoff berths, and two World Championships the collateral damage for the Red Sox' 7-20 meltdown in September. Call him a scapegoat, call it Steinbrenneresque, and absolutely call it the most foolish, shortsighted baseball decision by John Henry and the increasingly tone-deaf Red Sox ownership has made during its stewardship of this franchise.

With word coming from that tried-and-true transparent public relations stand-by for bad news, a press release late on a Friday afternoon, it was spun as a mutual decision initiated by Francona's sense that he couldn't get through to the players. Maybe there is genuine truth there. Maybe Francona is tired of this city, certain whiny and oblivious players, meddling from management, the effects it all has on his health. He's certainly tired of something; he wears the stress on his face. Maybe he's decided this is for the best, too.

But I refuse to believe he felt this way a month ago, when the Red Sox had a legitimate claim as a championship contender. Oh, we know how it came to this -- the Red Sox suffered a collapse for the ages this September, one that dragged on right down until the final batter of the final inning of the final game of the season. You know the timeline. On September 1, the Red Sox were in first place in the American League East, nine games up in the wild-card race on the Tampa Bay Rays. Today, phenom Matt Moore takes the mound for the Rays in Game 1 against the Rangers, while the Red Sox settle in to the offseason as a punch line for the ages.

Still, the magnitude and speed of the collapse doesn't explain how it came to this, how Francona went from as secure in his job as any manager could possibly be to a former employee of the Boston Red Sox in the matter of a month. The fallout is as ridiculous as the fall itself. You don't bid farewell to the best manager you've ever had in these grim circumstances. You support him, embolden him, while also telling him what he can improve upon, whether that's disciplining players or following the wisdom of numbers a little more often.

This is not meant as a suggestion that Francona was flawless. Such a thing as the perfect manager does not exist, other than perhaps in a Diamond Mind game or Bobby Valentine's mirror. But Francona was -- ugh, past tense -- the closest thing we've ever seen in Boston to an ideal manager, not only strategically, but also when it comes to the enormous and varied demands of managing a baseball team that is so much more than that to the region. He's communicative, wry, fair, forthright and logical in his reasoning, and those attributes helped him appease the fellowship of the miserable as much as any manager can. He's a second-generation baseball lifer with, it seems anyway, a reasonably open mind toward statistical analysis. Oh, and he was 28-17 in the playoffs, with eight wins in the World Series without a single loss.

I'm not naive enough to believe there are lifetime managerial gigs; they almost always end badly. But I did believe his accomplishments would make him something of an exception, that he would someday exit on his own terms, with a thank-you and a salute rather than a shrug and a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. That there will be two straight Octobers at Fenway without playoff baseball should not diminish what he accomplished or the perception of his capability. Around the game, it won't. He's not going to lack for suitors. If the Cubs want to end their decades of futility, they should empty the vault for Epstein, whose support of Francona yesterday and again in today's press release ("his next team will benefit more than it knows from hearing Tito’s voice'') was telling, and let his first act be to hire the manager with whom he helped end an 86-year drought. If they could win there after winning here, the final stop for both will be in Cooperstown, New York.

It is fair to say that Francona's main failing -- a loyalty to his players that often extends beyond the point when they no longer deserve it, though not hardly in the Pete Carroll realm -- is in part what is hurting him now. Francona lamented yesterday that there were clubhouse issues -- a telling, out-of-character public admission of discord -- and when Jim Rice, who was complicit in the "25 players, 25 cabs'' culture of the '70s Red Sox, outright states that the Red Sox clubhouse is a "spa,'' you know the days of the affable, all-for-one "Idiots'' are even longer ago than they seem. Often, Francona was rewarded for his belief in his players, whether it was Mark Bellhorn in 2004 or young Dustin Pedroia in 2007 or so many others along the way. Believing in these particular players hastened his downfall.

Who would have suspected a month ago that this team -- I should say, so many individuals in this group, since this apparently was not a team by any stretch by the bitter end -- was so unlikable? They were soft around the middle and soft in big moments. There were countless innings and anecdotes that suggested complacency. There was David Ortiz second-guessing Francona about using Alfredo Aceves as a reliever, and Carl Crawford shooing away reporters asking about his latest hiccup by saying, "Go ask the captain.'' There are reports of cliques among the pitchers, of resentment among teammates, of a culture of entitlement, of complacency. What is this, 2001?

So let's get this straight: The players became divisive and lackadaisical, and they get to stay while the manager whose first championship predated the arrival of most of them has to go? Sure, that's going to solve the problem. That's likely to have the opposite effect, to embolden them, and don't tell me a hard-nosed manager is the cure to changing whatever issues there are in the clubhouse.

Dick Williams rated as the Red Sox' greatest modern manager until Francona came along, kicking Yaz and the rest in the rear-end and setting a tone of accountability that helped spur the Impossible Dream. He also wore out his welcome with the players in his third season, and that was more than 40 years ago. Imagine how the players of today would react to that approach. John Lackey would have to invent a whole new repertoire of contemptuous sneers just for the manager.

I wish I knew where they go from here, but I don't. I just have suspicions. I'm certain Pete Mackanin does not replace Terry Francona under any circumstances other than insubordination or a sudden onset of insanity. Joe Torre? No chance. He's more passive than Francona. A relatively obscure loyalist to sabermetrics? Could be on to something, though a search to fit that profile comes up empty here. Valentine . . . now that's interesting. He has extraordinary knowledge, and his sharp analysis on ESPN certainly could enhance his appeal to a particularly fickle owner. He's also a confirmed know-it-all who would make Kevin Kennedy seem demure. I like Bobby V., and I can say without hesitation that he would be a disaster here.

Then again, it's teetering on disaster here already. The problems -- bloated bodies, bloated paychecks, bloated egos -- remain, while Terry Francona, the man who managed them as well as anyone could, has left the ball park, a terrible error marking the end of an era.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

If you're a baseball fan first, it's a night you'll never forget. If you're a Red Sox fan first, it's a night you'll never be allowed to forget.

The 2011 Boston Red Sox completed the worst regular-season collapse in baseball history last night, gagging away ... well, hell, you know. We'll keep today's postmortem brief since we'll be considering and reconsidering this 7-win, 20-loss September nightmare through the winter and spring and probably beyond.

Seven wins. Twenty losses. And none more painful than the last. Oh, yeah, this one is going to linger, folks, right up until the Red Sox win something meaningful again. In '78, the Red Sox showed tremendous resilience after their famous collapse, winning their final eight games of the regular season to force a one-game playoff. In 2003, it was an extraordinarily admirable team done in by a fierce, talented rival and its own molasses-brained manager.

This . . . this is just. Appropriate. This is right, how it should be. It stinks if you're a Red Sox fan, but it's the frigid truth The Red Sox gave the Rays every chance in the world to steal their place in the postseason. Took 'em to the 12th inning of their 162d game, but damned if they didn't do it. You could say Joe Maddon's crew ripped the Sox' heart out. But first we'd require proof that they had one in the first place. Save for but a few -- the great Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Alfredo Aceves, perhaps Marco Scutaro -- I don't sympathize with this crew the way I did with Yaz in '78 or Buckner in '86 or Pedro and Wakefield and just about all of them in '03. These guys did this to themselves.

How did it happen? Why? It feels like there are pieces of the knowledge puzzle missing. Is it chemistry? It's not a lack of ability -- the Sox were the best team in the American League through much of the summer, going 81-42 from the conclusion of the 2-10 start until September 1. On that date, they were on cruise control toward October, nine games up on the Rays in the wild card race. Two days later, Baseball Prospectus gave them a 99.6 chance of making the postseason.

So now we know what 0.4 percent looks like. Last night was a microcosm of the whole month of September, right down to the shell-shocked Carl Crawford botching a catchable ball again, Robert Bleepin' Andino tormenting blank-eyed Jonathan Papelbon again, and the Rays digging out of the grave again, coming back from a 7-0 deficit against the Yankees, who did an honest job of maintaining the game's integrity while also preparing for their long-since secured postseason berth.

The eerie juxtapositions of events of last night -- the Rays winning on Evan Longoria's walk-off homer mere seconds after Andino and the Orioles had staggered the Red Sox, when a Boston victory and a Tampa Bay loss had both been one out away from reality earlier in the game -- became instant baseball lore. With a similar dramatic collapse by the Atlanta Braves concluding in the National League, it was a compelling, unforgettable night of baseball, provided your spirits didn't get crushed like a John Lackey fastball.

Last night was the denouement of a month's worth of horrendous performances from those who make up this $161 million roster, of all of the innings wasted by a lack of urgency, inspiration, and a shortage of timely pitching and hitting. Don't let anyone tell you that injuries weren't a reason for this -- Kevin Youkilis and Clay Buchholz and even Daisuke Matsuzaka would have made a difference, and Adrian Gonzalez's power was sapped by shoulder and leg woes -- but don't let anyone tell you they were the reason, either.

Talented, richly compensated players did not perform, starting with Lackey, who simply cannot return to this team or this city next year. Not only is he coming off the worst season a Red Sox starting pitcher has ever submitted, but he's a miserable, dim, finger-pointing, unaccountable wretch of a teammate, and those may be his good qualities. That the Red Sox were apparently considering acquiring lefthanded mediocrity Bruce Chen to pitch a one-game playoff if necessary tells you all you need to know about Lackey's status with the team. Pack up the sneer and the sacks of unearned cash and just go away.

There are others who will be called to the witness stand today. Gonzalez has some lovely statistics and the dubious distinction of being a featured star on a second straight team that collapsed down the stretch. Big Papi's clutch mojo has been absent so long that a huge hit in a pivotal situation seems more like a tired wish than a real possibility. Josh Beckett and Jon Lester need to pitch up to their reputations, and I think they should seriously shop Beckett. I can't believe I'm sitting here watching ancient Johnny Damon get interviewed after earning yet another trip to the postseason while I wonder why Carl Crawford, the player Damon helped replace in Tampa at a fraction of the cost, plays with such timidity. What has happened to that dynamic player who tormented the all those years while he was in Tampa Bay? And is he gone for good? Because right now, he's Coco Crisp with a lousy glove.

The man who put this bunch together won't escape cross-examination. Theo Epstein is a tremendous general manager when common sense and context are considered, but he must be accountable for the Lackey and Crawford contracts (provided the latter wasn't pushed on him by ownership desperate to boost NESN ratings). I do not want him to lose his job or bolt for the Cubs by any means; I want him to find his way out of this mess he has created. And I trust he will.

As for the manager, please don't bring those ill-considered gripes to me, the reactionary argument that someone's head has to roll, that Terry Francona has gone too soft. Save the shrieking for someone else; I'm going to be more infuriated if Francona leaves than I was when Papelbon threw that meatball to Nolan Reimold. Just because Francona doesn't light up his players to the media doesn't mean he's passive behind closed doors. He's honest, funny, and sarcastic -- I'm sure he gets his points across. Again, please, try to keep perspective, and that goes double for anyone in ownership who wrongheadedly thinks Bobby Valentine is the solution to anything.

Have we actually forgotten during this meltdown and his helplessness to prevent it that Francona has so many essential attributes and admirable accomplishments, starting with those two championships? It wasn't so long ago -- I suppose August is the correct answer -- that a third seemed a real possibility this year. He handles the complexity and ancillary nonsense of the managerial job in Boston as well as anyone ever has. He is usually rewarded by his trust in his players; don't make him the scapegoat because they failed him this year.

You want it to go back to the way it was before 2004, Mr. Henry? Start by dumping the best manager the Red Sox have ever had, and you just may get that wish. If Francona leaves, it had better come on his own terms.

Just because the Red Sox blew it in agonizing fashion doesn't mean the whole organization needs to be blown up. Keep Theo, keep Tito, and erase all evidence that this Lackey thing ever happened, and the optimism for 2012 will return soon enough. Who knows, maybe you'll even sell a few bricks.

Just don't let a bad ending destroy what should still be a good situation once the shock and disappointment fade.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Don't know about you guys, but I haven't been at this level of tension and anticipation for a single Red Sox game since -- well, probably Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS. Can't stop thinking about it, so might as well write about it. Here are a couple of pregame thoughts before game No. 162, hopefully not the season's last . . .

* * *

I've gone back and forth on this, with Mr. Ryan on Globe 10.0 this morning as well as in my own whistle-pea brain, and as first pitch grows nearer I become more and more convinced that there is only one reasonable choice for Terry Francona to start behind the plate tonight is the one, thank heavens, that he eventually made.

Of course Ryan Lavarnway should play over Jarrod Saltalamacchia tonight. There really should have been no debate.

The most obvious reasons why are evident in last night's box score. The kid catcher from Yale hit two home runs and drove in four runs in the Red Sox' 8-7 victory, and if not for a phenomenal catch by Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis, would have had six RBIs, maybe seven. No matter how tonight and perhaps tomorrow play out, Lavarnway's performance is assured a permanent place in Red Sox lore.

But the most convincing Play The Kid, Tito argument has less to do with Lavarnway and more to do with Saltalamacchia. He's had a very encouraging first full season in Boston, winning the trust of the pitching staff, overcoming his throwing issue that threatened to ruin his career, and reestablishing himself at age 26 as potential long-term solution behind the plate. I believe he is the Red Sox' catcher of the future in part because the consensus seems to be that Lavarnway won't remain at the position, but the present tense is what matters right now, and it's very difficult to argue he should be behind the plate for any reason other than that it's been his job for most of the season.

He's hurt, having taken a direct hit of a foul ball off his collarbone Monday night. He's not hitting, batting .162 with one walk and 27 strikeouts this month. He's struggled somewhat defensively (still can't believe he whiffed on that relay throw Monday). And any belief that he's a security blanket for Jon Lester is countered by the reality that the lefthander has a 5.96 ERA and three losses this month. There's not a hell of a lot of security in those numbers.

When forced to use Lavarnway Wednesday night, Francona had the good sense to bat him sixth in the lineup. Tonight, he will hit fifth, and kudos to Tito for that. When given an apparently choice tonight between giving Lavarnway, who was named the best hitting prospect in the International League this season ahead of Yankees sensation Jesus Montero, a shot at an encore or playing the struggling and bruised incumbent in Saltalamacchia, common sense and the desperation of the moment trumped some vague code of loyalty.

* * *

This is all you need to know about the present perception of John Lackey by the same people who determined he was worthy of a $82,500,000 contract less than two years ago: They are considering trading a prospect or two to Kansas City to acquire Bruce Chen to make one start.

Yes, that Bruce Chen, the 13-year veteran of 10 major league franchises, the Bruce Chen who has been league-average the last two seasons for the Royals -- a dozen wins each season, an ERA+ of 101 last year and 102 this year, the Bruce Chen who has never thrown a pitch in a postseason game, the Bruce Chen who ranks 1,042d all-time among pitchers on baseball-reference's eloRater, sandwiched in eternal mediocrity right between Tomo Ohka and Carlos Silva.

The Bruce Chen who pitched five games for the Red Sox in 2003, not an inning of which you remember. Or that Theo Epstein remembers, apparently.

That the Sox are pursuing a mediocre starter to pitch a game on which their season -- and the perception of the manager and general manager -- hinges tells you that either Lackey's elbow is hanging by a thread or the Red Sox have not a shred of faith that he can bear any resemblance to the pitcher who won Game 7 of the 2002 World Series as a rookie or even the one who pitched 7.1 shutout innings in Game 1 of the 2009 ALDS. If he's not on the mound tomorrow and Bruce Chen is, then I'll consider it evidence that the Red Sox will give serious thought to swallowing the rest of his fat contract.

Some of the names on Chen's career comp list are sure to make a Sox fan shudder: John Halama, Scott Schoeneweis, Kent Mercker, Matt Young, and perhaps most appropriately, Pete Schourek.

* * *

Unless Lester's assurances that he is healthy turn out to be as inauthentic as that slight Texas drawl the son of Tacoma native seems to have picked up, I am confident that he will come through tonight with a performance that allows us to forget his strangely hapless September (three losses, 5.96 ERA) or the fact that for all of his success in his career (76-34 career record), his record in big games has been spotty lately after a sensational start.

History has some value here -- he's owned the Orioles in his career (14-0, 2.33 ERA), and the lineup Buck Showalter will put on the field to face Lester tonight has few hitters who have had any success against him.

Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, and Vladimir Guerrero all have a career batting average of .220 or lower against Lester, and the highest slugging percentage of the three belongs to Guerrero at just .357.

Now, if he'll just stop nibbling and trust his fastball a little bit more -- something The Eck has been saying for weeks -- the Sox should survive to play another day.

Now, if Dellin Betances can somehow channel Rick Waits . . .

* * *

Last question:

So what inning does Jacoby Ellsbury hit his home run tonight? I have the third inning with Marco Scutaro on base in the office pool. Don't have a feel for when he'll hit the second homer, though.

See! Optimism! And in Ellsbury, the MVP of the league as far as I'm concerned, it's genuine.

Man, this game needs to hurry up and get here.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

As the Red Sox' September skid kept going and going, careening perilously close to the historic, you kept waiting for that one moment, that one perfect swing at the perfect time, to make it all right again.

Forget the the scapegoats and disasters, the half-formed excuses and legitimate reasons for their lackadaisical play. Forget the failings of John Lackey, whose season-long ineptitude apparently proved contagious to the rest of the rotation this month.

One well-timed swing at a pivotal moment -- an Adrian Gonzalez opposite field blast to break open a tie game, a Dustin Pedroia gapper to clear the bases, a Big Papi flashback to 2003 and '04 and a couple of seasons beyond, hell, a fortunate flare from Carl Crawford -- and maybe then the best team in the American League through much of the summer would have started looking familiar to us once again.

We waited, and waited, and waited to the point that some among us wondered why we bothered waiting at all. And then, with zero hour approaching and the last evidence of a one-time 11-game wild card lead on the verge of evaporating entirely, the swing happened at last. Let the record show that Jacoby Ellsbury's three-run home run in the 14th inning last night -- his third homer of the doubleheader and 31st in his marvelous, redemptive season -- was just the reminder we needed of what a clutch hit looks like. The Red Sox have not had a more important hit this season, or in recent seasons, really, dating back to the 2008 postseason.

Felix Doubront earned the official save last night at Yankee Stadium, and you could say that Jonathan Papelbon, with 2.1 innings of critical, clutch relief, earned the thinking fan's save. But it was Ellsbury who may very well have earned a save of the entire season. And his performance when his team needed it the most, with the almost unfathomable possibility hanging over the outcome that the wild card race would tied with three games remaining, could go a long way toward bringing him baseball's most prestigious individual accolade: a Most Valuable Player award.

It is an especially compelling race for the AL MVP award this season, because there are several worthy candidates, but no clear-cut favorite. Jose Bautista is the game's most proficient slugger, but his Blue Jays are also-rans, and his accomplishments will be downgraded for the failings of his teammates. Detroit's Justin Verlander has essentially duplicated Roger Clemens's 1986 season when he won the MVP, but the debate over any pitcher's worthiness for the award rages on. The Yankees' Curtis Granderson leads the AL in runs (135), RBIs (119), and has walloped 41 homers in the Bronx, but his own candidacy may be hurt by the depth and talent of the lineup around him.

As for Ellsbury, he surged ahead of Gonzalez and Pedroia as the Red Sox' leading candidate long before last night -- over the last 28 days, he's hit .368 with seven homers and a 1.088 OPS.

Last night, however, he became the American League's front-runner.

Now, I wouldn't blame you, discerning readers, if you staged an intervention to keep me from using baseball-reference's Play Index to attempt to put every Red Sox player's season, up to and including Nate Spears, into historical context. Heck, this is twice I've done it with Ellsbury. I have a problem . . . but hey, it's a helluva fun problem to have. Besides, if you can't celebrate his season, especially after what happened last night, then what's the point of celebrating anything?

So here I am, fixing on the Play Index again, punching in a specific set of Ellsbury's numbers in with the hope of finding out just how great he has been this season.

I searched for players who equaled or surpassed Ellsbury's current output of home runs (31), RBIs (103), runs (117), and hits (208) in a single season. Pretty basic, I know, and those four categories don't even take into consideration the entire scope of Ellsbury's season -- the 38 stolen bases, 45 doubles, .928 OPS, and league-leading 356 total bases.

But they do tell you what you desire to know, even after you notice during rudimentary poking around that he has more extra-base hits this season (81) than Jim Rice did in '78 (76): namely, that Jacoby Ellsbury's age-27 season has put him in some extraordinary company.

There have been 23 players -- including Ellsbury this year, obviously -- who have pulled off the 31 HR/103 RBIs/117 runs/208 hits statistical four-pack, with it being accomplished a total of 33 times. Lou Gehrig did it five times, Chuck Klein three, and four players did it twice, including Alex Rodriguez and Todd Helton, who is one of three Coors Field legends on the list, along with Ellis Burks and Larry Walker.

Rice's '78 vintage is there, as is Don Mattingly's remarkable '86 season, and Vernon Wells's brilliant 2003 that feels like a long time ago given the current state of his career. Nineteen of the 33 occurred in either the 1920s or '30s, while eight others happened in the jacked-up sluggers' heyday from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. This is one thing I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure Ellsbury is the only player among the 33 who never had an at-bat against Tim Wakefield.

The list becomes even more exclusive when other criteria are considered. Only 16 players of the 33 matched or surpassed Ellsbury's 45 doubles, and only one stole more than 38 bases. I had forgotten that A-Rod, who swiped 46 bags at age 22 for the 1998 Seattle Mariners, used to be a threat on the bases without needing to slap the ball out of an opponent's hand.

I admit, the context here isn't perfect -- for instance, Ellsbury is on the bottom of the power scale, finishing 30th in OPS and tied for 32d with Mattingly in homers. But there's no denying that he has the numbers to win the AL MVP. He's far and away first in the majors in fWAR (9.2), and after last night, he has something even more visceral and valuable to his in his case: a go-ahead three-run homer in the 14th inning of a must-win game at Yankee Stadium. It's the swing we've been waiting for all September, and as it replays in your mind this afternoon, is sure looks like the most persuasive of defining moments.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Have to presume most Red Sox fans are tuning in to the meaningful 157th of the 2011 season on Fox this afternoon. But should the oblivious stylings of Matt Vasgersian and Tim McCarver -- or another disappointing performance by Jon Lester, which seems to be developing as I write this -- send you lunging for the remote, you can get a satisfying Red Sox-Yankees fix elsewhere.

At 5 p.m., the MLB Network will debut "1941: Summer of Legends,'' a compelling look back at two of baseball's most enduring legends and accomplishments: Ted Williams's pursuit of .400 and Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Set against the backdrop of "the final summer of peace before the second World War,'' it includes spectacular archived footage of both icons, as well as interviews with Bobby Doerr, Phil Rizzuto, Leigh Montville (who wrote a terrific book about Williams), and Tony Gwynn (who hit .394 during the 1994 season and became close with Williams in his later years.)

You're probably aware of this, but DiMaggio won the MVP that year while Williams finished second, by a vote total of 291-254. Williams hit .406 -- you're probably aware of that, too, I suspect -- with 37 homers, a .553 on-base percentage, a .735 slugging percentage, and a ridiculous rWAR of 11.3. All of those numbers were superior to DiMaggio's -- and those of everyone else in the league.

Williams also led the league in runs (135), walks (147, to just 27 strikeouts -- that's a week for Adam Dunn), and adjusted OPS (234, seventh-best all-time, behind three Babe Ruth seasons and three Swollen Barry Bonds seasons). It was the greatest season for the greatest hitter who ever lived. But the Sox finished second in the AL, 17 games back of the Yankees, so you can see how they settled the "does the MVP have to come from a contender?'' debate back then.

Anyway, check it out. Nostalgia about Williams beats the hell out of watching Carl Crawford play left field at the moment.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

What?! Whaddaya mean we're supposed to cheer for the Red Sox this weekend? I was just getting used to this whole-rooting-for-the-Yankees thing. It was such a graceful, easy adjustment, you know, like it was five years ago when Derek Jeter's range started to go and he humbly converted from shortstop to . . . well, anyway, it was easy. I just asked myself: What would Suzyn Waldman do? Voila! Instant Yankees fan! Oh my goodness gracious, bro!

Don't know how you went about it, but me, I went all-in this week when the Red Sox' September nosedive became so severe that Boston fans were required to depend upon the Yankees to do what the local team could not: beat up on the Tampa Bay Rays.

Like I said, all in -- I didn't do it halfway, like that bum Adrian Gonzalez, who barely runs to first base the 59 percent of the time he makes an out. A sore neck never stopped the luckiest man on the face of the earth, Mr. Joe Pepitone!

No, I committed myself to cheering for the Yankees, much like Phillip Glenn Hoffman committed himself to looking like that Art Howe dude in that nerd- and chick-flick baseball movie that everyone is talking about.

And not to brag, though it does seem to come more naturally now, but my commitment went beyond just baseball. I went Full Yankee, immersing myself in the ways of the Yankee fan, the mind set, the lifestyle, you know?

Among my prouder achievements that should help ingratiate me to my new Yankee brothers:

Had impure thoughts about Snooki.

Attempted to put an '86 Fiero on Craigslist on layaway.

Grew a mustache and convinced myself it looks exactly like Thurman Munson's in 1976.

Complimented the bro on the train next to me for growing a mustache that looked just like Rick Cerone's in 1981.

Apologized profusely to the woman on the train with the mustache.

Wrote Nick Swisher a letter asking if he likes gladiator movies.

Wrote Nick Swisher another letter asking if he likes gladiator movies after he accidentally forgot to reply to my previous 17 letters.

Became familiar with the term "restraining order."

Looked up "grandish'' in dictionary. Still didn't know what the hell John Sterling is talking about.

OK, I guess I do have to have to admit, going Full Yankee began as something of a protest on my part. You could say it was my way of teaching the Red Sox a lesson for all of their transgressions during this 5-16 month -- specifically, their lack of guts, grit, hustle, scrappiness, caring, and Ecksteinability. Oh, and Trotitude. Especially Trotitude

Yeah, I know, the starting pitchers' ERA is 6.75 over the last 18 games. You know why? Because they don't scowl enough. Well, except for Lackey. But he does it to his manager. Not the same. Misdirected Trotitude is a dangerous thing.

The Yankees, they're everything the Red Sox have not been this season, at least after September 1. They have an $82.5-million bust of a pitcher named A.J. Burnett whose ERA is almost two runs better than the Red Sox' $82.5-million bust of a pitcher.

The Red Sox' setup man, Daniel Bard, has five losses in September; the Yankees' setup man David Robertson, has a 1.16 ERA all season.

The Red Sox' closer, Jonathan Papelbon, blows his first save since May in one of the biggest moments of the season; the Yankees' closer, Mariano Rivera, sets the all-time saves record and may well be an android.

The Red Sox' general manager, Theo Epstein, signs Carl Crawford to a $142 million deal and he hits .259; the Yankees' general manager, Brian Cashman, chortles that the duped the Sox into signing Crawford while his left fielder, the considerably less expensive Brett Gardner, hits .261.

Then there's the difference in managers: let's just say no one will ever accuse Joe Girardi of being in a [Fran]coma, not as long as that perpetually pulsating vein in his forehead constantly reminds you he's thinking, and thinking hard. Also, he has a binder.

And just look at that picture there. Classy, no? The captain! Derek Jeter, No. 2 in your program, No. 1 in starlets befriended. (See? Befriended. Classy!) You were right all along, Tim McCarver. The eyes are as calm as ... as a sea that is especially calm, definitely calmer than most seas. And other huge bodies of water. Like a lake, or CC Sabathia.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's not poetry, but give me a break, will ya? We Yankee fans aren't known for our metaphors. We're more into syllables.

"DER-EK JEE-TER!!! CLAP CLAP CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!!!"

Did Ted Williams ever acknowledge you after you clapped for him? Didn't think so.

Stick that in your adieu and bid it, Updike.

Yes, I do know there's some risk in this conversion, that the Red Sox, should they back into the postseason, wouldn't have to rely on the likes of Tim Wakefield or Kyle Weiland or Andrew Miller or Allen Ripley. But despite what the pit stains on this Teixeira t-shirt might tell you, I'm not sweating it. Disregard their 4-11 start against the Red Sox this year. We all know the season begins in October, unless the Yankees happen to win the first series of the year in April.

Nope, this is as real as Ivan Nova's 16-4 record.

I cheered for the Yankees this week, thaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Yankees won, and dammit, I'm staying with you, Waldman. You know, Suzyn, sometimes in life, Stockholm Syndrome can be pretty fun.

Sing it, Liza, old blue eyes, you!

If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere, and probably already did before hitting free agency, hahhahaha!

It's all about New York, New York around here now, so adjust accordingly, you loyal Red Sox losahs with your measly two World Series championships in the past seven years.

Come to think of it, only one thing still feels the same.

Bro, I still cannot stand A-Rod.

Recorded this week's edition of the podcast at 10:30 this morning with Daigo Fujiwara and Nick Cafardo. It probably sounds like a postmortem, or at least an audio version of today's column. But after the Yankees rallied to beat the Rays this afternoon, I'll admit the optimism level rose from "Mike Lansing would fit in great with these bums" to "Hmmm. If Beckett pitches well, there may be some hope here." Check out the podcast, and I'll keep you posted on my latest Sox-induced mood swing.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

During this September so cruel it almost seems scripted, each new ballgame -- every few innings, really -- provides new depths of disaster and despair for the 2011 Boston Red Sox. At this point, I'm not sure what rock-bottom is for this battered, hard-luck, and self-destructive team, though the definitive image of this collapse that will stick with most of us in retrospect will probably happen in the next few days, presuming the Rays stop prolonging the inevitable and finally surpass them in the wild-card race.

In the office pool, I have Carl Crawford tripping over third base and failing to score the tying run in the ninth inning of the last day of the season while Don and Jerry barely acknowledge the Aparicio-esque disaster because there's a visitor in the booth who requires extended on-air acknowledgment. But the Rays, they'll notice from afar. For their former teammate's season-long contributions to their eventual playoff berth, the Rays will covertly vote Crawford a playoff share.

Go ahead, just try to top that last paragraph on the bitterness scale. Of course, such sarcasm can be justified when the Kodak Carousel in our minds is already loaded with images of all the recent on-field atrocities one would expect from a team with a .250 winning percentage in a given month. There's Josh Reddick's Trot-trademarked rain dance on the routine fly ball . . . [click] . . . and Erik Bedard's 51-pitch meltdown in an inning from which he should have escaped . . . [click] . . . and a Toby Borland special from Daniel Bard, who had a12.15 ERA in seven September appearances before last night . . . [click] . . . and Jonathan Papelbon giving up a three-run double on a 3-2 count to Robert Andino, a recycled part with a career .638 OPS.

At least Papelbon was accountable in defeat. His comments in the postgame ("This is on me") were reminiscent of Dennis Eckersley's "I pitched horse[bleep] . . . the 'L' goes next to my name" comments during the Boston Massacre in '78 when he saw shortstop Frank Duffy, who made a crucial error, besieged by reporters after a loss. Behind all the flash, the Eck was a stand-up guy. So is Papelbon, and so is Bard for that matter.

The same can't be said of John Lackey, who is apparently as oblivious as he is disastrous. He has apparently missed all of the stories this week pointing out either that he's having the worst season of any Red Sox pitcher ever or that he's making the Yankees' oft-mocked signing of Carl Pavano look like a bargain by comparison, staring incredulously at Terry Francona as he came out to remove him during his 4.1-inning, 11-hit, 8-earned run gem against Baltimore Monday.

I blame Francona for very little of this meltdown -- you think he's given Kyle Weiland five starts out of the goodness of his heart? -- but I do wish he'd greeted Lackey this way: "What the [insert Bill Belichick's standard word of choice for Derrick Mason] are you staring at? Give me the damn ball and get off this mound."

While the stress of the circumstances are easily recognized in Francona's tired voice during the postgame interviews on NESN and his increasing candor about his players' failings (such as noting Reddick made a fundamentally poor play in reading the fly ball before he dropped it), he's doing his damnedest to keep the ship on course. Bringing in Papelbon in the eighth was the right move with an unfortunate result, and those who spent the past couple of weeks howling that he needs to be more aggressive should probably finds a new screeching point today.

I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't recognize where they are coming from, however, as misguided as some of the finger-pointing can be. This in-progress meltdown and what seems at the moment to be an inevitable outcome have made even me sound bitter -- no, I don't really believe the Rays will vote Crawford a playoff share -- and more sarcastic than usual, anyway. It's cathartic to gripe about it.

My only wish is that those who deserve the blame are the ones who get it, and that's where we go off the rails around here a bit. This slide isn't because the team lacks spark or fire. They don't need to bring in David Eckstein as a gritty, gutty inspiration, they don't need to pass Trot Nixon's old dirty hat around the clubhouse for luck, and they sure as hell don't need Francona to turn over the postgame spread in a phony show of fire. What they need is simple: Good pitching from their good pitchers, and enough timely hits to cover for those who aren't so good.

Real faith may be hard to find right now, but it's not that far out of reach. As Bob Ryan just popped by my corner to tell me in his inimitable, inarguable way, it's really all about the magic number. Yes, they lost last night, and it was excruciating. But so did Tampa, and another one can be crossed off the schedule. Seven games left, and the magic number is six. Sure, the concept of requiring and appreciating the Yankees' help -- I prefer, for the sake of my soul, to think of it as rooting against the Rays rather than for New York -- in whittling down that number is an uncomfortable one. But considering everything else going on around the Red Sox these days, it shouldn't feel that weird. Uncomfortable became the new normal weeks ago.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Sweet rings, sweet cover about Boston's winnahs, and sweet distraction from the submerging Red Sox. Or as Kevin Garnett put it in a classic commercial for ESPN Mag back in the day before he was part of the Boston sports scene, it's tastefully done.

While the suspicion here is that this week's all-Boston issue will include more references to "Beantown'' than most true Bostonians would ever actually say -- that would be one or greater -- a glimpse at the table of contents suggests it should be appealing overall even to the most parochial Boston fan.

Hey, anything with an article about Boston sports titled "Decade of Dominance" is off to a good start as far as I'm concerned. Also, Bill Simmons -- Grantland Sports Guy these days -- returns to the magazine to write a back-page piece on why the issue was a bad idea.

I know there's a punch line there, but I'm not finding it. So let's consider five other articles included in the issue, in order of appeal:

The Front Office Diaries -- A look inside the thinking of the Red Sox farm system featuring the scouting reports on some of the team’s best homegrown players, such as Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, and Jonathan Papelbon. Sounds like required reading for those howling without context or a clue that Theo Epstein should be fired.

How to Rob Fenway Park -- Chuck Hogan’s novel “Prince of Thieves” was turned into “The Town,” a well-reviewed and wholly Boston movie directed by and starring Ben Affleck. (Jeremy Renner, a Modesto, California native, had the most accurate Boston accent in the movie, however.) Following the movie’s release, there was a string of copycat bank and armed car robberies utilizing techniques seen in the movie. But no one has tried to copy the film’s heist of Fenway Park -- yet. Other than perhaps John Lackey every fifth day.

Bruins in the Bean -- This photo essay will show why the Stanley Cup champion Bruins are the most Bostonian of all the pro athletes in the Hub, with vignettes of their daily lives and what they love about Boston. No wisecrack here. Could not agree more with the premise.

Debating Boston -- Artie Lange (a Yankees fan) and Denis Leary face off to argue that Boston’s sports teams are awful and amazing, respectively. Then they rip apart the other’s view. Kudos to ESPN for going with two legitimately funny personalities to rep the two fan bases rather than, say, Billy Crystal and Lenny Clarke.

Who Does Tom Brady Think He Is? -- An examination of why Tom Brady is hard to relate to and "insufferable." Presumably co-bylined by Terrell Suggs and Bridget Moynahan.

Regarding that last article, I'm going to do what Brady does so well: pass. But I am looking forward to checking the issue out. It should arrive in subscribers' mail boxes today or tomorrow and is available on the newsstand Friday.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Many words were spent this summer breezily debating the trio's worthiness and likelihood of winning baseball's most prestigious individual honor.

Adrian Gonzalez, Jacoby Ellsbury, and to a slightly lesser extent, Dustin Pedroia, each made a legitimate case at one time or another as the American League's most valuable player.

Those days cannot be as long ago as they feel right now, and the schedule tells us they aren't. The collapse of the Red Sox -- yes, mostly injury-induced, but a collapse nonetheless -- has been the equivalent of an elevator plummeting without warning. There's nothing left but the desperate hope that the free-fall will somehow screech to halt before everything crashes to the ground.

You know the gory details; I'll rehash them as briefly as possible and out of obligation. Less than a month ago, the Red Sox led the wild card race by 11 games over the Tampa Bay Rays. This morning, with a doubleheader against the Orioles looming, that lead has shriveled to two, with poor, overmatched Kyle Weiland and pitiful, overpaid John Lackey charged with starting for the Sox. It's not exactly Pedro-Schilling 2004. Heck, it's probably not Pedro-Schilling now.

The Sox' rotation, which consists of tough-minded but sore-ankled Josh Beckett, the suddenly exasperating Jon Lester (you wonder whether the oblique issue is still bothering him and he's trying to macho his way through it), and a collection of semi-prospects, hapless misfits, and one ancient knuckleballer, isn't going to save them.

The usually potent offense -- leading the major leagues in runs per game (5.39), leading in on-base percentage, slugging, and OPS, but currently putting up its lowest monthly totals since April (.265 average, .770 OPS) -- simply must pick up the pitching staff. It's the only way they can hold off the Rays.

The Red Sox' fate depends upon the offense's ability to cover for at least 60 percent of the rotation, and that begins with the three alleged MVP candidates Gonzalez, Ellsbury, and Pedroia. Any potential individual honors are a faded afterthought at this point, and any recognition for their statistical feats will stand as a cruel joke should this epic flop concludes without a postseason berth.

Unless.

Unless Gonzalez reminds us that at one point this season some were calling him the best Red Sox hitter since Ted Williams, and it didn't entirely feel like hyperbole. Unless Ellsbury wins one game with a homer, another with a well-timed steal, and a third with a defensive gem. Unless Pedroia puts them on his back and drags them to Detroit.

Yes, we're clinging to unless. Because it's just about all we have at this point. And because none of that is unreasonable over these last 10 games.

This is not a request for Gonzalez, Ellsbury or Pedroia, to play the role of Yaz in '67, to duplicate his possible dream of a performance during the pennant race in the final 10 games of that regular season, when he put up these numbers:

44 plate appearances, 37 at-bats, 20 hits, 11 runs, 4 homers, 11 RBIs, 6 walks, and seven hits over his final eight at-bats.

That, as Sox fans of a certain vintage will tell you, was once in a lifetime. But another crucial late-season performance by a Red Sox slugger may be attainable. Here's Jim Rice over the final 10 games of the 1978 season, the one-game playoff excluded:

47 plate appearances, 43 at-bats, 11 hits, 8 runs, 4 homers, 7 RBIs, 4 walks, and home run in the Game 162 victory over the Blue Jays.

It's a nice daydream, but this afternoon at least, Gonzalez, Ellsbury, and Pedroia don't seem intent on cooperating. The first pitch of the 153d game of the season was about to be delivered as I began writing this, and when I finished, the 66th loss of the season -- and 14th against four victories this September -- was in the books.

Jeremy Guthrie, a slightly above average (career 105+ adjusted ERA) pitcher whom the Sox have typically pummeled over the years (4.41 ERA entering today in 17 starts), earned the win in Baltimore's 6-5 victory. Weiland, who will get all of next summer in Pawtucket to try to recover from this, gave up three homers and looked like he wanted to burrow a hole in the mound, and the big guns didn't pick him up.

Ellsbury made the last out and hit into a big double play. Pedroia also hit into a double play. Gonzalez had two hits and two RBIs, but left three runners stranded . . . and hit into a double play.

Tonight, the historically bad John Lackey goes for the Red Sox, while the historically bad Brian Matusz takes the mound for the Orioles. The Sox should score some runs, and they'll need to. Their MVP chances may have evaporated along with the Sox' wild card lead, but it's time for Gonzalez and Ellsbury and Pedroia to deliver like Rice in '78, and as close to humanly possible to Yaz's legendary clutch effort in '67.

The Red Sox' season -- and perhaps their individual reputations, too -- suddenly depend on it.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

I like to think I've proven myself as someone who is not prone to screeching from the rooftops about their personal effect on my summah when the Red Sox lose 3 of 4 -- or a season-opening 8 of 10, for that matter. Being a voice of reason isn't profitable and doesn't get your mug on TV, but at least it comes from an honest place.

As far as I'm concerned, the past decade-plus in Boston sports has confirmed seven times over that faith often is rewarded, that the benefit of the doubt is worth giving, that Boston's teams are more resilient than those who killed your father and are coming for you, as the saying used to go.

So it's with some disappointment that I offer this confession: I'm all but convinced that the Red Sox are cooked if Josh Beckett doesn't come through tonight.

You know I've searched for optimism in history and math, in sabermetrics and the brief remaining schedule, as the battered Red Sox have tried to avoid melting to their core while the Rays have surged. I checked Baseball Prospectus's odds of making the postseason -- 95.1 for the Sox, 3.8 percent for the Rays -- and all I could think was, "No team relying on Tim Wakefield, John Lackey, and Kyle Weiland should have 19-1 odds in anything."

I thought maybe the great Dave Cameron's piece on Fangraphs, titled It's Still Not Time To Panic In Boston, would provide some catharsis in logic.

But the case that there is "not all that much to worry about'' presumes that each of the final three games in this series is a 50-50 tossup (with some benefit given to the Red Sox for playing at home), concluding that the odds of the Rays winning all three and pulling even in the wild card race this weekend are just 12.5 percent.

I appreciate the common sense of the argument, but I just can't wrap my head around the 50-50 aspect. Josh Beckett takes the mound against Complete Game James Shields with a gimpy ankle after a 10-day layoff. Maybe that one is 50-50. Maybe. Shields has been lousy against the Sox at Fenway over his career (1-8, 6.99 ERA -- maybe I should have said Lackeyesque with that ERA). But he's been excellent overall this season (2.70 ERA), and he allowed three hits and three earned runs in eight innings in his only start at Fenway this season.

The Red Sox' one perceived pitching advantage -- Jon Lester versus Jeff Niemann tomorrow -- really isn't an advantage at all considering Lester's alarmingly wretched four-inning performance against the Rays in his last start and the fact that Niemann has allowed five hits in 17 innings against the Sox this year. And Sunday features David Price versus Tim Wakefield, possibly a mismatch as great as the difference in their velocity.

For every optimistic thought that I have about this series -- maybe Adrian Gonzalez has a Yaz-in-'67 moment or two in him -- the miniscule part of my brain that deals in common sense quickly counters with a "yeah, but. " As in:

Yeah, but ...

... Gonzalez has a calf injury, which probably makes him refreshed and ready by current lineup standards but could impact his performance in some way.

Yeah, but . . .

. . . what if Lester and Daniel Bard can't fix their mechanics or whatever it is that has caused their recent issues.

Yeah, but ...

. . . they've lost nine of 11, including six straight to the Rays.

Yeah, but . . .

. . . they've lost 5 of 6 to the Rays at Fenway this season, with a minus-25 run differential.

Yeah, but ...

. . . the Rays have knocked eight games off the wild card lead since August 7.

Yeah, but . . .

... Evan Longoria and B.J. Upton are suddenly pounding Red Sox pitching again like they're replaying the 2008 ALCS . . .

Yeah, but . . .

. . . all right, I'm sick of this device, too. And being a part of the negativity stinks. I hate the wrong-headed narratives that the Sox lack heart or don't have any spark or that "Francoma" needs to tip over the postgame spread or that someone needs to yell "Cowboy Up!" It always looks that way in baseball when a team is tired, injured, or struggling. You don't have to bound around like nine wee Ecksteins just to prove you care.

It's mostly a health problem that plagues the Sox right now, not a character or effort problem. The little perceived omens -- such as last night's routine grounder to Marco Scutaro that turned out to be riding shotgun with the barrel of a bat -- will be touchstones if the Sox fail to make the postseason, but what we fear is happening has to do with an attrition of talent more than anything else. I can't be the only one around here who suddenly realized that Dice-K is actually missed.

It's a sprint to the finish, and the Red Sox are limping. I'm not worried about their condition entering the playoffs; just get there first, and sort it out then. If there's any comfort here whatsoever, it's that the Rays have the Yankees seven times and the pesky Blue Jays for the other three after they leave Boston. The Sox have three against the Yankees and seven against the lowly Orioles. Buck Showalter doesn't like Theo or the Red Sox, and they're surely on the short list of teams whose season he'd love to spoil, right after the three teams that fired him. That's one thing I'm not worried about.

But first, the Red Sox have to survive the Rays. Tonight, they turn to an accomplished big-game pitcher with a messed-up ankle. I seem to recall a vaguely similar scenario working out before.

I hope that passes for optimism. Because right now, it feels like wishful thinking.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

The timing of this is probably unfair to Carl Crawford, coming a day after one of his best games -- two hits, including a double, a walk, and three runs scored -- of his frustrating first season with the Red Sox.

It was an encouraging performance in a crucial victory for the Red Sox, though Crawford's lousy luck did not abandon him entirely -- he'd have had a home run, too, had Adam Loewen stood shorter than 6 foot 6 or, I suppose, decided to stick with pitching.

Perhaps it's a sign that Crawford, who has a respectable .814 OPS over the past month, will spend the rest of the season finally playing like the game-changing nuisance he often was with the Rays rather than continuing his occasionally adequate but often abysmal output from his first five months in Boston. Some October vindication reminiscent of J.D. Drew '07 isn't out of the question.

Crawford's work ethic has countless testimonials from peers and media observers, and I cannot believe that his talent has just evaporated. He's only 30 and not even a full-season removed from a seventh-place finish in the American League Most Valuable Player balloting.

But that's the cruel catch here, because no matter whether or not you have optimism for him going forward this season, the reality is that he's been one of the least valuable everyday players in baseball this season.

He will be better. But then, it's hard to be worse. What he's accomplished -- or hasn't accomplished -- so far through a little more than 90 percent of the season puts him in some very undistinguished company.

This morning, my interest was piqued by a post on the baseball-reference.com blog titled The Worst Full-Time Players of the Last 50 Years. Catchers, shortstops, and second basemen were excluded since those were and sometimes still are positions where defensive ability took precedence over a player's hitting skills. Among those who fit the other criteria -- the most plate appearances by a player with an OPS+ of 60 or lower since 1961 -- was a familiar one to Sox fans who remember Jimy Williams's sometimes peculiar lineup choices in the '90s.

If you thought Darren Lewis's regular place in the lineup during the 1999 season -- when he hit .240 with two homers, a .620 OPS, and a 57 OPS+ in 538 plate appearances -- was inexplicable, well, history and the numbers are on your side. It's tied for the 10th-worst season by this measure, right there with Bobby Tolan '73 and Michael Bourn '08.

As you might have guessed by now, that's where Crawford and that undistinguished company comes in. A bit of goofing around deep and complicated research on the site's addictive Play Index revealed that he and Lewis are two of just three Red Sox outfielders since '61 to meet other specific criteria: an OPS of .691 or lower, an OPS+ of 85 or lower, a batting average of .253 or lower, and no more than 11 home runs while having enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title.

In other words, Crawford's statistics thus far in 2011 . . . or worse.

Turns out there have been just two seasons that have been worse: DLew's aforementioned '99 season, and Tommy Harper's in 1974, when at age 33 he followed up consecutive 112 OPS+ seasons for the Sox by hitting .237 with a .630 OPS. He retired a year later.

(Note: If batting average is removed from the equation, the 1995 season of one Otis Nixon also makes the list. He hit .277 and stole a bunch of bases, but was statistically dismal in every other way. If you think we're going to dis Otis around here, you haven't been paying attention very long. Now, pretend this conversation never happened, got it?)

So what conclusions can we come to today? That you never speak ill of Otis Nixon, obviously. That Jimy Williams must have bumped more than just his booty for thinking it was a good idea to run DLew out there pretty much every day -- and did I mention he often hit him leadoff? That Tommy Harper's rough '74 season did portend the end, which happens to the best of 'em. And that Carl Crawford's miserable season has been . . . well, just as miserable as it has seemed.

Here's hoping October -- yes, presuming there is one for the Red Sox -- brings him some redemption.

* * *

Update: Crawford's prolonged ineptitude has reminded me more than anything else of Troy O'Leary's 2000 season, when the formerly dependable left fielder's at-bats suddenly became exercises in hopelessness. Turns out that even though O'Leary didn't appear on the previous list, he is one of five Red Sox outfielders to qualify for the batting title while having an OPS+ of 85 or lower, joining the aforementioned Lewis, Harper, and Nixon. O'Leary's was 81. The fifth? Coco Crisp in 2007, when he hit .268 with a .712 OPS, an 83 OPS+, and played the most spectacular defense over a full season of any Sox center fielder I've ever seen. Jimy Williams would have loved him, too.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Maybe this afternoon's good news -- that ace Josh Beckett will pitch either Thursday or Friday -- is harbinger that the worst of the Red Sox' September slide is over, that Fenway will host October baseball, that a three-game advantage over the Rays with 16 games to play will prove secure.

Me, I'm going to need more evidence. I'll believe the Red Sox's September can be salvaged and sweet when I see Tim Wakefield get career win No. 200 tonight against the Toronto Blue Jays. For most of the summer, Wakefield's pursuit of the milestone has stood as a nostalgic sidebar to the main story, which had the Red Sox coasting into the postseason.

But now? The season narrative has taken a cruel and unforeseen twist. The ancient knuckleballer takes the mound tonight for his eighth attempt at 200, and somehow, it's become white-knuckle time for his team. Heck, yes, we should be nervous. If the Sox play .500 ball over their final 16, the Rays just have to go 11-5 to tie. At the moment, the latter seems more plausible than the former for one reason, and no, Joe Castig, it's not the swell lettermen sweaters Joe Maddon is going to have the team wear on their next road trip.

It's Tampa's extraordinary advantage in starting pitching.

In Friday's first act of the Rays' three-game weekend sweep, Wade Davis pitched a complete-game six-hitter, lowering his ERA to 4.36. He is the Rays' fifth starter -- all five have at least 10 victories -- and his ERA is highest among those in the rotation. James Shields has gone the distance 11 times this season; he's not Big Game James, he's Complete Game James. Rookie Jeremy Hellickson is having a quietly superb season (2.90 ERA).

The Sox didn't even have to deal with gifted nuisance David Price in this series, and when the Rays arrive at Fenway for a four-game series beginning Thursday, they will bring with them recently recalled lefty phenom Matt Moore, who had a 1.37 ERA and 79 Ks in 52.2 innings in nine Triple A starts. He could be this year's version of what Price was during the 2008 American League Championship Series -- the ultimate X-factor.

The Red Sox simply cannot match up right now. Jon Lester was so scattershot in his chance to be a stopper Sunday that you couldn't help but wonder whether he's trying to pitch through an undisclosed or recurring ailment. Beckett is on the verge of his return, and again, that is tremendous news. Still, will his effectiveness be compromised?

And is there anyone you trust beyond him?

John Lackey's ERA is 6.30. Again: 6.30. Erik Bedard is hurt and hurt again. And let's make this clear: Anyone who watches tall, hard-throwing lefty Andrew Miller and draws any comparison to a young Randy Johnson needs to seriously recalibrate their expectations. Let's set the high at Lee Guetterman and the low at "dammit, Theo, you should have let the Yankees claim him." It must be tempting to put Alfredo Aceves in the rotation, but his ERA is nearly three runs lower in relief, and besides, who is going to clean up the messes left by Miller, Lackey, and the rest in salvageable games? Aceves is needed in the rotation, but he may be essential in the 'pen.

As for injuries, I keep hearing they're not an excuse, and that's true -- they're a reason. Beckett has been one of the best starting pitchers in baseball this season; if he had John Lackey's run support, he'd probably have a half-dozen more wins and be angling for a spot on the Cy Young podium a step or two below Justin Verlander. Bedard, a fine pitcher in those rare moments of health, has pulled off the neat and unsurprising trick of getting injured (lat) while he was injured (knee). Kevin Youkilis is in tatters, and his various injuries have obviously affected his performance. This will be the first season in his eight-year career where his OPS has not been higher than it was the previous year.

The offense really isn't to blame in this. Dustin Pedroia has slumped at a terrible time (.476 OPS the past two weeks), but that happens to the best of 'em over 162 games. Those who want to blame Adrian Gonzalez should read PeteAbe's post and then check back. While you wish they'd get Texas-hot and carry the lousy pitching, it's not as if they're hitting like Wakefield during his brief days as a New York-Penn League first baseman. Over the last two weeks, the Sox as a team have hit .269 with a .795 OPS, 16 homers, and 63 RBIs in 479 plate appearances. Those totals are pretty close to Youkilis's season stats, actually.

If there's any comfort for the Red Sox at the moment, it's that there will be no backing in for the Rays. Tampa Bay is going to have to earn its way in by beating its richer division rivals. They have four left with the Sox, and seven more with the Yankees, including a regular-season-ending three-game set at Replica Yankee Stadium.

It would be strange to depend upon the Yankees for help in making the postseason after spending the summer convinced -- justifiably given their head-to-head record and the Sox' depth -- that the Red Sox were the superior team. But that may very well happen. The Yankees' duct-taped rotation has somehow held together en route to October. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are counting on Tim Wakefield's knuckleball to help keep them afloat, his long-awaited milestone suddenly as important to his team as it is to him.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

An oft-cited reason for WEEI’s recent struggles in its sports-radio showdown with 98.5 The Sports Hub is its lack of an FM signal.

As of Monday, that reason will no longer exist. And neither will Mike FM.

Industry sources have confirmed that Entercom, WEEI’s parent company, will announce tomorrow morning that WEEI (850-AM) will begin simulcasting on WMKK (93.7), better known as the pop-rock station Mike FM.

Entercom, WEEI’s parent company, owns four stations in the Boston market: WEEI (850), WMKK (93.7), hard-rock WAAF (97.7/107.3 FM), and talk station WRKO (680 AM).
WMKK’s pop-music format -- its slogan is ‘‘We play everything’’ -- will not move elsewhere on the dial.

While WEEI executives have occasionally denied that a simulcast or outright switch to FM was imminent, the news is not a surprise. The Sports Hub’s advantage in having a potent FM signal has often been noted by its competition as a significant factor in its rise up the Arbitron ratings since launching an all-sports format in August 2009.

Entercom’s decision to implement the simulcast now comes two months after The Sports Hub’s sizeable victory in Arbiton’s spring ratings book. The Sports Hub earned an 8.8 share, finishing first in the coveted men 25-54 demographic. WEEI-AM was tied for sixth (5.1), but moved up to fourth (5.6) when the Boston share from its Providence-based FM station was included.

WEEI’s move is similar to a recent one made by WIP in Philadelphia, which began simulcasting on an FM signal in mid-August. WIP, coincidentally, is owned by CBS Radio, which also owns The Sports Hub.

Entercom said in a press release last night that it will have a major announcement at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning on the ‘‘Dennis and Callahan Show.’’

If you happen to hear what sounds like footsteps or typing in the background of this week's podcast, that's just me pacing, muttering "When is a sprained ankle not a sprained ankle?" and furiously refreshing my browser for updates on Josh Beckett's status. As usual, the voice of insight and reason is provided by Peter Abraham.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while being surprised that Jarrod Saltamacchia's arm didn't shatter like so many doomed Louisville Sluggers to come in contact with Mariano Rivera's cutter through the years . . .

1. I guess five wins against CC Sabathia in one regular season is probably too much for the Red Sox to ask; heck, being 4-0 against him this season entering last night's game seemed on the fringe of greed. Even though he didn't have his best command last night, that was an admirable pitching performance. He hit 95 miles per hour effortlessly, kept the ball down as if his next meal depended on it, and made Adrian Gonzalez look like an imposter in the batter's box. His performance was an impressive mix of ability, savvy and relentlessness, though I still like the Sox' chances against him in the postseason. He does have a 6.39 ERA against them this year, and he was in and out of danger all night; chances are the Sox won't go 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position again. It will be interesting to see where Sabathia ends up historically. While his girth may abbreviate his career, he's smart enough to get by as a Tanana-ish junkballing lefty even after his best stuff fades, and he's the best bet to be baseball's next 300-game winner. He's fourth among active players with 175 victories and he just turned 31 in July. Wakefield is first among active pitchers in wins (and losses), while 34-year-old Roy Halladay is second (185). It may surprise you who is third on the list -- Tim Hudson, who has 178 wins. Old friend Derek Lowe is sixth with 165, which makes you wonder where he might be had he become a full-time starter before his 21-win 2002 season at age 29.

2. John Lackey seems to be winning the begrudging respect of Red Sox fans, at least that segment that can temporarily forget about his salary and respect his knack for pitching six-plus innings and give up three or four runs. (I suspect these same people remember John Burkett's work fondly and are going to be stunned when Tim Wakefield is one-and-done on the Hall of Fame ballot.) But Lackey really could have boosted his popularity last night had he channeled his inner Pedro when asked whether he hit a certain .688-OPSing Yankee showboat catcher on purpose: "Who is Francisco Cervelli?" He's A.J. Pierzynski with a giant helmet and without the talent.

3. Terry Francona has handled the delicate balance betweenWakefield's proud and prolonged pursuit of 200 wins and what's best for the Red Sox with extraordinary grace. Since winning No. 199 -- a 6.1-inning, 7-run grinder July 24 -- Wakefield has made six starts, with one hard-luck loss, two losses he probably deserved, and three no-decisions. Francona has given Wakefield every chance to get the milestone win, but there have also been a couple of occasions where the pitcher looked annoyed to be coming out of a tight game and Tito didn't hesitate to take the ball. Skipping Wakefield's turn in the rotation is one more decision that might have been difficult when the pitcher's personal goals were considered, but really shouldn't be difficult at all when sentiment is removed from the equation. That's not always the easiest thing to do, though, and Francona deserves credit for making the right decisions for the Red Sox -- as usual.

4. Tough to watch Darnell McDonald whiff with the bases loaded and the Sox down three runs in the seventh inning last night. But any howls that the Red Sox need a significant upgrade for a backup righthanded-hitting outfielder probably haven't noticed that McDonald has been dependable in the second half, going .264/.355/.509, with three homers in 62 plate appearances. Now, if he could just get that batting average above .200.

5. He's wearing the years a little more noticeably than the last time we saw him, but it's always cool to see Oil Can Boyd put in an appearance at Fenway. He was, as Peter Abraham reported in his notebook this morning, on the field for batting practice and in the legends' suite last night. But given his have-curveball, will-travel attitude and affinity for pitching, I wouldn't be stunned if he tried to talk Terry Francona into giving him a turn in the rotation. After all, when he was Tim Wakefield's age (45), The Can put up a 3.83 ERA in 17 games for the 2005 Brockton Rox.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

"He was funny, he was smart, he was tough. But the other side of him, coming from New England, there was a certain part where you didn't always know what was inside.''

-- Jim Palmer, on the suicide of his friend and former teammate, Mike Flanagan.

* * *

Maybe that's the best explanation we can expect when it comes to the cruelly inexplicable.

Maybe Mike Flanagan, a great character long extolled as someone also of great character, was at his core a stereotypically stoic New Englander who kept his pain inside until it the unthinkable metastasized into the logical in his mind.

Maybe that's the reason Flanagan, a Manchester, N.H. native forever identified with Baltimore, pointed a shotgun at his head and ended his life Wednesday at age 59, leaving so many admirers and friends like Palmer grasping to make sense of the senseless.

Can you find an explanation for this more logical than Palmer's? I've searched, and I can't. Baseball fans who were sucker-punched by this story -- one that has grown more terrible with each new detail -- have heard and read the vague and knowing suggestions from friends and former teammates that Flanagan was hurt by the perception that he failed during his stint in the Orioles front office, or that financial struggles had sent him spiraling downward in despair.

I don't doubt there's some truth to be found there. But it doesn't explain why someone who appeared to live a charmed life, seemed to appreciate his good fortune and had so many who would be willing to help if they'd just known, someone who was the father of three girls, would choose death.

The thought that someone could be so distraught that they would be unaffected by the knowledge that those they left behind would be engulfed with sadness and guilt is heartbreaking. The legacy that apparently mattered so much to him is now permanently altered; he no longer known foremost as "Mike Flanagan, 1979 American League Cy Young winner and beloved Oriole." He's that ex-pitcher who killed himself in a gruesome manner, another name on a list of ballplayers who died when there should have been plenty of good years left to be lived.

Despite the devastating nature of his final days, Flanagan deserves to be remembered for all of the chapters that came before. His former teammates will try to remember the ballplayer first and foremost, the gutsy lefty who stood as a symbol of those admirable '70s Baltimore teams. I must admit, however, that my appreciation of Flanagan was ancillary. I never met him, and that's where beat writers have my envy. I never had the good fortune of hearing him talk pitching in detail or tell a story with Earl Weaver cursing out Palmer as the punch line.

I knew him only in the admiring way a kid knows baseball players. As the long-haired lefty in my cherished stack of 1978 baseball cards, as one of the three pitchers to beat the seemingly unbeatable Ron Guidry that season (thus making him essentially a Red Sox by proxy in my 8-year-old mind), as the wit whose weekly one-liners in Peter Gammons's Sunday notes column in the Globe were just subtle enough to elude my grade-school sense of humor but always made my dad cackle.

In some way, maybe that was the best way to know Mike Flanagan. From afar, admiringly, as that witty and bright baseball prince of Baltimore, in those bright seasons long before the stoic New Englander would reveal the darkness inside.

* * *

Four worthwhile remembrances of Flanagan, with the acknowledgment that I hope Dan Shaughnessy, who covered the Orioles in the late '70s, writes about him when he returns from vacation.

Peter Gammons: Flanagan Brought Humor, Smarts To Ballpark

Thomas Boswell: Mike Flanagan Brought Unique Perspective To Top of the Mound

Harvey Araton: Flanagan's Off-Field Legacy: He Cherished the Joy of New Life

Richard Justice: If You Were Lucky Enough To Know Mike Flanagan, You Were Better Off For It.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Figure I should start linking to our weekly Red Sox podcast here because . . . well, because I think we've hit our stride with the thing this season, because it's informative and entertaining without being overbearing, and mostly because pestering our Red Sox insiders for extra insight is one of my favorite parts of this gig.

This week, host Daigo Fujiwara and I chat with beat writer Peter Abraham about the offense's struggles in Seattle (which seem to have carried over to this Tampa Bay series), who should be the No. 3 starter (Erik Bedard, without a doubt), and whether Jonathan Papelbon's outstanding season means there's a better chance that he'll remain with the Red Sox.

We discuss his filthy 8/1 K/BB ratio, but ran out of time before discussing his terrifying archery skills. Check it out if you haven't. If you have, thanks for listening.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes. Find its archive here.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while assuming Adrian Gonzalez's stiff neck explains his Casey Kotchman imitation lately . . .

1. Last Friday on Twitter -- @GlobeChadFinn, if you're so inclined -- I made this observation about the local perception a certain Red Sox lefthander:

Surprised how many chatters were down on Jon Lester today. The list of pitchers I'd trade him for is short. (Felix, Verlander, who else?)

Keep in mind that this came after he had lost two consecutive starts and obviously before his seven-inning, three-hit, one-run gem against the Rays to earn his 12th win of the season. The hunch here is that Lester was back in the majority's good graces after that more typical performance. Still, I was a bit taken aback at how many readers were arguing that he's really not an ace-caliber pitcher.

Sure, Josh Beckett has been the superior pitcher this year, a genuine Cy Young candidate if not for a lack of run support. But it also struck me that perhaps Lester is being taken for granted somewhat. No, he hasn't lived up to the predictions by the likes of yours truly that he will win the AL Cy Young award this season. But he has 12 wins, a 3.32 ERA, has been in the top five for rWAR among AL pitchers the previous three seasons and is seventh this year, has the best winning percentage (.702) of any active pitcher and the third-best in baseball history, has won the clinching game a World Series . . . and just turned 27 in January.

The Sox are fortunate to have a prime-of-career lefty who is both accomplished and promising. The days of Matt Clement starting a postseason opener weren't that long ago, you know?

As for the answers some of you submitted: Yovani Gallardo, Tim Lincecum, Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia, Jered Weaver, Zack Greinke, Cole Hamels (Lester's No. 1 comp), Michael Pineda, Stephen Strasburg, and the younger and perhaps slightly more talented lefthander pictured above who is the only one I'd add to my previous duo, Clayton Kershaw.

All right, and for the long term, maybe I'd add today's version of David Price, too. But that's it.

2. There are plenty of worthwhile questions to ask about Jacoby Ellsbury right now. Is he the Red Sox' Most Valuable Player? Is he the AL's Most Valuable Player? Is he even the AL East's most valuable center fielder with the season Curtis Granderson is having in the Bronx? Is this power upgrade sustainable now that he's not only learned how to hit the low, inside fastball, but to drive it 370-plus feet over the visiting bullpen? How sinister is Scott Boras's laugh every time Ellsbury does something to enhance his spectacular statistics?

And the one I wonder about the most of all: Would he have become this incredibly well-rounded and dynamic player last year if he'd not had that high-impact collision with Adrian Beltre that cost him the season and, unfortunately, his reputation?

I'm beginning to think Ellsbury -- who has always had wiry strength, batting-practice power, and a tireless work ethic -- would have hit 15 or so homers a year ago, making his segue into an all-around force this season easier to foresee.

3. A letterman's jacket. The perfect accessory for the aw-shucks Midwestern farm boy, and I mean that only half-facetiously. By all accounts,Thome is a gem of guy, genuine and habitually friendly, and while it's probably fitting in some way that his quest for 600 homers got a small fraction of the publicity of Captain Jeter fist pumping his way his 3,000th hit received, he's just the eighth player to join the club, and that's worth celebrating.

Yes, he played on some suspiciously muscle-bound Indians teams, and three of the seven sluggers ahead of him on the home run list are his generational peers who have been implicated in performance-enhancing drug use.

But I don't believe Ken Griffey Jr. used PEDs, I don't believe Jeter did, or Frank Thomas, and I don't believe Jim Thome juiced, either. Maybe I'm naive, but you've got to have leftover faith in something from that era besides Pedro Martinez's repertoire. And if you're going to tell me that after this photo was taken that Thome went down to the soda fountain with Malph and Potsie before meeting up with his steady girl at the sock hop, well heck, I'll buy that, too.

4. The occasion of Thome's 600th homer jostled a vague recollection about a season early last decade when the Red Sox were in hot pursuit of the then-Indians slugger at the July 31 deadline. The details were a bit dusty, so I took a quick search through the Globe archives to reacquaint myself with the facts, mostly out of curiosity regarding the prospects the Red Sox would have supposedly parted with from their then-barren farm system.

Turns out the season was 2002, which was my guess. The centerpiece, according to the rumor, was Casey Fossum. And after pursuing Thome -- something that apparently never got close to happening -- and Phillies third baseman Scott Rolen, interim general manager Mike Port ended up getting Cliff Floyd from the Expos.

Always did wish Thome played for the Sox, but consider this bit of retrospective whimsy: Had the Sox traded Fossum in a deal for Thome, would the Red Sox have had enough to acquire Curt Schilling from Arizona a year-plus later? I don't think Brandon Lyon, Jorge de la Rosa and Michael Goss would have gotten it done.

5. If there's a chance the Red Sox can re-sign Marco Scutaro to a one-year deal over the winter, count me in.

I'm on record as a fan of Jed Lowrie's offensive potential, but he has the Luis Rivera double-whammy of lacking range and botching too many routine plays at shortstop, and I'm beginning to think someone in baseball ops actually built him out of leftover parts from Nomar, Tim Naehring, and Bret Saberhagen.

And let's hold off on anointing Jose Iglesias as the imminent replacement until he gets that elusive seventh extra-base hit in Triple A. Scutaro is somewhere between adequate and average, and that's usually good enough.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Yeah, I know, this probably teeters on overkill given that I wrote glowingly and at great length about Jacoby Ellsbury's astronomical statistical projections just a week or so ago. All right, it is overkill. But that's never stopped me before; you might say I'm a ramblin' man, and I ain't ever gonna change. Besides, Ellsbury has been so spectacular -- he would get my hypothetical vote for American League Most Valuable Player if the season ended today -- that it's fun to marvel at what he's accomplished and what he could accomplish through through different lenses.

With Ellsbury adding to the legend of his superb season with back-to-back walkoff hits last week and a six-RBI game against the Yankees Saturday, I caught myself wondering if this was what it was like to watch Fred Lynn during his Rookie of the Year/Most Valuable Player daily double in 1975. Maybe that particular thought was tinged with the usual hyperbole, but it did make me curious about how Ellsbury's season stacks up against some of the best individual seasons compiled by his predecessors in Fenway's center field.

So today's particular lens comes courtesy of baseball-reference.com's addictive Play Index, where for a small fee you can find the answers to just about any statistical patterns, feats, and trends you've ever wondered about. I simply took Ellsbury's adjusted OPS this season, which is 140 entering tonight's game at Minnesota, and searched for Red Sox center fielders who have had a 140 OPS+ or better in seasons in which they qualified for the batting title. It was a pretty simple quest, one that gave us the names of three players who met the criteria a total of nine seasons.

Here they are. I'm sure you'll agree that's some impressive statistical company Ellsbury is keeping:

Tris Speaker 1909-'15 : While some may recall him first and foremost as the captain of Jerry Trupiano and Joe Castiglione's all-audio equipment team, he will also forever be remembered as one of the greatest players of all-time. The lifetime .345 hitter ranks 12th on baseball-reference's Fan EloRater, splitting up No. 11 Mickey Mantle and No. 13 Joe DiMaggio, and that seems about right. What's lesser known about Speaker that he was in center field for Tim Wakefield's first start for the Red Sox, and legend has it that he's the one who, during a train ride during a 1912 road trip to St. Louis to face the Browns, first referred to teammate Jason Varitek as "Tek." True stories, honest.

Reggie Smith (1969): Those who savor their still-vivid memories of the Impossible Dream season are encouraged to provide me with some clarity and context on this, but looking at what Smith accomplished statistically (.826 OPS in a low-offense era, 149 homers) during his seven full seasons with the Red Sox (1967-73), shouldn't he be regarded as one of the most unheralded Boston players of the past half-century? He was no dud defensively, either, featuring a shotgun arm and winning a Gold Glove in '68. I know it's complicated, that in his baseball youth Smith had a reputation as being headstrong, which was a label the Red Sox seemed to casually slap on more than a few minority ballplayers during the particularly shameful seasons of the Yawkey era. But no matter what the circumstances were, there's no denying he had a wonderful career and deserved to spend more than one year on the Hall of Fame ballot. His No. 1 all-time comp is actually another former Red Sox outfielder . . .

Fred Lynn (1975, '79): A reader recently suggested, with bull's-eye accuracy, that I tend to compare a lot of players to Lynn. I thought about it a bit, and there are two reasons for that, I believe. One, as a child of the '70s who, as you may have noticed, is still slightly nostalgic for those days, Lynn was the benchmark for both substance and style. While the old-timers might have thought he should have played through his various injuries, kids admired his grace and cool, whether he was making a spectacular catch in center field (he sure ran into the wall a lot for someone who was "soft") or hitting another majestic home run with that sweet lefthanded swing that we all dearly wished we could imitate but never quite could. That, as you may have guessed, is the sentimental reason. The other reason is that Lynn actually compares historically to both Smith and Ellis Burks, who is Lynn's most similar comp from ages 32-35. Considering Lynn's two monster seasons that pop up here -- his transcendent rookie season in '75 (161 OPS) and his even better '79 season (176, when he led the league in batting, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, and hit 39 homers) -- it seems to me that comparing Ellsbury's breakout to a vintage Fred Lynn season is just about the highest compliment he can be paid.

Footnotes: I'm not even done with the post and I'm already finding an oversight: Even though he predated the "Red Sox" nickname - ah-ha, my loophole! -- I should have noted Chick Stahl, who had a 141 OPS+ while manning center field for the 1904 Boston Americans. In 157 games, he batted .290 with three homers, 67 RBIs, and a team-best .782 OPS. He also had a .961 fielding percentage. No idea about his Ultimate Zone Rating . . . If we change our criteria from a 140 OPS+ to 130, four other seasons make the cut: Lynn's in 1976 (132 OPS+) and '78 (133, trailing only MVP Jim Rice's 157 among Sox regulars); Ellis Burks's superb sophomore year in '88 when he hit .294 with 18 homers, 25 steals and a 131 OPS+ at age 23; and Carl Everett's 2000 (135), when his unique brand of clubhouse-poisoning lunacy remained mostly dormant and he hit .329 with 24 homers and a 1.050 OPS in the first half . . . As for that Dwayne Hosey-as-Spiderman photo at the top of this post, there's actually an explanation: Hosey's 1995 season, along with Billy Conigliaro's '69 season, would have qualified for the above list if both players had had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. In '95, the peak of Dan Duquette's obsession for collecting other team's failed and flawed prospects, Hosey duped the Sox into thinking he could be an every day center fielder, hitting .338 with a 1.026 OPS in 77 plate appearances and starting during their ALDS sweep at the hands of the mighty Cleveland Indians. The Opening Day center fielder the next season on one of the worst defensive teams you will ever see (2B, Wil Cordero . . . RF, Kevin Mitchell . . .), he hit .218 in 87 plate appearances before being sent to Pawtucket in May. He never played another major league game.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

I'd like to believe my appreciation of an entertaining, well-played baseball game -- no matter how many hours it takes to complete and no matter how often the broadcasters with presumably can't-miss dinner reservations whine about it -- trumps the final judgment on the scoreboard.

I'd also like to believe I'm relatively self-aware, though, and so no dose of sodium pentothal is necessary for me to admit that I'd probably be griping today about the insanity of Jason Varitek having the green light on 3-0 had Josh Reddick not sent everyone walking off happily into the night with a 3-2 victory and a one-game lead in the American League East a few innings later.

Actually, I should probably say "griping more," because I'm still dumbstruck (dumbstricken? dumberstruck?) that he was swinging away with two on and one out in the sixth inning in a 1-1 game with first place at stake. But Reddick, who is having a summer that is going to be remembered well for a long time whether he becomes a star or his success proves fleeting, made sure there would be no laments and scapegoats in the aftermath of this ball game, ripping the winning run-scoring single to left off beleaguered Phil Hughes, who was probably wondering like the rest of us why Joe Girardi used Mariano Rivera for just nine pitches.

The highlights are piling up like fan mail for the likable Reddick, whose throw to cut down Russell Martin trying to stretch a single into a double in the fifth inning was also a pivotal play in that it happened a batter before Eduardo Nunez's tying homer. But I have to be honest -- while I hope what we're seeing now is evidence that he is capable of being the Red Sox' right fielder for the next half-dozen seasons or more, I still have a nagging skepticism about his long-term value, and it is for the reason you probably suspect: his command of the strike zone.

Brian MacPherson, the Providence Journal's excellent baseball writer, posted some compelling visual evidence recently that Reddick has been expanding the strike zone recently, most often by falling back into his habit of swinging at high fastballs. While Reddick's statistics remain outstanding -- he's hitting .338 with a .939 OPS -- he endured a 3 for 23 slump in late July before heating up again (he hit .412 over the past week).

Maybe this latest hot stretch is a sign that he is adjusting to the pitchers after they adjust to him, something he's struggled to do during previous stints with the Red Sox. Terry Francona noted that during Reddick's previous at-bat before his winning hit, he swung at a ball that "was probably two feet in front of the plate."

When the game was there to be won, he didn't make the same mistake again. Reddick got a pitch he could handle, smoked it, and the celebration was on. The memory will stick. Here's hoping the lesson will, too.

* * *

I don't know how the Red Sox shortstop situation is going to shake out now that Jed Lowrie is set to return from his latest injury. Marco Scutaro is dependably average, he bats righthanded but the switch-hitting Lowrie is better against lefthanded pitching, the talented but brittle Lowrie can't be trusted to play every day at this point . . . maybe the best thing for Francona to do is to make the call on a day-by-day basis without naming one or the other as the starter.

I do know this much, though: When Mariano Rivera is on the mound, Scutaro is the one you want in the batter's box. It's a puny sample size, but Scutaro has an .896 OPS, one walk-off homer, and last night's huge double against the great Rivera in 16 plate appearances. Have to like that sort of trend if you're a Red Sox fan.

Lowrie is 0 for 3 against Rivera. And just in case you were wondering, Bill Mueller hit .353 with a .918 OPS in 18 plate appearances against Rivera, not including the postseason, when he hit an apparently meaningful single this one time that scored some fast guy from second base.

I'll leave it to you to look up the details.

* * *

Back to the post-victory-complaint of the night. (I can't help myself; is this what it feels like to be Mazz?) There's no logical reason that Varitek hacked at that 3-0 pitch other than that perhaps he thought he might get a meatball from Yankees slopballer Corey Wade. He didn't -- the pitch was out of the strike zone -- and his inability to turn on an 88 mph fastball he apparently guessed was coming is a sign that he's due for another second-half fade, if not already in the middle of it. He's hitting .139 with a .490 OPS since the break.

Varitek has been a true asset this season, but I'm beginning to wonder whether his playing time should diminish to little more than Designated Beckett Caddy, with Jarrod Saltalamacchia emerging as one of the best offensive catchers in the AL.

At least Varitek's night went much better than did that of his longtime Yankee counterpart, Jorge Posada, who learned from his manager (and nemesis?) Joe Girardi that he'd no longer be the designated hitter against righthanded pitchers.

Posada has been brutal since a decent start power-wise, and it's fair to presume he would be designated for assignment by now, with Jesus Montero getting his much-anticipated call to the big leagues, were he not a beloved remnant of the '90s glory days.

* * *

One measure of Adrian Gonzalez's greatness: Even during his perceived slumps, he remains productive. Over the past two weeks, in 55 plate appearances, he's batting .367 with a .928 OPS and nine runs batted in. He still leads the majors in batting (.348), total bases (253) and RBIs (91), while leading the American League in hits (153).

Yet I don't think it's unfair to acknowledge that there have been a few temporary dings in Gonzo's armor lately.

I'm pretty sure he's made more soft outs in key situations in the past week than he has the rest of the season. He seems to have left his power at the Home Run Derby -- he has just one homer in 106 plate appearances since the All-Star break. And while he's batted .326 in that span, his OPS is just .797, which would be just fine if he were Saltalamacchia but mildly concerning for the slugger whose season has been so spectacular that some have touted him as the greatest Red Sox hitter since Ted Williams.

Until he snaps out of it -- and you know him well enough now to know he will any day now -- let's stick to calling him the club's best hitter since Manny.

* * *

I realize that the rivalry in some ways is more intense among the fans than it does the players. Big Papi is friends with A-Rod, for heaven's sake. Not even A-Rod is friends with A-Rod.

So I'm still not quite sure what to make of it when the cameras catch Derek Jeter and Dustin Pedroia joking around after a play at second, which happened a couple of times during this series. I realize they became buddies at the last World Baseball Classic, and it's pretty obvious Jeter, like the rest of us, finds Pedroia both admirable and amusing.

Had either been miked up we'd probably discover that the conversation is hilarious, probably includes the phrase "Laser Show," and is in requirement of a seven-second delay.

But being an increasingly nostalgic grouch who has a picture of Carlton Fisk teeing up Thurman Munson with a right jab hanging in my home office, the fraternizing between Red Sox and Yankees stars is still weird to witness from my perspective.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

When that question is applied to the American League East standings, I'm pretty sure I know your voting tendencies. But let's admit it, barring catastrophe, they're both playoff-bound. This series might provide some foreshadowing, but the real plot won't be revealed until October. I'd rather react to what happens this weekend than try to predict it.

So leading off this lovely Friday, I'm instead going to take a couple of late swings at something I pulled together the other day in the always-popular gallery form: a ranking of the Red Sox roster from the 25th most important player to No. 1.

Now, obviously, this 25-to-1 thing is an entirely subjective exercise, one I've been doing for a couple of years now, with periodic in-season revisions. The ground rules are admittedly a bit vague. The general point is to rank the Red Sox in order of relative importance to the team's success from this point of publication forward. The underlying point is . . . well, to generate juicy page views. For me, however, it is to generate fun conversation and debate with you guys about what is a remarkably deep roster.

Which is why I bring this up here: Never have I had a harder time pulling this thing together than I did this time around. The way I saw it, five players have a legitimate claim to the No. 1 spot: Starting pitchers Jon Lester and Josh Beckett, as well as three of the major leagues' top six leaders in offensive fWAR -- Dustin Pedroia (2d), Jacoby Ellsbury (3d), and Adrian Gonzalez (6th).

There were several other players who were difficult to rate, many of whom could be classified in other categories: The unsung heroes (Matt Albers, Alfredo Aceves), the mysteries (Josh Reddick, Erik Bedard), the aggravations (John Lackey, Carl Crawford), the waiting room regulars (J.D. Drew, Jed Lowrie), and the last cuts (neither Franklin Morales nor Mike Aviles made the cut to 25, though today I'd drop the exasperating Andrew Miller for either/or.) And then there's Clay Buchholz, who has to be ranked somewhere simply based on what he could do even though it seems probably that he's thrown his final pitch of the season.

The whole thing is ridiculously fluid. When I finished pecking it out Wednesday, Jon Lester was No. 1 on my list, and he has a chance to justify that ranking tonight in the opener against the Yankees. But I'll conclude here with a confession: Had I waited later Wednesday night to finish it, walk-off-hero-squared Ellsbury probably would have taken the top spot. I suspect he might get the majority of your votes too, but with all of this still rattling around in my head, I'm curious for your take. Bring me your knowledge in the comments.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Ten free minutes for me, 10 free throwaway lines for you (a.k.a. the column format just about made obsolete by Twitter, as if that's going to stop me.)

1. I love the Erik Bedard move for a basic reason: When the guy has been healthy in his career, he has been a well-above average pitcher with almost no exception. Yes, we all realize the caveat as always with Bedard is "when he is healthy," since he missed the entire 2010 season with a shoulder injury and made just 46 starts (winning 15) since joining the Mariners before the 2008 season. The question of when, not if, he will get hurt will probably hang over every start, which is one reason why I wish they'd also found a way to bring in Rich Harden; maybe between the two of them they could provide a full season of effectiveness. But Bedard, who whiffed 221 batters in 185 innings for the Orioles in 2007, still has top-notch stuff, as evidenced by his 2.90 K/BB ratio (the second-best of his career) and 87 strikeouts in 91 innings. The Red Sox, as a couple of astute readers have pointed out, were up against a numbers crunch in the offseason with so many quality prospects eligible for the 40-man roster, and so I have no problem with them dealing four decent prospects for Bedard. I mentioned this on the Sox podcast, which will be posted later today, but it's worth noting here that Bedard's No. 1 statistical comp all-time is Ubaldo Jimenez, while Harden is No. 3. I don't care if he's mean to my friends. This is a risk worth taking.

2. If all indications are correct and Ty Warren's Patriots career formally ended when he was cut Friday, that leaves just one member of the franchise's vaunted 2003 draft on the roster -- center Dan Koppen, fifth-round steal that year. Seventh-rounder Tully Banta-Cain was also sent on his way today. In retrospect, that draft wasn't as good as it looked the first couple of seasons. Fourth-rounder Asante Samuel became a star at least judging by his salary and interception totals, but Dan Klecko was nothing more than a fan favorite, Bethel Johnson is still running very fast in a straight line somewhere, and Eugene Wilson's decline still remains a mystery at this address.

3. Not sure if this makes sense -- wouldn't be the first time I left you scratching your skull, I imagine -- but in regard to the Patriots' two recent big-name acquisitions, I have to say I think there's a better chance they get greatness out of Albert Haynesworth than Chad Ochocinco. That's no knock on Ochocinco, who is genuinely hilarious, good-natured, and accomplished. But I'm convinced that he's slipped a bit as a receiver (12.7 yards per catch, 53-percent catch rate), and his role with the Patriots is going to be closer to what Deion Branch provided last season than what a casual fan might expect from a player with Ochocinco's fame and public profile. I'm skeptical that he's capable of greatness at this stage in his career. But with Haynesworth, it's still possible. If Belichick can keep him motivated and engaged -- I know, that if is as big as Haynesworth's belly -- he still has the talent to be one of the premier defensive players in the NFL. I like the Ochocinco signing more, but the Haynesworth move is the one that could be season-changing.

4. Still snickering at the thought of Andy Reid -- who probably doesn't do a whole lot subtly -- swooping in to steal Nnamdi Asomugha from the Jets and Cowboys. The Eagles are no dream team, but they are loaded, at least until Michael Vick gets hurt and they have to play Vince Young . . . or Favre. Still, the Jets would have been something to behold had they been able to convince Asomugha to join Darrelle Revis in their defensive backfield. It would have given them arguably the two best cornerbacks in the league and, if I'm hearing this right, allow Rex Ryan to send the other nine defenders after the quarterback on every down. While my instinct as a lifelong New Englander was to hope it doesn't happen -- Asomugha is probably the first quality player I've ever hoped would sign with the Cowboys -- from a completely subjective football fan's perspective, it would have been fun to see how it works. That said, spare me the hyperbole that they would instantly become the best tandem cornerbacks ever to play on the same team, and the same goes for the Asomugha-Asante Samuel pairing. Neither would start for the 1983 Raiders.

5. I'm sure you keep reading the same vague rumors and conjecture that I do that the Patriots have one more big move on the way. Considering that no one in the national media other than occasionally Mike Lombardi has any clue what the Patriots are thinking, I'm skeptical. But that hasn't stopped me from hoping that Ricky Williams somehow ends up in the Patriots backfield this season. Like Ochocinco, he's not a malcontent so much as he is a person with a mind of his own, Belichick is open-minded and secure enough to worry that his authority could be threatened by a talented but free-thinking football player. I doubt it happens, because the Patriots have a deep backfield already. But I hope it does, and to me, it would count as a big move. (Related to that, I'm not sure that Matt Roth counts as a big move, and if the Patriots were interested, wouldn't he be signed by now?)

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Batting in the usual order, here's another whimsical foray into full-season projections, with a look at Dustin Pedroia's stellar season following up on my Ellsbury-is-a-beast post the other day.

I'd ask you to indulge me this one more time, but after Pedroia's four-hit, homer-shy-of-the-cycle performance in which he extended his hitting streak to 23 games and improved his batting average to .548 lifetime as a cleanup hitter, I suspect we're all fine with jabbering admirably about his accomplishments this season. (Which Tony Mazz, Daigo Fujiwara, and I also did at some length on our Red Sox podcast. Check it out.)

One apparently necessary disclaimer: I'm not specifically comparing Pedroia to any of these players. I'm not saying his season is or will be better than, say, Joe Morgan's '73 or Barry Bonds '92. I'm certainly not saying counting stats are a better measure of a player's value or success compared to his peers than advanced metrics such as WAR or OPS+ and so on.

I'm simply having fun while tipping my size-8 cap to one more Red Sox player who is having a season so spectacular, if not quite transcendent, that it deserves proper acknowledgement of what it has been so far and what it could be. With me? Let's do this one more time.

Pedroia's current statistics: .303 batting average, 13 home runs, 51 RBIs, 20 stolen bases, 67 walks, 69 runs, 120 hits.

Pedroia's projected statistics, which are unassailable are absolutely sure to happen because they come from CBSSports.com, the host for my rotisserie baseball league which has never done me wrong except for suggesting I pick up Jorge Cantu that one time: .302 average, 21 homers, 82 RBIs, 32 stolen bases, 108 walks, 111 runs, 194 hits.

Number of players who have had at least 20 homers, 80 RBIs, 30 stolen bases, and 105 walks in a single season: Four, but it's been accomplished 12 times.

Even casual baseball fans know Arquimedez Pozo is one, having accomplished the feat a staggering nine times. But who are the other three? Gotcha! Pozo never did it once! I know, hard to believe, but true. While you let that stunning bit of information sink in, I'll give you the list of those who have gone 20-80-30-105 or better:

FIVE TIMES
Barry Bonds: (1991-92, 1994-'97). With the acknowledgement that walks are the pivotal statistic in this particular exercise, I suppose it's no surprise that the five times he did it came in seasons before his hat size went from something like a 7 1/4 to bigger-than-most-mascot-heads, including Youppi's. For the sport of it, here are his HR/SB ratios from 1998 through 2004:

1998: 37 homers/28 steals. 1999:34/15. 2000: 49/11. 2001: 73/13. 2002: 46/9. 2003: 45/7. 2004: 45/6.

Fair to say we'll never see a baseball-reference page as mind-blowing as his ever again.

THREE TIMES
Bobby Abreu: (2001, '04, '05). Now, I doubt this surprises anyone since 20 homers, 30 steals, 100-plus walks and 80-plus RBIs is exactly what you'd expect an Abreu-in-his-prime season to look like. The amazing thing is that he didn't do it 2006, when it seemed like he accumulated those numbers against Red Sox pitching alone during the Yankees' five-game sweep of the Sox that August that unofficially snuffed out any hopes of having playoff

TWO TIMES
Joe Morgan: (1973, '76). The only player to overlap with Ellsbury's projection earlier in the week, and that's probably no surprise. He was such an outstanding all-around player -- arguably the greatest second baseman of all time -- that I'm almost starting to feel guilty that I can't write about him as a player without mentioning how abysmal he was as a broadcaster. The longer he is gone from the booth, the easier it will become to separate the two, I hope. Notably, '73 wasn't one of this two MVP seasons. He finished fourth in the balloting that season with 26 homers, 111 walks, and an .899 OPS, then won the award in 1975 and '76.

Jeff Bagwell: (1997, '99). Maybe failing to recognize how many amazing feats Bagwell accomplished in his career is a coping mechanism for Red Sox fans. It would explain why I, for one, completely forgot that he was stolen base threat who reached double figures in steals in 10 different seasons. Maybe it's because, should anyone among us recall that, yes, one of the most fearsome sluggers of his generation actually stole more than 30 bases twice in his career, or that in 1994, he slugged a Ruthian .750, or that in that same MVP season he led the National League in OPS (1.201), OPS+ (213), runs (104), RBIs (116), and total bases while batting .368 with 39 homers in 110 games, well, we might just find ourselves babbling "LarryAndersenScottCooperLarryAndersenScottCooper" more than we already have.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Since Jacoby Ellsbury flashed on the Fenway scene in 2007, helping win a world championship for Boston and a taco for the world, it's been fun to try to find a player he compares to and a challenge to find one that felt accurate.

Baseball-reference's player comparisons were of little help. Ellsbury's similarity scores mostly brought up old timers such as Buzz Boyle, Buster Mills, and Danny Southern. Only Tim Wakefield could tell us anything about them, having surely faced one or the other when he was tossing devilish knucklers for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys back in the late 1890s.

Among ballplayers not quite so ancient, Johnny Damon, his center field predecessor once removed, was an easy potential comp, but there was skepticism whether Ellsbury would hit with similar power, which also left any Grady Sizemore or Brady Anderson comps feel like wishful thinking.

His new teammate, Carl Crawford? Pretty close, but the longtime scourge of Red Sox catchers is another with presumably more extra-base pop.

Brett Gardner? Yankees fans had an argument a season ago when Ellsbury was injured, not so much now, though that probably won't stop them.

Jason Tyner? OK, now you're just being mean.

Now that Ellsbury is healthy, hitting for power for the first time, and putting together an overall monster season -- at this writing, he's batting .317 with 16 homers, 28 stolen bases, 125 hits, and an .891 OPS -- he finds himself compared to a higher class of players. His numbers this year remind me of a vintage Roberto Alomar season. There's some Best of Barry Larkin to be found in those numbers, too, and maybe some Expos-era Tim Raines. If you're keeping score, that's a brand-new Hall of Fame inductee, a player who might want to get a speech ready for next year, and another who I know will get there because he deserves it, even if Raines needs to take the Blyleven path.

Good company? Legendary company. And while keeping in mind that this is fewer than 100 games we're talking about, here's the amazing thing: Should Ellsbury sustain this pace, his season would rank as one the most statistically impressive in baseball history. And the company he would keep would become even more elite.

Skeptical? Stay with me. First, consider that according to CBSSports.com, Ellsbury's current numbers projected over a full season come out to 27 homers, 92 RBIs, 210 hits, 121 runs, 47 steals, a .316 average, and an .886 OPS.

Once my eyes returned to my sockets after looking at those numbers, I know what I had to do: To the baseball-reference.com play index! Pronto! The mission: To find out how many players in baseball history have approached that set of numbers in a single season. I rounded down Ellsbury's projections slightly, first searching for players who have had 25 homers, 45 stolen bases, a .310 average, and an .880 OPS in a single season.

Turns out there are just five of them, and not one named Bonds, Griffey, Mantle or Mays. I present them in reverse chronological order:

Hanley Ramirez, 2007: In his second full major league season, the former Red Sox phenom who went to Florida in the necessary Josh Beckett/Mike Lowell swap batted .332 with 29 homers, 81 RBIs, 51 steals and a .948 OPS. He finished 10th in National League Most Valuable Player voting. Jimmy Rollins won the award, and yes, it seems strange that the Phillies shortstop ever was the league MVP. Stranger still, upon looking at Hanley's beastly numbers his first four seasons in the majors, is his puzzling regression this year. He's hitting .247 with 10 homers and a 100 adjusted OPS. The one thing I never thought Hanley Ramirez would be in his age 27 season is average.

Alex Rodriguez, 1998: A-Rod actually had other years -- many of them -- that were more wondrous years or wonderful years or whatever that card says. Start with his three MVP seasons (2003, '05, '07) in which he walloped a combined 149 homers. Then there were his two runner-up seasons (1996, when led the league with a .358 average and 379 total bases at age 20 and fans actually liked him, and '02, when he hit 57 homers but finished a distant second to Oakland's Miguel Tejada.) But his '98 season sticks out here because of the particular parameters we set; this was the one time in his career that A-Rod surpassed 45 steals, finishing third in the league with 46. Forty-year-old Rickey Henderson led the league with 66, which provides a nice segue to the next guy on our list . . .

Rickey Henderson, 1990: Well, hello Rickey. No surprise to see you here . . . I think when we set the criteria for this based on the numbers Ellsbury is charging toward, the first name that came to mind as a potential match is Henderson's, the best leadoff hitter the game has known and the all-time leader in stolen bases and runs scored and second in walks . . . We know how Rickey feels about his own career: "Today, I am the greatest." But where would you rank him among the greatest players of all-time? Has to be in the top 25 easily, right? Baseball-reference's Fan EloRater has him at 23d between Ken Griffey Jr. and Eddie Mathews . . . As part of my master plan to annoy you into admitting Raines belongs in the Hall of Fame, I must note that he is Henderson's most similar player at every age from 24-39, though the similarity score wasn't particularly close . . . Don't know if you saw him in the celebrity softball game during the All-Star break, but he still looks like he could play at 53. At the least, he could probably come off the street and lead the Mariners in on-base percentage . . . Oh, yes, his 1990 season: .325 average, 28 homers, 65 steals, 119 runs scored, league-leading 1.019 OPS, and his only MVP award.

Joe Morgan, 1976: You may have heard this a time or two -- and by a time or two, I mean every other inning -- during his 21 years masquerading as analyst on ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" broadcasts, but it's worth mentioning in today's context since it was a season worth bragging about. Morgan won his second straight MVP award in '76, batting .320 with 27 homers, 111 RBIs, and 113 runs, as the Reds, on the short list of the greatest single-season teams in history, went on to sweep the Yankees in the World Series. The truly impressive thing -- or I should say most impressive-- about Morgan's season is his efficiency. He stole 60 bases and was caught just nine times. He walked 114 times while striking out just 41. And he led the NL in on-base percentage for the third straight season (.444), slugging (.576), and, obviously, OPS (1.020.) I think it's fair to say we all got weary of Morgan talking about his exploits as a player. But looking at what he accomplished, it's very easy to understand why he was so proud.

Cesar Cedeno, 1973: Upon first glance, the longtime Astros center fielder may appear to be the weak link among this quintet, the Alex Gonzalez in a lineup of Adrian Gonzalezes. But to dismiss him immediately would be to overlook how productive he was in his early career, when the comparisons to a young Willie Mays might have seemed doused with hyperbole had Cedeno not been a big league regular at 19 and a Gold Glove-winning star with a 22-homer/55-steal season to his credit at age 21. According to "The New Bill James Historical Abstract," published in 2001, Cedeno rated as the 21st best center fielder of all time and the fourth-best young center fielder (career value up to 25), trailing Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, and Tris Speaker, and a spot ahead of Mays. Injuries and scandal prevented Cedeno from fulfilling his early promise, and though he spent 17 seasons in the majors, '73 was arguably his last great season (.320 average, 25 homers, 56 steals).

* * *

So once the play index gave us the aforementioned Fab Fave, I upped the degree of difficulty by adding 120 or more runs and 210 or more hits as categories.

With those feats -- again, both within Ellsbury's current projections -- the list narrows to two: Ramirez '07 and Rodriguez '98.

(With their work here done, I like to imagine that Rickey and Morgan will go off and yammer about who really had the best season among them. "Rickey says Rickey is the greatest!" "Well,you cannot be the greatest if you did not play for the World Champion 1975 and '76 Reds, Rickey. That was a slidepiece, Jon.")

Finally, once we add one more category to the criteria -- 90 or more RBIs -- there's just one man standing at the top step of the dugout:

Alex Rodriguez is the only player in baseball history to meet the set of dazzling if specific offensive statistics Jacoby Ellsbury projects to achieve this season.

Three conclusions:

1) A-Rod had such a phenomenal season in 1998 that I'll refrain for once from making a snide crack about him. (Feel free to do so yourself, however. 'Roid jokes, popcorn-feeding actresses, centaur paintings, Jeter envy, and purple lip gloss are always popular topics.)

2) Obviously, the failure to meet the stolen base criteria weeds out countless legendary players and seasons along the way. Hey, I didn't set the parameters; Ellsbury did.

3) Ellsbury's bounce back from his lost and controversial 2010 season, when he played just 18 games because of multiple rib fractures, has blown right past impressive and redemptive and is speeding toward historic faster than he goes from first to third.

Advanced metrics and conventional wisdom suggest Ellsbury isn't the Red Sox' most valuable player, let alone the league's. Dustin Pedroia is second in the majors in WAR (fangraphs version) to Toronto's Jose Bautista, while new-kid-in-town Adrian Gonzalez is the people's choice for the AL MVP.

But if Ellsbury can continue to pile up the stats and soar among the stars, he will be a very tempting choice for voters when they're looking at their MVP ballots. Perhaps even the favorite.

Red Sox fans, of course, hope Ellsbury keeps it up for obvious reasons -- he's a blast to watch, an electrifying athlete, somewhat ironically, an upgrade on what Carl Crawford was supposed to be, and he's helping the team win (and win, and win).

I hope he keeps it up for another reason. To see where it falls among the most well-rounded power/speed offensive seasons in baseball history.

The bar has been raised, Gardner.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Whether you appreciate Bobby Valentine's approach to broadcasting or are annoyed by it -- and judging by the reaction to my media column today on the ESPN "Sunday Night Baseball" analyst, there's not much middle ground -- there's no denying the man knows his stuff.

Like Terry Francona, he's saw the game from the perspective of a phenom and a journeyman, which helped him immensely as a manager. And his experiences managing in Japan and looking down from the broadcast booth have only enhanced his distinctive résumé.

Valentine is smart, informed, and insightful. So what if he happens to know it? Beats the alternative.

Maybe you're one of those people who got your fill of him during the Red Sox' 16-inning win over the Rays Sunday; me, I could talk baseball -- or listen to him talk baseball -- all day.

Here are five outtakes from our conversation for today's column.

1. You got to watch the Red Sox for nearly two full games' worth of innings Sunday night. Thoughts on what you saw, where they stand right now and where they are headed?

Valentine: "With [Dustin] Pedroia hitting like he is and [Carl] Crawford back, their offense is the best out there right now. It really is; the numbers say no one can match it, and that's also what your eyes tell you. I have some questions about the starting pitching. At the start of the season some people wondered if they have too much, but there's always attrition and now I'm wondering if they have enough. We'll know better when Buchholz and Lester are in sight again. But overall they're the class of the American League. That includes the Yankees and the Texas Rangers, who also have rode a terrific offense. You know, if you stopped the season right now and lined all three of them up, I'd have to say Texas has the nod in starting pitching over the other two. But you don't stop the season now. [Alexi Ogando is still throwing 97, [Derek] Holland has been outstanding, but the only question about it is whether they can do it over the entire season. Because the entire group other than maybe Colby Lewis are not really battle-tested as starters over many seasons."

2. Having managed for several years in Japan, you've become a go-to source whenever a player comes stateside. Who among the players who have come from Japan to play in the major leagues has surprised you with his success, and who did you think would do better over here than he has? I'm sure that latter part sounds like a loaded question coming from a Boston writer:

Valentine: "I think Hideki Okajima's success really surprised me. I didn't think of him as someone who would be a pitcher on a good team. He was a good pitcher on a bad team over there, then he became an OK pitcher on a good team. Guys like Takashi Saito . . . there were a lot of guys who just couldn't pitch there who came here and overexceeded any expectations. The biggest disappointment that I saw or had was Hideki Irabu, who I had in 1995 when he was absolutely, other that Nolan Ryan, the best thrower I had ever seen. On days, he was the best pitcher I had ever seen in my life. For him to be such an also-ran and a bust here was very surprising. And Daisuke Matsuzaka-- and yes, that was a loaded question -- he's that hard-headed guy who I felt had to get into the perfect scenario and be in the perfect spot to be the pitcher he could be. At times it was that in Boston, but that's a tough place for anyone to change teams and go to and be successful."

3. Right now it looks like Carlos Beltran is going to be the most coveted player leading up to the trade deadline, with legitimate contenders such as the Red Sox, Phillies, and Giants all interested. Where is the best fit for him in your opinion?

Valentine: "You would think that the team that would be best would be Philadelphia. Their offense has been flawed but has produced enough to give them the best record in baseball. Ryan Howard has been a leader in the RBI category all year with the Who's Who of baseball not hitting behind him. He woudl seem to be a wonderful piece to that puzzle. Putting him San Francisco, for instance, you would say that they're asking him to be the guy because they don't have an offensive player like him. I don't think that scenario of asking him to do that would work. And if Boston wanted to bolster what is already the best offense in baseball, they could do it and be the team that is able to go down the stretch and win those 15-10 games. But I don't know that he's the guy that Boston needs at this time. The other thing about Carlos Beltran is that of all these guys who have gotten the huge, multi-million dollar contracts over the last 5-10 years, he's come as close to anyone to fulfilling that, even with the injuries he's had to deal with. He's a stellar player and a terrific person, and he'd be a welcome addition just about anywhere."

4. I'm sure I'm not breaking news to you here, but one of the primary criticisms about you as a broadcaster is that you talk too much, and you've sometimes been accused of being a know-it-all dating back to your days as a player and manager. Do either of those perceptions bother you?

Valentine: “I know I'm perceived that way by some people, but that's just how it is. I'm myself, true to myself, and I think it originates from me being I’m just one of these guys in baseball who has always challenged myself so that when someone said something that I accepted to be true when I was 15, by the time I was 21 I would be challenging it to see if it was true then. I did that my whole playing career, I did that my whole managerial career, and then when I finally thought that I had it all figured out, I went to Japan and got challenged again. I have a lot of frustration with our game of baseball because . . . there’s so much confusion out there with the different ideas about what people think happened. I like to try to get to the bottom of that, to get out what the proper idea is.”

5. Sort of a quirky question here but bear with me. Don't know if you saw this, but a fascinating recent ESPN.com article ranked you as the 11th-best prospect of the draft era, right between Reggie Jackson and Gregg Jefferies. You were considered the best prospect among all of the young talent the Dodgers came up with in the late '60s [Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Bill Buckner], and yet you had a star-crossed career. What are your recollections of those days as a phenom?

Valentine: [Laughs] "Where was that? I want to read that one. I don't really remember what they were, those early days. When I first signed, I was in a pretty select group, and I was lucky to be with the Dodgers. I was pretty hot, I guess. I was better than most and younger than most and probably crazier and cockier than most, and that was a good thing and a bad thing. I made some stupid mistakes, and I got beaned at the end of a really good minor league season which was the reason I was rated, because I was 20 years old, led the league in hitting, won the MVP at the Triple A level. Before spring training, I played in a couple of intramural football games [at Southern Cal] and wound up going to spring training with my leg in a cast. That was stupid move number one. I could have been a little more patient as a 22-year-old and not tried to buck the system as I was always doing and always did. I got into a little rift with [Dodgers manager] Walter Alston as to whether or not I should be playing shortstop or second base. When he decided I should be the second baseman of the future, I decided I should have a future with another team. They obliged me. And then I ran into a wall. It was all kind of crazy stuff. But I can look back at it with good conscience. I played with a lot of really good players, and I was as good as most of them and better than some of them and had some fun while it lasted."

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Pedro and Loooouie. Now that's a tandem. I'll take them 1-2 at the top of my all-time Red Sox starting rotation -- Bruce Hurst, you get the ball for Game 3 -- and you can have Cy Young, Roger Clemens, Pat Mahomes, and the rest.

That picture of perhaps the two most entertaining pitchers in franchise lore serves as the entry point to a whimsical Sox topic I was discussing with a colleague the other day, a discussion fueled by 59-year-old Dwight Evans finishing second in our poll on who should be the Red Sox right fielder the rest of the season:

Who are the most universally popular or beloved Red Sox players in recent history?

There is, of course, a loaded word in that question: universally. Superstars who felt the wrath of the fans for a time in their careers are immediately disqualified.

Yaz was and is beloved . . . yet at one point in the early '70s he had to tuck cotton balls in his ears to drown out the booing. One down.

There are few players who were adored by the fans like Nomar in the late '90s . . . and yet his legacy is largely that of the guy who had to go to make the 2004 championship possible. Two out.

Mo Vaughn helped change the culture of the Red Sox in the mid-'90s . . . and yet his brutal honesty and affinity for late-night egg and cheese sandwiches didn't always help his cause with the patrons. The side is retired.

Then there are those other great Red Sox who have a "yeah, but" attached to their accomplishments.

Jim Rice? Number on his uniform: 14. Number in the scorebook: 6-4-3.

Johnny Damon? A money-grubbing traitor in pinstripes.

Curt Schilling? Doesn't he have a mute button?

Wade Boggs? Addicted to . . . his own statistics.

Roger Clemens? . . . in the showah!

Even Pedro has his detractors, particularly among certain disingenuous sports-radio bloviators who give you the sense that they aren't entirely explaining the reason for their disdain for him. As someone who will forever miss watching him pitch in his heyday, it's as inexplicable as it is disappointing. But that's the way of our world. We're finicky and demanding, and the media too often magnifies the emphasis on the negative. Riling up the masses is much more lucrative than writing or speaking with reason and sincerity.

Man, now I feel like I'm ripping on these guys by jostling the memories of their flaws and disappointments. You know that's not the intent. We're looking for the players who appealed to fans of all demographics and levels of dedication, those of whom a disparaging word was rarely if ever uttered. You remember them well, and you always will.

I've spent more time setting this up and explaining the parameters than writing about those on our Universally Popular list. Before I finally get to it, here were some near-misses, which begins in 1978, the first season I followed the Red Sox.

Jerry Remy was a well-liked player, albeit one with a .656 career OPS; his broadcasting career has enhanced his popularity retroactively. Dave Henderson was here so briefly he's more a guest that you remember fondly than a member of the immediate family, and his clutch moments were somewhat dulled by the ultimate devastating defeat. Jon Lester, a cancer survivor who has 71 wins in 100 career decisions, is close, though his understated personality has kept him in the shadows somewhat. If the next 6 1/2 years of Adrian Gonzalez are anything close to as mesmerizing as the first 1/2 season, he will make the list.

Here are the seven who I say already did:

Carlton Fisk: When our resident Dirt Dog, Steve Silva, put together his position-by-position "most beloved" galleries and polls that ran on Boston.com before this season, Fisk edged Jason Varitek in the voting at catcher, 49.1 percent to 47.3 percent. The argument can be made that Varitek, who debuted with the Sox in 1997 but seems like he's been here for about five years prior, belongs on this list as well. I respectfully vote no because of some deserved backlash about his reputation as a pitcher whisperer, but that doesn't mean his popularity isn't deserved. It doesn't and shouldn't match that of Fisk, the New Hampshire native who with his stoic demeanor and deliberateness in making sure the job was done right embodied so much of what New Englanders see in themselves. The 162 homers hit for the Boston cause and roughly as many fistfights with some of the more dastardly 1970s Yankees didn't hurt Pudge's rep, either.

Dwight Evans: If you could watch one once-great athlete do the one thing he did best one more time, who and what would you choose? Bobby Orr accelerating end-to-end? Ted Williams getting his pitch, flashing that slight uppercut, and sending the ball sailing toward the red seat? A no-look from Larry to a cutting DJ? No matter what your choice, if you are Boston fan, watching Dewey cut down a foolish baserunner trying to go first to third must be near the top of the list, no?

Luis Tiant: He appears to be throwing sidearm on this card, one of approximately 67 angles from which he delivered his array of hypnotizing junk. There are many words that describe El Tiante -- charismatic and clutch are two standards for the cigar-chomping righty who had ample guts by any measure and meaning. But the writer George Frazier turned to Tiant's first language to find the perfect one: duende. Said Dwight Evans, "Unless you've played with him, you can't understand what Luis means to a team." Oh, but he fans fortunate enough to watch him had a pretty good idea.

Dustin Pedroia: The adulation for the hilariously cocky second baseman through the first four-plus years of his career reminds me of how fans felt about Nomar in his early seasons. But Pedroia's personality ensures that popularity will last long after his playing days are done. Hopefully sometime around 2025, conservatively.

Dave Roberts: You see, he stole a base this one time. Second base. During a playoff game of some importance. Perhaps this jogs the memory, yes?

I demand to see this image bronzed and in full, larger-than-life statue form on Van Ness Street no later than 2014. No, make it October 2013. And should the sculptor accidentally disfigure Jeter ever so slightly, all the better. That's what he gets for nearly getting away with that sweep tag.

Bill Mueller: The sad thing about Roberts's steal, as we all know and as I hate to bring up with the drought being what it is, is that he was left stranded there on that second-base island while the Yankees celebrated their four-game humiliation of the Sox just a few feet away. If only the great Mariano hadn't mowed down Mueller, Mientkiewicz, and Damon in order in the ninth inning. If only he hadn't been so damn invincible with that stupid buzz-saw cutter. If only . . . ah, heck, I can't drag out this dismal imaginary parallel universe any longer. Mueller, of course, beat Mariano that day, just as he did during the landmark (if not quite pivotal) Mitt To The Twit game earlier that season. Mueller's stay here was just three seasons, but his legacy is permanent. He played hard, played hurt, produced to the point he won a batting title, and yes, beat the great Mariano. Twice. The praise Theo Epstein deserves for signing Mueller is tempered only by his inability to figure out a way to clone him.

David Ortiz: Imagine how much different Red Sox history would be if
Theo Epstein, early in the 2003 season, decided that Ortiz and Jeremy Giambi were redundant and gave the vote of confidence to the latter? If, as I've often written and still believe, that the day they acquired David Ortiz is the pivotal moment in franchise history, then the days that Shea Hillenbrand was traded to clear a logjam so Mueller and Ortiz could play more and the day that Grady Little saw fit to start giving Ortiz steady at-bats at least belong in the footnotes. I know he heard a smattering of boos during his slow starts in 2009-10, and maybe that means he doesn't meet the criteria for this exercise. I'll let you decide that. Me, I don't want to recognize a Red Sox universe in which anyone with a recollection of 2003-04 has a problem with the man who made this . . .

. . . and so much more . . .

. . . happen.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

The Jose Reyes daydream is a pleasant one for us lineup junkies . . . Ellsbury, Reyes, Gonzalez, Youkilis, Ortiz, Pedroia, Crawford . . . -- but the clear-eyed thinking here is that there's a better chance of the Red Sox bringing back Julio Lugo on another four-year deal than parting with the bushel of prospects it would take to pry the superb but injury prone shortstop away from the Mets in his contract year.

Yes, for once in this neighborhood, the focus is on realistic matters. And so the attention turns to right field, where perhaps the Red Sox' greatest need offensively -- presuming you buy that a team that is leading the league in just about every hitting category has a greatest need -- is a bat, preferably righthanded, to complement/replace Josh Reddick or J.D. Drew.

The rumor mill has included some big names (Hunter Pence, Carlos Beltran), some relatively appealing role players (Jeff Baker, Ryan Ludwick), and various degrees of liklihood that any one of these players could end up with the Red Sox. There is also the status quo, which for now includes Reddick's spot-on Andre Ethier imitation and Drew's quest for his 23d RBI.

What will the Red Sox do? Well, that's why July 31 is such dramatic fun, isn't it? But as the trade deadline approaches, here's how I'd rate the potential right fielders -- present company included -- in terms of appeal, while disregarding for the most part what it might take to acquire them. As always, let's yap about it further in the comments:

1. Hunter Pence, Astros: The Astros didn't arrive at their current hapless and perhaps hopeless situation by making savvy personnel decisions, so maybe there's a small chance that they would consider trading Pence, their All-Star right fielder who is in the middle of the best season (.321, .852 OPS) of his outstanding five-year career. But unless they are presented an overwhelming offer even they know better than to refuse, it makes no sense to deal Pence. He's 28, makes $6.9 million, has two more years of arbitration eligibility ahead, and is their only appealing asset, other than arguably Bud Norris and Wandy Rodriguez. If the Astros can make a deal that instantly revives their barren farm system, only then does trading him make sense. But that offer won't come from the Red Sox. He's listed first here because he's the best potentially available right fielder rather than because of any expecation he'll be cramming to learn the nooks and crannies of Fenway come August 1.

3. Michael Cuddyer, Twins: Twins management said this week that it has no plans to trade the 32-year-old rightfielder/first baseman, who has been with the organization since he was chosen with the ninth pick in the 1997 draft. To say as much is makes sense given that Minnesota is just five games back in the AL Central and trading a popular player would be a sign that its pennant aspirations have given way to a white flag. But Cuddyer is a free agent at season's end, and should Minnesota slump the next two weeks, wouldn't they have to consider a deal? Even if they are serious about re-signing him, trade him for a package of prospects, then bring him back over the winter. Cuddyer would have tremendous appeal to the Red Sox -- he's hitting .364 with an 1.186 OPS and eight homers in 88 at-bats against lefties -- and I still say he's the most realistic high-quality option for the Red Sox.

4. Josh Reddick, Red Sox: No, I'm not sold. But man, I want to be. The tools -- a quick bat, a vertical leap apparently higher than Jacoby Ellsbury's judging by that Fred Lynn-caliber catch Sunday night -- are all there, and he made significant strides in plate discipline at Pawtucket this season. Still, Reddick was hitting .230 with the PawSox, with tells you something, and he was prone to prolonged slumps in the minors. While he has been dazzling (1.056 OPS in 87 plate appearances) this season, the real test will come after he strings together a couple of 0-for-4s. At the very least, he's earned the chance to try to play through a slump.

5. Ryan Ludwick, Padres: Marc Normandin at Over The Monster makes a compelling case why the Red Sox would be wise to target the 33-year-old Padres outfielder, who has .238/.306/.376 line this season playing half his games in the hitters' hell formally known as Petco Park. As Normandin points out, coming to Fenway and playing in a park that suits his skills for the first time in his career might bring the best out of him, and his best has been pretty darn good in the past (he hit 37 homers for the Cardinals in 2009). With Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod's deep knowledge of the Red Sox farm system, chances are there is a player they like that Theo Epstein would be willing to part with. (For what it's worth, Ludwick's No. 1 comp for his career and through age 31 is Josh Willingham, another potential candidate. I like Ludwick better for durability reasons alone.)

6. J.D. Drew, Red Sox: There's no chance I'm firing up the argument on the overall merits of his signing again; he's as polarizing as any recent Red Sox player I can recall, and no minds are going to be changed about his value and usefulness at this point. What we can all agree on is that he's had a horrendous season -- Reddick has five fewer RBIs in 184 fewer plate appearances -- and that the likelihood of Drew going on one of his hot streaks shrivels by the day. He's about to fill the dubious role vacated by Mike Cameron as baseball's best-compensated fourth outfielder.

7. Jeff Baker, Cubs: With a career .326 on-base percentage, it's tempting to suggest he's a depth piece more than a solution to any problem. But he's hammered lefties in his career, posting a .318/.367/.543 line with 21 homers in 521 plate appearances, and he's hit nearly 50 points higher in the second half over his seven seasons. The Cubs have said they aren't inclined to trade him, which is a perfectly Cubs thing to do.

8. Jeff Francoeur, Royals: If Reddick ends up as the lefthanded-hitting version of Francoeur -- excellent defense, double-digit home run power, and incurably brutal plate discipline -- would that be a disappointment? Because a month ago, that's who I would have told you Reddick would become. Francoeur gets bonus points for growing up a Red Sox fan, but his OBP this season, .310, is exactly the same as his career number. Watching him whiff on 1-2 sliders in the dirt would get old in a hurry.

9. Dwight Evans, Red Sox: Baseball-reference.com tells me he's 59 years old now, which of course cannot be true. But even if it is, you're not going to convince me that he couldn't go up there and work a walk once in a while (his on-base percentage in his final season, unfortunately spent with the Orioles, was .393), or still gun down some foolish baserunner trying for an extra base. (He also deserved an Oscar nom for his turn as Jenna Fischer's character's dad in "Hall Pass." But you knew that.) And even if he really is 59 and those skills are gone, can't, well hell, it's always worthwhile to acknowledge his greatness at any opportunity. Retire that No. 24 already.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Leading off on this lazy Friday, it seems somehow appropriate to immediately digress with a brief state of the Sox before we get to the Topic O' The Day around here.

With 90 games down and 72 to go as the 2011 Red Sox' march toward the postseason commences tonight, I have nothing but positive thoughts about this team. They are as good as we thought they were, winning 53 of 78 games after that lumpy 2-10 start. Adrian Gonzalez is better than we thought he was, which is saying something, because as longtime TATB readers know, we had more than a hunch or a daydream that he'd be spectacular at Fenway. Jacoby Ellsbury has become the player his most ardent supporters always believed he would be. Josh Beckett found his youthful mojo -- not to mention velocity -- on the other side of 30. Papi is hitting homers and trying to hit obnoxious Orioles relief pitchers like they're wearing Tanyon Sturtze masks.

Barring a catastrophic run of injuries -- and the hyperextended knees, pulled hammies, and tweaked lats thus far are not yet leading to gruesome 2006 flashbacks starring Kevin Jarvis and Jason Johnson -- this team is as likely to be crowned the 2011 World Champions as anyone else, Phillies included. (I'm telling you, Atlanta is winning the National League.)

Yet as the trading deadline approaches, I find myself . . . well, not so much thinking of the worst, or perceived worst, transactions of Theo Epstein's largely exceptional nine seasons as the general manager, but certainly being reminded of them. Mike Cameron, signed to a two-year, $12 million $15.5 million contract before the 2010 season, was recently designated for assignment and brought his eroded skills to Florida. John Lackey, introduced the same December day after agreeing to an $82.5 million deal, has been the worst pitcher in the AL this season. Some among us are caterwauling -- unfairly, but gratingly -- about the trade for Victor Martinez two deadlines ago now that he's moved along to Detroit and Justin Masterson has emerged as a top starter for Cleveland.

As far as I'm concerned, Theo has made one truly inexplicable awful move since taking over as GM: signing Julio Lugo to a four-year, $36 million contract before the 2007 after he'd spent several years in Tampa Bay doing absolutely nothing of significance against the Red Sox. A four-year, $3.6 million deal would have been too long and for too much loot. Should have just kept the original Gonzo, smooth-fielding Alex.

More often, what we perceive with 20/20 hindsight as dumb or poorly considered moves are actually reasonable, well-considered acquisitions that simply don't work out for one reason or another. I'd put Cameron in this category, even though he was an injury-prone disaster here, batting .219 with seven homers over 81 games. Before coming to the Red Sox, he was a Gold Glove outfielder who had hit at least 18 homers in every season but one since '99. Then he got hurt, and he got old. It happens. It wasn't entirely predictable.

I'd also put Edgar Renteria in this group. His counting stats during his one season here were decent -- 100 runs, 70 RBIs, 172 hits -- but if you recall much from anything from the 153 games he played for the Red Sox in 2005, it's that he was sluggish defensively and seemed to shrink from the moment, which ran counter to his well-earned clutch reputation. As much as Red Sox fans adored Orlando Cabrera, Renteria should have been an upgrade. The move was made for the right reasons, but he was the wrong fit.

J.D. Drew is having a miserable season, the fifth and final year of his contract, and he needs to go. But he's also been an extremely valuable player here for extended stretches, and those who dismiss him as indifferent or damaged always seem to be the same fans who prefer their brittle outfielders to come accessorized with dirty hats and you-feel-my-pain-don'tcha scowl. J.D. Drew? Not a bad signing -- a perfectly decent one, even with the inflated sticker price.

Judging Theo's body of work -- in terms of trades and free-agent signings -- on a couple of moves that didn't work out shows a lack of context and perspective. Dice-K was maddening (he really should have been a Met), and John Lackey-Wasdin's deal is regrettable just a year and half into it. But taking into consideration all of Epstein's significant acquisitions (at least the ones I could recall) since his spectacular Papi-Millar-Mueller-Timlin-Walker bargain-shopping jackpot before the 2003 season, I'd categorize them this way:

SMOOTH MOVES
Scott Williamson, Dave Roberts, Doug Mientkiewicz, Orlando Cabrera, Billy Wagner, Bobby Kielty, Victor Martinez, Jason Bay, Alex Gonzalez (both times), Adrian Beltre, Adrian Gonzalez, Keith Foulke, Curt Schilling, Hideki Okajima, Mark Bellhorn, Bronson Arroyo, Gabe Kapler, Curtis Leskanic, Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

Probably should list Adrian Gonzalez first out of proper respect . . . They played Jason Bay's career perfectly, didn't they? . . . Anyone who is mad the Sox gave up Masterson for Martinez has forgotten how much fun it was to have VMart here for a year and half. Have to give up quality to get a player like that.

SMOOTH MOVE PRESUMING HE ACTUALLY MADE IT
Trading for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell.

Lowell and Beckett were pivotal in winning the 2007 World Series. Beckett could be pivotal in another title or two. Hanley Ramirez is a heck of a talent, but the deal should not be regrettable for either side.

RIGHT IDEA, MIXED RESULTS:
Byung-Hyun Kim, Tony Graffanino, Edgar Renteria, J.D. Drew, Carl Crawford, Mark Loretta, Pokey Reese, Ellis Burks, John Olerud, David Wells, Coco Crisp, Eric Hinske, Julian Tavarez, Sean Casey, Mark Kotsay, Bartolo Colon, Paul Byrd, Rocco Baldelli, Adam LaRoche, Marco Scutaro, Darnell McDonald.

If you consider the Shea Hillenbrand for BK Kim deal a bad one, look at Kim's game logs during the 2003 season after he took over as closer, replacing the "committee." They wouldn't have made the postseason without him . . . Crawford will never be worth $142 million, but he will be in the "smooth move" category before his time with the Sox is over . . . I feel like John Olerud could sign with the Sox now and hit .280 with 20 doubles the rest of the way. Helmet power! . . . Can't bring myself to rate the admirable Ellis Burks any lower than this, even though he was injured virtually all of 2004.

RIGHT IDEA, LOUSY RESULTS
Scott Sauerbeck, John Smoltz, Eric Gagne, Brad Penny, David Riske, Mike Cameron, Ramiro Mendoza, Jose Cruz, Jay Payton, Wade Miller, Matt Mantei, Josh Bard, Carlos Pena, Joel Pineiro, J.C. Romero, Casey Kotchman, Jeremy Hermida.

Gagne was an epic flop, but the only way you can say it was a bad idea is to point out that the Red Sox knew, as evidenced in the Mitchell Report, that he was a product of PEDs . . . Still wish it had worked out for Smoltz here. That would have been fun.

WRONG IDEA, MIXED RESULTS
Daisuke Matsuzaka, Doug Mirabelli, Nick Green, Eric Patterson.

Let's admit it. Red Sox scouts should have had a better idea that Dice-K's stuff might not translate quite so well to the major leagues.

WRONG IDEA, LOUSY RESULTS:
Bobby Jenks, Jeff Suppan, John Lackey, Wily Mo Pena, John Halama, Matt Clement, Jason Johnson, Kevin Jarvis, Rudy Seanez (all 14 times they had him), Kevin Cash (all 15 times they had him).

The summer of Jarvis and Johnson will haunt me forever . . . I'm tired of Jenks's act . . . It's cool Wily Mo is back in the big leagues -- he's only 29 -- but I'm glad it's not with the Sox. He's the worst defensive outfielder I've ever seen . . . I know Clement was an All-Star. Decent half-season. But I start hyperventilating when I think about how close they reportedly came to trading Derek Lowe for him during the 2004 season.

HEY EPSTEIN! TELL US AGAIN WHAT YOU SAW IN THAT STIFF

Julio Lugo.

The worst. And I was sick of the Mother's Day Miracle 10 airings ago, NESN. How about some vintage Pedro starts once in a while?

I suppose we should be grateful that Lugo didn't arrive in Boston before December 2006. Remember the trading deadline in 2005, when Manny was in the midst of his annual Operation Man-I-Really-Don't-Feel-Like-Playing-Here-Anymore routine, and there were rumors that the Sox, Rays, and Mets were considering various three-way deals that would have sent some combination of Lugo, Cameron, Lastings Milledge, and Aubrey Huff to Boston?

I know -- I just swallowed my tongue, too. Now that would have been a deal worth howling about.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

Whenever I'm charged with cleaning out the garage or the attic or some other cobwebbed and possibly tarantula-infested cranny of our home, I always seem to stumble upon a terrible sports book such as this relatively recent discovery that has been lost, generally with good reason.

I'm never sure why I bought them, beyond the usual obssession-with-sports thing that led me to purchase and read other literary gems such as "Nails," in which Lenny Dykstra proved it is possible to "write" more books than you've read. But I always remember where I bought them. They came from an old discount bookstore at Cook's Corner in Brunswick, Maine. Though the name of the place eludes me (Nonesuch Books, perhaps?), I loved the place and usually stopped in a time or two to load up every trip home from college. Most books weren't always worth the buck or two they cost -- Obsession: Timberwolves Stalk the NBA, anyone? -- but for an aspiring sports writer they were a joy to mine, and every now and then one proved to be solid gold.

On my desk here is one of those bargains amid the bargains: "No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Life of Hardball, by Dick Williams and Bill Plaschke. (Nope, it's not written in one-sentence paragraphs.) It's memoir of one of the superior managers in modern baseball history, a Hall of Famer who won a pair of championships with the Oakland A's in the early '70s, managed some supremely talented Montreal Expos teams later in the decade, and even took the San Diego Padres to the '84 World Series. (This morning, Chris Jaffe at the Hardball Times has a thorough look at Williams's career highlights.)

Of course, in this corner of the baseball universe, only one line -- one year, one season -- on his impressive résumé matters. As the dugout mastermind of the 1967 Red Sox, the irascible Williams was more responsible than anyone, Yaz included, for shaking off the lethargy and cronyism of the Tom Yawkey ownership and making the Impossible Dream season a reality. You're damn right they would win more than they lose. Like the Big, Bad Bruins, the '67 Sox are the forever enduring darlings of Boston sports fans of a certain generation, the team who made all of this happen. Williams's death last Thursday at age 82 was a somber reminder of how long ago that was, and yet it also brought reminiscences of a summer at Fenway never to be forgotten.

Later Thursday night, I pulled Williams's book, published in 1990, from a shelf in my home office and began skimming through it. It's a remarkably entertaining memoir for anyone, let alone a sports figure Williams comes across as a charming, funny, stubborn, politically incorrect, brilliant, unapologetic grump. Pretty much how he was always perceived, in other words. But it's his candor about the famous players he managed -- and almost to a man, feuded with at one time or another -- that makes the book such a fun read.

He has nothing but praise and admiration for Nolan Ryan, who played for him with the Angels, or Tony Gwynn, who came up with the Padres during Williams's reign. Many of his other players weren't so lucky. So consider this a special edition of Nine Innings, featuring nine comments from Williams's book about those who played for him. I could list about 90. And if you ever see a copy or run across it on Amazon, buy it. It's way better than "Nails."

1. On taking away Carl Yastrzemski's captaincy upon taking over as manager: "Maybe I could have done it more gracefully. Maybe Yaz and I could have gotten off to a better start if I'd called him into my office and asked him to resign as captain. Yeah, and maybe I should have asked everyone on the team how many games they wanted to play. And maybe I would have lasted in Boston about six months. And had my [expletive] living room repossessed. The hell with grace. I wanted wins. . . . Yaz didn't have the outgoing and enthusiastic makeup to be a chief anyway, but he could be one hell of an Indian. And I needed that Indian."

2. On Jim Lonborg, the eventual AL Cy Young winner in 1967, proving his toughness to Williams during a July 21 game against the Yankees by hitting Thad Tillotson, who had beaned the Red Sox' Joe Foy earlier in the game: "For Lonborg, the season of his life was just getting started. In that one incident, he had proved to me and to the rest of the league that he wasn't just going to be another frightened kid with talent. He was going to be a scary kid with talent. All by not being afraid to pitch inside."

3. On a certain infamous comment about slugging first baseman George Scott: "Scott was a likable guy with a weight problem -- in both his belly and his head. I once said, 'Talking to him is like talking to a block of cement.' Everybody thought I was joking, and even Yaz told somebody it was a rather cruel joke. But it was no joke. I meant it."

4. On Tony C. "In the end he did come back [from his tragic beaning in 1967] and I was very happy for him, just as I was deeply troubled by his heart attack several years ago and his death in early 1990. Say what you will, the guy was a fighter. Between the lines there was nobody who played harder, as his great comeback years witness. He was a fighter and so am I, and that's probably why we got into so many verbal scrapes. I'm never sure who got the better of who, but I know that by having Tony Conigliaro in there fighting every day, the game of baseball was the winner."

5. On the 1975 Angels, who hit just 55 home runs all season: "These Angels were cursed with several things, beginning with what obviously bored reporters called an incubator infield. Indeed, we were young: first baseman Bruce Bochte was in his second season; second baseman Jerry Remy was a rookie; shortstop Orlando Ramirez was in his second season; third baseman Dave Chalk was in his second full season. It wouldn't have bothered me that their combined total of home runs was just seven, or that none of them batted better than .285 or knocked in more than 82 runs. I could have lived with that had I seen promise of improvement in the near future. The problem was, only one of them, Remy, really got much better. It was obvious that my Angels were the Peter Pans of baseball -- nice, cute kids who would never grow up."

6. On Reggie Jackson and the early '70s Oakland A's, who won three straight World Series, two under Williams: "The clubhouse had three leaders. Reggie, [Sal] Bando, and Catfish [Hunter]. Reggie was the guy with the lungs, the vocal one. His constant talking gave his teammates something to both laugh at and rally behind, and the best thing about it was that it was an act. I knew, because I used to be the same kind of actor myself. Reggie was really just a talented but very sensitive and insecure person. In other words, get through his bull and you found a guy who'd play his [expletive] off for you."

7. On the Montreal Expos superb young late '70s outfield of Andre Dawson, Warren Cromartie, and Ellis Valentine: "I'll always mention Dawson first, because he was everyone else's third choice. Of the three, he was always the slow learner, the who'd need the most work and wouldn't go nearly as far. Our scouts would sit around and collect foam at the corners of their mouths while talking about Valentine's natural all-around ability and Cromartie's incredible bat. 'And,' they always would say, 'we've always got Dawson.' As if Dawson didn't even belong in the same speech. You know what happened. You could have never left the beer garden and still know what would happen. Dawson, working every day . . . became a future Gold Glove and Most Valuable Player and one of baseball's leading citizens."

8. On Mark Langston, who Williams accused of asking out of games when he managed him in Seattle: "I perceived Langston as I feel much of baseball finally perceived him when he cost the Montreal Expos the pennanty in the late summer of 1989 by choking on his next few starts. Gutless. Anybody can pitch for a loser, which Langston did very well for the Mariners before I arrived. But let's see you pitch for a winner. That's the sign of a true competitor, which Langston is not. . . . C'mon Langston. Let's see you pitch for a winner. Let's see you be a winner."

9. On Bill Lee, whom Williams managed as a rookie with the Red Sox and later in Montreal: "Once when I needed Lee to pitch, he showed up at the clubhouse with bruises and cuts, looking like he'd just left a 10-rounder. He told me he'd been hin by taxicab while jogging. How had he gotten to the clubhouse? I asked. The guilty cabbie had driven him. Lee said he'd even tipped him. I tried not to faint before telling him to sit out the game. Later that season, on a trip, I spotted him jogging along a marina and shouted to him, "Be careful, you don't want any boats to jump out and hit you!"

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

I've become a huge fan of David Schoenfield's writing on ESPN's post-Neyer SweetSpot blog. It's destination reading, and more often than not, after devouring one of his more in-depth pieces, I find myself asking, "Rats, why didn't I think of that?" That was especially the case back on May 26 -- known around here as the middle of hockey season, of course -- when Schoenfield pulled off the clever idea of ranking the top 50 prospects of the amateur draft era. Here's how he explained his approach:

I'm going to go back to 1965 and the advent of the draft, and come up with my list of the top 50 prospects. What does this mean? I'm not thinking of where guys stood when drafted, but where they were at any time before they reached the majors. We know the hype around Harper, and Stephen Strasburg before him, but I tried to imagine how players from 40 years ago would have been evaluated and hyped if we'd had prospect lists and the Internet.

Schoenfield noted that he excluded players who rocketed to The Show so fast that they wouldn't have had a chance to build hype as a prospect, meaning the likes of Dave Winfield, Bob Horner, Robin Yount, and John Olerud didn't make his cut. The fun is in the details, discoveries, and especially the debates about his rankings and exclusions.

I thought Clint Hurdle (No. 43) should have been higher and Bo Jackson, as fondly as my generation remembers him, should have been lower (Bo didn't know consistent contact). I was surprised by Dwight Evans at No. 40 (I never regarded him as a phenom, but Schoenfield reveals that he truly was) but not by fellow Red Sox rightfielder J.D. Drew at No. 20 (he was a known phenom; we'll save the debate for whether he lived up to it for another day).

His most egregious oversight -- and one the author addressed in the comments on the article -- was failing to include Chipper Jones, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1990 draft who was rated among Baseball America's top five prospects every year from 1992-95.

It's a credit to Schoenfield's comprehensive research that there really isn't a terrible amount to debate on a topic that should be ripe for an old fashioned baseball argument. But I'm going to try anyway. Chipper belongs; here are nine more who also have a case to be rated among the finest prospects of the draft era.

Garry Templeton: So far as I can tell, Templeton is remembered for three things, none particularly flattering: 1) Flipping off the fans in St. Louis and being yanked off the field by manager Whitey Herzog. 2) Explaining his hesitance to go to the All-Star game as a backup with the instant classic quote, "If I ain't startin', I ain't departin'." 3) Being the doomed-by-comparison shortstop the Padres got in return when the Cardinals fleeced them in a 1981 trade that brought Ozzie Smith to St. Louis. Which is too bad, because before knee and attitude problems altered Templeton's career, he was such a dynamic force that it was "Jumpsteady," and not The Wizard who was the shortstop on the path to Cooperstown. In 1975 at Double A Arkansas, Templeton hit .401 in 184 plate appearances as a 19-year-old. The next season, he hit .291 in 225 PAs as the Cardinals' starting shortstop. And at age 23 in 1979, he was a superstar, batting .314 with 211 hits -- becoming the first major leaguer with 100 or more from each side of the plate in a single season -- and a league-leading 19 triples among his 60 extra-base hits.

Rick Ankiel: The Next Koufax hype for the gifted but high-strung lefthander veered off course for good during one humiliating, hard-to-watch postseason. But it's certainly been an interesting career, with highs (he made the Cardinals at age 19 as Baseball America's No. 1 prospect in 1999, then won 11 games, with 194 strikeouts in 175 innings the following season) and lows (the aforementioned 2000 postseason, when he walked 11 and threw nine wild pitches in four innings over three games), and ultimately, finding redemption in reinvention (battling his way back to the big leagues as an outfielder in 2007, and hitting 25 homers for the Cardinals the next season). If not for a pesky human-growth hormone allegation, his story would probably be fully Disneyfied, "The Rookie"-style, by now.

Frank Tanana: If Baseball America had existed in the early 1970s, Tanana would have been every bit the hotshot lefthanded pitching prospect Ankiel was 25 or so years later. In 1973, his second year of pro ball, the cocky 19-year-old went 17-6 with a 2.70 ERA between Double A El Paso and Triple A Salt Lake City, striking out 212 in 220 innings. He went 2-2 with a 3.08 ERA in 26.1 big league innings that September, whiffing 22 more batters. If you're keeping score at home, that's 234 Ks in 246 innings over three levels at age 19. My rotator cuff hurts just thinking about it. After forming among the most overpowering lefty-righty tandems in baseball history with Nolan Ryan in the '70s -- he won the AL strikeout title in 1975, whiffing 269 -- the predictable (nowadays, anyway) arm problems that may have something to do with throwing 1,294.1 innings from 1974-78 eventually cost him his fastball. After injuring his shoulder in '79, he did reinvent himself as a classic lefty slopballer, earning 138 of his 240 victories after leaving the Angels. The Red Sox had him during his what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-without-my-fastball? phase -- he went 4-10 with a 4.01 ERA for the 1981 club after coming to Boston in the Fred Lynn trade. Little did Haywood Sullivan know that Lynn was the harder-throwing lefty at that point.

Von Hayes: Just look at that pained expression. It's like he knows that he's soon going to be traded to the Phillies for five players, including a fellow prospect named Julio Franco who would last 15 seasons beyond him in the majors, that Pete Rose would nickname him "ol' five-for-one," shortly after his arrival, that he'd bat .267, and that the .314 batting average and .401 on-base percentage he'd posted as a 22-year-old in Triple A in 1981 exaggerated his abilities to the point that he'd never possibly live up to the hype. Though I suppose it's possible that he could be thinking about something else there. Such as why his parents had to go and name him Von. Bet Rose gave him heat for that, too.

Ruben Rivera: He's probably most famous for once stealing Derek Jeter's glove, which is not exactly the same thing as Jeter stealing a bunch of gold gloves. (Do try the veal.) Those types of errors in judgment and execution, on the field and off, probably hint at why Rivera, a genuine five-tool prospect (six-tool if you include kleptomania), ended up flopping as badly as any prospect during the '90s save perhaps for fellow Yankees farmhand Drew Henson. Just how highly was he regarded? He was the Yankees' No. 1 prospect from 1995-97, ranking in the top 10 in baseball all three years, with a high of No. 2 in '95. In 1995 and '96, the Yankees' No. 2 prospect behind Rivera was . . . Jeter. And Ruben, who hit .216 with a .700 OPS and 64 homers in 1,586 big league at bats, was always the highest-rated Rivera -- some guy named Mariano cracked the prospect list twice, ranking ninth in the Yankees' system in 1993 and '95.

Danny Goodwin: The power-hitting catcher was the only player to be the No. 1 overall pick in the June draft twice -- he was selected by the White Sox in 1971 out of high school, played four years at Southern University instead, and was chosen with the top pick by the Angels four years later. Touted as the "black Johnny Bench" -- shouldn't Bench be called the white Josh Gibson? -- Goodwin hit just .236 with a .646 OPS and 13 homers in 707 plate appearances over seven seasons. The story, perhaps apocryphal but certainly reasonable, goes that he was never the same after injuring his right shoulder in the minors when an overzealous coach forced him to participate in an intense throwing drill without warming up. I imagine the truth falls somewhere between an injury and the everlasting mysteries of the major-league curveball.

Oddibe McDowell: His career did not come close to enduring as long as his Chris Berman-bestowed nickname, Oddibe "Young Again" McDowell, which is almost as witty as Chuck "New Kids On The" Knoblauch and Bert "Be Home" Blyleven, not to mention damning evidence of just how long Boomer has been pummeling that shtick. McDowell, a three-time first-round pick who played in the same Arizona State outfield as Barry Bonds and Mike Devereaux, starred on the stacked 1984 US Olympic baseball team that included Will Clark, Mark McGwire, and Barry Larkin, then tore it up upon entering organized ball in 1985, a year after he was the 12th overall pick by the Texas Rangers. In 146 plate appearances at Triple A Oklahoma City in '85, McDowell batted .400 with an 1.118 OPS before being recalled to the big leagues. While McDowell had his moments in the majors -- he hit 18 homers at age 22 in '85, and 18 again the next season with a 106 OPS+ -- his certain stardom never came to be, in part because of his struggles against lefthanders (.224 career average). Perhaps the promise of his college years prevented his employers from appreciating him for what he was -- a decent platoon option with power, speed, and a center fielder's glove. In seven seasons, he hit .253 with 74 homers, and his big-league career was over at age 31. Coincidentally, his top comparison at that age was his college teammate, Devereaux.

Ken Brett: No disrespect to Babe Ruth, Ace Lefty, but Red Sox management through the decades hasn't always had the best foresight when it comes to deciding whether a prospect should be a pitcher or a hitter. (Is it too late to try Frankie Rodriguez at shortstop? Whaddaya mean he's 38 years old? Jeter's still doing it.) Near the top of the list of most egregious examples is Brett. While he had a more than respectable career primarily as a lefty reliever, pitching 14 seasons for 10 teams, including the Impossible Dream Red Sox in the '67 World Series days after his 19th birthday. Yet he remains a great what-if. The story goes that every other team other than the Red Sox wanted him as an outfielder in the 1966 draft, but the Red Sox picked him fourth overall and immediately determined he would pitch. He endured as a pitcher, but there is evidence that he could have been special as a hitter. First, there's his gene pool -- as Peter Gammons wrote in his remembrance after Brett's death in 2003, he was his little brother George's baseball hero. And he does rate as one of the greatest hitting pitchers in history, batting .262 with 10 homers and a .698 OPS (94 OPS+) in 373 plate appearances. In 1973, he homered in four straight games. With the Pirates in '74, he batted .310 with a .448 slugging percentage and 15 RBIs. Imagine what he might have done if hitting had been his day job.

Paul Molitor: Random baseball question: Who has the shortest, sweetest righthanded swing you've ever seen? For me, it's either Molitor or Edgar Martinez. Excluding two rehab assignments totaling 13 plate appearances long after he was an established star, Molitor's entire minor league experience came in 1977 after the Brewers chose him with the third overall pick out of the University of Minnesota -- and he was superb. In 286 plate appearances for Burlington in the Midwest League at age 20, he batted .346 with 8 homers, 50 RBIs, .962 OPS, and a 47/25 walk-to-strikeout ratio. The next season, he was the runner-up to Detroit's Lou Whitaker for AL Rookie of the Year. Tying this all together in a tidy bow, Molitor was drafted in the 28th round out of high school in 1974 by the Cardinals -- 27 rounds after they chose Garry Templeton.

Honorable mention: Cliff Floyd, Julio Franco, Jeffrey Hammonds, Eric Davis, Cory Snyder, Gary Redus, Jose Offerman, Ben Grieve, Pete Broberg, Al Chambers, Kirk Gibson, Will Clark.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

I can't think of a better way to lead off this blog's unofficial return to blabbing about baseball than by taking a brief moment to salute Dave Roberts. If it's not a commonwealth law that the author of The Steal, current Padres first base coach, and all-around swell guy must be given a standing ovation whenever he's within a Dwight Evans throw of Fenway, well, you know it should be.

I never thought I'd be chasing pucks and parades through half of June, and following this admirable Bruins team across the continent and back (times three) as it built what will be an enduring legend has been perhaps the most rewarding assignment of my career. But following the Sox isn't as fun from afar, and I missed 'em. So while it may be spitting rain at Fenway this afternoon, there will be no further delays here. Let's talk some Sox, finally and at last . . .

The Gonzo/Papi situation: Dearest Tito: We've all heard about your anxiety and sleepless nights in trying to find a proper solution to a situation most major league managers would sacrifice their bench coach to have:

How do you dole out the playing time between Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz during the upcoming nine-game road trip through Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Houston.

Both have had sensational half-seasons, and Papi's bounce-back ranks only behind Josh Beckett's rejuvenation among pleasant surprises this season. Combined they've basically put together a vintage Manny Ramirez season with 32 homers, 116 RBIs, 102 runs scored, and a .335 batting average. Whoops, saw the twitch there. Forgot we're not supposed to mention Manny in your presence.

Anyway, Tito, the decision is really no decision at all. As important as Papi has been this season, you know better than any of us keyboard cynics do that you cannot take Gonzo out of the lineup for anything more than a day or two of rest, and you especially do not jeopardize his hamstrings, pride, or the wildly encouraging outlook for this team by sticking him in right field unless you are completely certain he can handle it.

If you do honestly believe he can and are convinced his willingness to do isn't masking any trepidation he might have about it, you play him in the outfield once or twice, perhaps a game in Philadelphia with Citizens Bank Park's Williamsport dimensions. But that's it. Then you give him that day or two off along the way -- maybe one against Houston, just to cut poor Millsy a break.

So that gets David -- have you ever noticed you're the only person in New England who calls him David? -- into the lineup three or four times. In the other five or six games, he becomes the most feared pinch hitter the National League has ever seen, up to and including Manny Mota and Matt Stairs.

Papi -- David -- may not like it, and he may mope for an hour or a day, but he'll come around, and it's the right thing to do. It will keep him from getting rusty, it will keep him from having to play the field more than a handful of times and putting stress his knees, and it will keep the hitter who must be in the lineup in there for at least seven of the games.

Is Drew through?: Come to think of it, putting Gonzalez in right field against Philadelphia would probably spare Drew from the ever-ready-to-throw-an-Everyready bleacher jackals who have vilified him since he refused to sign after Philadelphia chose him with the second pick in the 1997 draft.

The way he's going, however -- and WEEI.com's Alex Speier does a thorough job here of breaking down just how dismal his season has been -- the Phillies should want him in the Sox' lineup for their guaranteed World Series preview three-game set June 28-30.

I think I've made my admiration for Drew's varied and subtle skills apparent over the past couple of years. I also think I also have a discerning eye when it comes to determining whether an older player is in a prolonged slump or full-fledged decline. With Drew, whose bat has slowed to Troy O'Leary-in-2001 levels, it sure looks like the latter. You were my boy, Drew, but I'm convinced the Red Sox will and should have a new starting right fielder no later than July 31.

I should say I do not think it will or should be Josh Reddick. While he's been impressive in his short stint in the majors this season and has made progress in terms of patience (33 walks, 39 strikeouts at Pawtucket after going 25/73 last year), he was hitting just .230 with the PawSox, a sign that he still struggles to recognize the pitches he can drive.

Had Ryan Kalish not been injured, he's the one who would probably be the Red Sox starting right fielder by now. In terms of future value, Reddick is the David Murphy to Kalish's Jacoby Ellsbury.

Five other random thoughts while waiting for the tarp to come off the field: If Dr. Lewis Yocum's recommendation regarding Jed Lowrie's injured shoulder includes the word surgery, then it's official. Lowrie is the new Tim Naehring, a versatile infielder with legitimate offensive promise who will never fulfill his ability because of injury after injury . . .

Good thing Marco Scutaro is still around. To put it another way: Good thing the Red Sox didn't trade from depth simply because they had it. Stockpiling proven veteran talent is always going to be one of their crucial advantages as a big-market team . . .

Scanning Drew Sutton's minor-league numbers, it's curious why he hasn't received a legitimate shot elsewhere. He's produced everywhere he's been, and you'd think he'd have received a decent shot with the Astros given his multi-position versatility . . .

The Adrian Gonzalez deal has been nothing short of perfect from the Red Sox standpoint, but I hope it ultimately proves a win-win for both sides, and I think it will. Anthony Rizzo is a very easy kid to root for, and doesn't he remind you a little of Mark Teixeira at the plate? . . .

CBSSports.com has Jacoby Ellsbury on pace to bat .313 with 18 homers, 54 steals, 207 hits, 85 RBIs, and 117 runs scored. Take it for what it's worth considering the site also has him on pace to play 164 games, but even with some faulty math, the conclusion is obvious: Ellsbury is having a truly phenomenal season, and even if his .351 BABIP suggests he's due to come back to earth, he's playing at a level that even his most ardent fans probably didn't imagine coming off his lost 2010 season. I've been wrong about a lot of things, but I don't know if I've ever been more wrong about any one thing than I've been about what Ellsbury was capable of this season.

By Chad Finn, Boston.com/Globe Staff

We may never know the real reason the Red Sox spent the first two weeks of the season slumbering and plodding like they were facing the Twins' B squad in Ft. Myers. Maybe there was more of an emphasis on making sure all of the crucial players who lost chunks of last season to injury were healthy rather than ready, if that makes sense. Maybe it was the alignment of the stars, the moon, and the four-leaf clovers. Probably it was just one of those quirks of baseball.

No matter now, for an explanation is no longer necessary. The 2011 Boston Red Sox are officially fulfilling their grand talent and grander expectations, moving into a virtual tie for first place with the Yankees in the AL East yesterday with a 14-1 win over the Detroit Tigers. It's safe to shout it, Dennis Green. They are who we thought they were.

After a gruesome and disconcerting 0-6 and then 2-10 start, they are now 28-22, a season-high six games over .500. They are 17-7 in May, having outscored opponents 136-99 this month. Since the 12-game low-water mark, they have gone 26-12, a .684 winning percentage. Should they win at that rate through Game 162, they'll finish with 104 wins.

Now, that's just a silly math game, just like the ones we were stuck playing a month ago when the cynics and scolds delighted in telling us that the Sox would have to play something like .890 ball the rest of the way to win 47 games. (My numbers may be slightly off there, but it was something like that.)

Of course one expects them to play at this extraordinary a level the rest of the way; .650 ball is, conservatively, right about the edge of reason. Then again, no one expected two measly wins in the first dozen games, either. The truth is that the middle ground is probably right where most of us thought it would be when we all made our hopeful preseason prognostications. I had them at 96 wins then. I have them at 96 wins now. And it will not be a photo finish in the division. This will be a one-horse race.

It is amazing that they dug out of that hole before Memorial Day -- didn't you think the full recovery would take until June? I guess they do owe what will surely be an unpaid debt of gratitude to their AL East brethren for slogging along themselves and never allowing the Sox to fall more than five games back. It could have been so much worse.

Now, it's just good times, especially when the Sox are at the plate. It's convenient to praise them after back-to-back 14-run outputs, but the incredible quality and depth of this offense must be acknowledged.

Watching Adrian Gonzalez on a daily basis is such a rare baseball treat that it almost feels like a disappointment when he finishes the day with just a pair of singles and an RBI. Carl Crawford, batting .333 with an .864 OPS in May, has found his dynamic Tampa Bay form. Jarrod Saltalamacchia has rewarded his bosses' patience, hitting four homers in 53 plate appearances with an .893 OPS this month. David Ortiz leads the team in homers (10) and perhaps more impressively, has more walks (22) than strikeouts (20). Jacoby Ellsbury has 26 RBIs and a .364 on-base percentage. This lineup may not match up statistically with the 2003-04 squads, but given the era and the lineup depth, it may be just as good.

(Not that he's anything more than a backup singer at this concert, but Drew Sutton does own an interesting minor league track record of consistent production without receiving a real shot. He could be this year's Darnell McDonald if Marco Scutaro doesn't return soon.)

The pitching? So much depends on the big three, and to a man Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and Clay Buchholz (lately, at least) have delivered. Beckett is off to a historically great start (five straight starts of one run or fewer), much to the pleasant surprise of those of us who thought the vague injuries, probably more serious than we knew, had ended his days of dominance. He is the co-ace, again. And they are better off with a healthy Alfredo Aceves and his 2.98 ERA in seven career starts over that enigma named Daisuke Matsuzaka.

While there are the perpetual issues in the bullpen and Daniel Bard's hiccups are cause for small concern, it is not a bad scene, especially with closer Jonathan Papelbon rediscovering his command. It all adds up to an uncommonly deep roster, 1-through-25 -- actually, make it 1-30 given the help they've already received from Pawtucket this season.

The best team ever? That was just an effective declaration by a tabloid headline writer, one that was twisted into a referendum on the fans' hubris by sports radio hosts and columnists. No one I know said that -- most of my friends believe the best team evah! was the 2004 Sox. Biases can be so charming.

The best team in 2011? Now that I'll believe -- have all along, actually. The bandwagon is chugging toward the summer and straight through to October, that 2-10 start barely visible in the rear-view mirror. To those of you who had doubts, welcome back aboard.

By Chad Finn, Globe/Boston.com Staff

1. Red Sox fans exhaled in unison when the surprising news arrived after last night's game that Dustin Pedroia's injury wasn't nearly as serious as it appeared and he would probably miss only a game or two. It looked bad, season-altering bad, and you couldn't help think the worst. The last time I had that queasy feeling watching a Boston athlete try to pick himself up after an injury was the moment after Bernard Pollard plunged into Tom Brady's knee. Pedroia's injury is undoubtedly a bullet dodged, though I think we're all pretty close to unanimous in believing that the "stingers" and any other painful nuisances going on with his surgically-repaired foot are more responsible for his .246/.362/.316 batting line than anyone with the Red Sox is letting on. Getting healthy and continuing to play is a difficult trick to pull off, but Pedroia has a rather admirable track record of success when he's faced with a challenge.

2. Nothing more so I tweeted the other day that I look forward to Adrian Gonzalez's at-bats with the same anticipation that I did when Manny came over from Cleveland in 2001. Every one is a must-see event; you know a hitter is truly great when he can stop me in my tracks en route to the fridge. Out of curiosity, I compared Gonzalez's start through his first 47 games with the Red Sox to the first 47 games of the Manny era. Just for the fun of it -- and perhaps to daydream about the feats a lineup with prime-of-career Manny and Gonzo might accomplish -- here's how the $314 million worth of sluggers compare:

Manny 2001: 209 PAs, 72 hits, 15 homers, 56 RBIs, .400/.483/.733, 1.270 OPS.

Gonzo: 2011: 211 PAs, 66 hits, 9 homers, 41 RBIs, .342/.393/.570, .983 OPS.

Conclusion: Um . . . wow. Even taking into consideration that Manny's early Red Sox days were in the heart of the steroid ere, he annihilates the comparison like it's a hanging curve from K-Rod. So let me ask you this: Are you enjoying Gonzalez's start with the Red Sox more than you did Manny's a decade ago?

3. David Ortiz's impressive start (.298, 9 homers, 22 RBIs, .894 OPS) actually isn't that much of an improvement over where he was at this date last season (.259, 9 homers, 23 RBIs, .870 OPS) after his awful April. But one statistic in particular does stand out as exceptional even by Papi's standards: Through 45 games and 189 plate appearances this season, he has a 1/1 K/BB ratio, having walked 20 times and struck out 20 times. This wouldn't have been unusual five or so years ago. During his 2006-07 height-of-his-powers heyday, he walked more than he struck out both seasons. But in 2009? Sixty more whiffs than walks. Last year? Sixty-four more. I honestly have no idea what to make of this.

4. I was in the house with a few old friends Sunday night to watch the anticipated James Russell/Tim Wakefield duel -- and watch the pitchers I did since from section 13, row 2, seat 17 there was a lovely green pole blocking any possible view of home plate. That's what they mean when they call Fenway "quaint," right? But of course any day at the ballpark is a good day, even with the quaint obstructions, and even after I did the rudimentary calculations and figured Wakefield has probably started 80 percent of the games I've seen as a fan the last 17 years. (The rest of the breakdown is 19 percent Frank Castillo, 1 percent Pedro, I believe.) But Wakefield's remarkable longevity in this city and with this team was put into further perspective a little later, when I realized that Russell was the son of former Sox closer Jeff Russell . . . who pitched here last in 1994, meaning he missed being Wakefield's teammate by a year. The way Ol' Knucksie pitched the other night, I wouldn't be surprised if he has aspirations to pitch against Russell's grandchildren someday.

5. Though he's apparently no Asdrubal Cabrera, who has already exceeded his career high in homers by four, I'm comfortable in my April assertion that Jed Lowrie will finish among the top five most productive shortstops in baseball this season. Defensively, however, that .942 fielding percentage and minus-25.2 UZR/150 go a long way toward explaining why Terry Francona speaks highly of him as a potential third baseman.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Tonight at 8 p.m., the MLB Network unveils the top spot in its "MLB's 20 Greatest Games'' series, its countdown of the best games of the past 50 years. Stunningly, it is not the Cubs' 9-3 win over the Sox last night. The choice is an appropriate one, nostalgic and legendary not only for the outcome but for the talent involved: Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, won by Carlton Fisk's "if it stays fair" home run in the bottom of the 12th inning.

During the three-hour program, Fred Lynn (here talking about his frightening crash in to the wall that spurred the Sox to add padding to the fences the next season -- and by the way, does Lynn ever age?) and Johnny Bench, one of five Hall of Famers to play in the game, join hosts Bob Costas and Tom Verducci in studio to discuss it over video replay.

Bernie Carbo, whose pinch-hit three-run homer tied the game in the eighth (faring far better against Rawly Eastwick than Bob Bailey did against Rich Gossage three years later, Zim), is among those interviewed.

Curiously, in the MLB Network's publicity about the program, there's no mention of any extended conversations with Fisk, though Dwight Evans, Pete Rose, and Pat Darcy (who allowed Fisk's homer) are prominent. The program airs opposite the Sox-Cubs game on ESPN tonight, but it's definitely a must-watch. I'll be at Fenway, so this one's going on the DVR.

For what it's worth -- and that's probably about as much as a Pat Darcy rookie card -- here's my Sox-slanted list of the greatest games of my lifetime, keeping in mind that I didn't start following baseball until three years after Fisk's homer hit the pole:

1. Game 7 of the 2004 American League Championship Series: You know what's an underrated phrase in Red Sox lore? "Pokey Reese has it."

2. Game 6 of the 1975 World Series: It's weird. All those years on ESPN and Joe Morgan never once mentioned playing for the World Champion Cincinnati Reds.

3. Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS: When Jason Varitek gave A-Rod a bad case of Mittface to help pivot the Sox season in the right direction, it was Bill Mueller who hit the winning homer off Mariano Rivera. When Dave Roberts stole second, it was Bill Mueller who knocked him in, again against Rivera. No wonder Mueller remains about as universally popular among Sox fans as any recent player.

4. Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS: Two random recollections of one of the greatest games ever played, not to mention one of the greatest baseball play-by-play broadcasts ever by Al Michaels: 1) Bruce Hurst and Chuck Finley both pitched in this game. Always thought they were very similar, though Finley had the better career and neither appears on the other's comps page. 2) When the Angels were one out away, camera hog Reggie Jackson could not have been more obvious as he sidled up to Gene Mauch and tried to bask in what was supposed to be his glory.

5. Game 4 of the 2004 World Series: I consider myself extraordinarily blessed personally and professionally. I don't have many regrets, big or small. But I'll always wish I made more of an effort to make it out to St. Louis on October 27, 2004. It looked like a pretty good time from the couch.

Whaddaya mean there are other teams besides the Sox? That doesn't even make sense.

All right, I guess we can put Game 7 of the 1991 World Series and Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS in there somewhere. Long live Pudge, Bernie . . . and you too, Francisco Cabrera.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Red Sox and Cubs at Fenway Park! Lovable losers! Kindred spirits! Tortured histories! Actually, that also sounds like a promo for Joe Buck's excruciating mid-game conversation with Sarah Silverman last Saturday. And it's roughly as appealing.

The brothers-in-angst angle is a wholly understandable . . . if this were October 2003 or Opening Day 2004. But the day has passed and the script outdated. I can't pinpoint the exact hour the Red Sox and Cubs ceased being kindred spirits, but I sure can give you a couple of dates.

October 20, 2004. The vanquishing in the Bronx, and the reason, should you require a reminder, why Johnny Damon should never be booed at Fenway.

October 27, 2004. Finally and at last. For those of us who lived to experience the fulfillment and joy, it really was worth enduring everything that came before.

The Red Sox overcame 86 years of torment that October -- damned if the "Faith Rewarded" video never gets old -- then made it two in four years in 2007. They are just another championship-contending franchise now, and I don't know about you, but life has been pretty good without the constant reminders that it's all gonna go wrong!

I hope the day comes when Cubs fans experience the same exhilaration, the same emancipation from the past. The franchise has not won a World Series since 1908, a drought of 102 years that stands as the longest in American professional sports. As someone who'd just as soon eighty-six the number 86, I wish didn't even have to mention that, but it gets us to the core of the point:

The Red Sox' relationship to the Cubs nowadays is not about shared experience, but mere longevity. They're old friends at the reunion who realize they don't have much in common anymore, but enjoy each others' company nonetheless.

Cubs-Sox, at Fenway. The times are good. Even though they've changed.

* * *

Though I'll spare you the specific dates here, it's not difficult to pinpoint when the whole kindred-spirits-in-misery thing peaked: that would be October 2003, when the delicious possibility of a Red Sox-Cubs World Series was tilting toward reality.

Instead, for both franchises, it morphed into a mutual nightmare in the matter of a few dozen pitches.

You know how it went down in the Bronx. Losing that hate-fueled series to the Yankees in that manner hurt more than 1978 and '86. For me, it was the first moment I ever questioned whether it was worth committing so many hours of my life to following this franchise. My wife says she's never seen me as down as I was after that series. I still don't know if that's a good thing.

The autumn was just as cruel in Chicago. The Cubs led the Marlins, 3-2, heading into Game 6 of the NLCS. The Cubs led the Marlins, 3-0, entering the top of the eighth inning of that ballgame. When the half-inning was over, they were down, 8-3, Alex Gonzalez seemed doomed to permanent goathood, Mark Prior's golden arm was on the verge of turning into Grade D meat, and a certain fan's life was changed forever.

Lovable losers? The way Steve Bartman was treated in the aftermath -- by all the other fans who lunged for the ball but weren't damned to touch it, by Moises Alou's unforgiving overreaction, by those vicious unhinged individuals who permanently altered his life -- put heavy emphasis on the latter word. I'd like to think that had it happened here, Boston would have let him live his life. But Grady Little isn't exactly making appearances at the Baseball Tavern these days, you know?

Wrigley Field is a wonderful place to have a beverage or six, pay occasional attention to a ballgame, and to get enough sun to help a dermatologist-to-be-hired-later make enough money to purchase his second hovercraft.

Like Fenway, it occupies a permanent place in my heart; my wife and I caught a ballgame there not long after learning she was pregnant with our first child. I covertly plucked my daughter from her crib in the moments before Renteria grounded to Foulke and all heaven broke loose; it was a dad's duty that night.

But the poster of Wrigley in her bedroom is her reminder of where she first went to a ballgame even before she entered the world. Far better than remembering it as the place where your fandom died.

* * *

The most interesting relative history between the Sox and Cubs has little to with 2003 or the ancient angles the networks -- Saturday's game is on Fox, Sunday's on ESPN -- will bludgeon emphasize this weekend. I'll be disappointed if there's not a "Troy O'Leary's cow" malapropism from Tim McCarver by the second inning.

Actually, in a different context, it would be quite cool to hear O'Leary's name mentioned in relation to the Red Sox and Cubs. The specific moment I'm thinking of happened amid the Cubs' dying gasps during the 2003 NLCS, his seventh-inning home run in Game 7 accounting for the final run of Chicago's season. It featured one past Red Sox postseason hero facing off against a future one. O'Leary won the battle; Josh Beckett won the game.

It's not so much the history of the teams but the players that makes this a Cubs-Sox matchup compelling. From Aardsma (David) to Yerkes (Steve), there are 167 players who have been fortunate enough to play for both the Red Sox and Cubs in their careers. That includes two in this series, Sox reliever Rich Hill and Cubs first baseman Carlos Pena.

There have been Hall of Famers (Fergie Jenkins, Andre Dawson) and cult legends (El Guapo Garces, Dick Radatz). There's been a Chico (Walker) and a Tuffy (Rhodes), a Fox (Chad) and a Foxx (Jimmie), two Farrells (Doc and Duke), a Hy (Vandenberg) and a Heathcliff (Slocumb), and even a Babe (Dahlgren). Oh, and Tony Fossas, who of course pitched for everyone. Twice.

In 1984, the Red Sox and Cubs traded Dennis Eckersley for Bill Buckner, two accomplished players with awesome mustaches and agonizing World Series losses in their future.

In 1986, Terry Francona was a veteran pinch hitter on a Cubs team with three rookies who would go on to make a lasting name in the game. Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer are remembered for the right (and left) reasons. Rafael Palmeiro and his pointing finger are not.

Todd Walker, the Red Sox' 2003 second baseman and postseason star, played for the Cubs. So too did Mark Bellhorn, the Red Sox' 2004 second baseman and postseason star. Only the latter has a ring. It never seemed right to me that Walker, such an integral part of the changed culture in '03, didn't get to stay and win one.

* * *

Changed culture. In Sox-speak, that could be translated to The Age of The Idiots, which reminds me that there's one more date I should have mentioned in this post's leadoff spot: July 31, 2004.

Nomar Garciaparra will forever be remembered well in this nostalgic corner of the internet ballpark. Watching him from 1997-2000, when he played with the passion we recognize in Dustin Pedroia nowadays and seemed he hit a line drive every single time up, was a joy a Red Sox fan doesn't forget. He was better than Jeter, you know.

But the ending was cold and bitter, and his departure in Theo Epstein's daring trade that day was pivotal in the franchise's shedding of the lovable losers label that October.

If irony is your thing, maybe it is appropriate that it went down with the Cubs.

Just don't forget to acknowledge it as a landmark where the franchises' paths began to diverge.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

The Red Sox' catching situation was the team's biggest question mark coming out of Fort Myers, and the early answers the season provided left us longing for the heady days of Muggsy Allenson. Jarrod Saltalamacchia's brutal start behind and at the plate (.216 average, .547 OPS in April) put him on short notice with the fans and led to increased playing time for 39-year-old Jason Varitek, whose knowledge of the pitching staff didn't exactly make up for his salami bat (he had a .339 OPS in April. Not on-base percentage. Not slugging percentage. His OPS.)

Lately, Saltalamacchia has demonstrated some encouraging tools of competence. He hit his first homer of the season, a Johnny Damon special over the short right field porch in New York, for a key insurance run in the third game of last weekend's sweep. And last night may have been his best game with the Red Sox since coming over from the Rangers at the trading deadline last July 31. He doubled home the winning -- and only -- run in the eighth while also catching a seven-inning, no-run, 127-pitch performance by Clay Buchholz. That he did it with Victor Martinez, who had built a notable rapport with Buchholz as the Sox catcher the past two seasons, in the opposing dugout enhanced the accomplishment. Perhaps last night's game is one we will eventually look back upon as Saltalamacchia's turning point

But even if it proves nothing more than a random good night at the ballpark and consistency remains elusive, at least we can say this with some certainty: The Red Sox catching situation at the moment is more than workable. Over the past two weeks, Saltalamacchia has hit .292 with an .820 OPS, while Varitek is hitting .292 himself in May. It's probably safe to keep the Bengie Molina talk on hold for the time being.

Besides, hanging out here in our myopic corner of the baseball world here in New England, the Red Sox catching problems sometimes lacked proper context. Quality catching is a scarce resource for the vast majority of major league clubs at the moment. Taking a prolonged chance on Saltalamacchia, a 26-year-old former phenom with an admirable work ethic and attitude, is a far shrewder approach to filling the void behind the plate than what many teams have done. Skeptical? Let's take a quick look at each AL team's catching situation to try to gain perspective on where the Sox really stand.

RAYS
John Jaso: .225, 2 HRs in 87 PAs; 675 OPS.
Kelly Shoppach: .159 average, .424 OPS in 69 PAs.
Comment: Jaso has a sneaky-good rookie season last year (.372 on-base percentage.) He'll get better in this, his age-27 season.

YANKEES
Russell Martin: .252, 7 homers, .836 OPS in 134 PAs.
Comment: Martin, a two-time All-Star with the Dodgers who has been plagued by injuries in recent seasons, has made the Yankees look shrewd for pursuing him more vigorously than did the Red Sox. If Jorge Posada even looks at a catcher's mitt, he gets tased by Tony Pena. Girardi's orders, you know

BLUE JAYS
J.P. Arencibia: .231, six homers, .781 OPS in 120 PAs.
Comment: John Farrell calls him a "work in progress," but he's second among AL catchers in homers has recently taken over more of the catching responsibility from Jose (Don't Call Me Bengie, Yadier, Or Especially Gustavo, Who Isn't Even My Brother) Molina.

ORIOLES
Matt Wieters: .264, four homers, .756 OPS in 137 PAs. He's thrown out 50 percent of base stealers (12 of 24).
Comment: Maybe he'll never reach those crazy Piazza-with-a-mitt heights pinned on him when he first arrived in the big leagues. (Baseball Prospectus famously projected him to hit .311 with 31 homers and a .939 OPS as a rookie -- after one year of minor league ball.) But the confident bet here is that he's still going to be a genuine star. He's just 24, he's improving, and catchers have a steep learning curve.

TIGERS
Vict . . . whoops, Alex Avila: .268, six homers, .854 OPS in 130 PAs.
Comment: The Tigers have stuck to their plan to use Martinez mostly as a designated hitter -- he's caught eight games, making six starts. And it's worked. While Martinez has a .900 OPS, the 24-year-old Avila has been a revelation with the bat while throwing out 38 percent of would-be basestealers.

INDIANS
Carlos Santana: .233, six homers, .786 OPS, .367 OBP, 28 walks in 158 PAs.
Comment: Ignore the batting average. The 25-year-old Santana is a wonderful player. In 350 career plate appearances -- roughly half a season -- he has 12 homers, more walks (65) than strikeouts (58), and a .386 on-base percentage.

ROYALS
Matt Treanor: .243 , .756 OPS in 96 PAs.
Brayan Pena: .203, .504 OPS in 68 PAs.
Comment: Jason Kendall, last year's starter and a truly atrocious offensive player, is on the DL after undergoing shoulder surgery last September.

WHITE SOX
A.J. Pierzynski: .252, .593 OPS, 1 homer in 141 PAs.
Comment: If this were a list of the catchers most likely to be slugged by a teammate, opponent, or random sabermetrician, he and his .323 career on-base percentage would be at the top.

TWINS
Drew Butera: .108, 0 homers, .278 OPS in 77 PAs.
Joe Mauer: .235, 0 homers in 38 PAs.
Comment: It's tough watching injuries again plague Mauer, who should be one of baseball's signature stars no matter how many dumb commercials he does with Troy Polamalu. No knock on Matt Capps, but that Wilson Ramos trade is going to grow only more regrettable. Butera has a minus-21 adjusted OPS. He's a chip off the ol' out: His dad, Sal, had a .597 OPS in parts of nine seasons.

RANGERS
Yorvit Torrealba: .216, three homers, .576 OPS in 122 PAs.
Comment: Mike Napoli (.195, six homers, .816 OPS) has started 10 games behind the plate, but Torrealba, who has thrown out 33 percent of basestealers, is a far superior defensive option. Plus, his name is Yorvit, always a plus.

ANGELS
Jeff Mathis: .193, .486 OPS, one homer in 89s PAs.
Hank Conger: .270, .757 OPS, three homers in 80 PAs.
Comment: Mike Scioscia's son Matt is senior C/1B at Notre Dame. But it's suspected that his favorite son -- related or otherwise -- might be Mathis, an atrocious hitter (his highest batting average in six seasons is .211) whose defensive and game-calling prowess mirror his manager's best assets as a player. Conger can swing it -- he had an .847 OPS in Triple A at age 22 last year.

ATHLETICS
Kurt Suzuki: .259, .730 OPS, four homers in 151 PAs.
Comment: Suzuki is just 27, well-regarded, a reported favorite of the Red Sox front office. . . but perhaps a little overrated? His top three all-time comps are Brook Fordyce, Ed Ott, and knuckleball-phobe Josh Bard.

MARINERS
Miguel Olivo: .203, .540 OPS, two homers in 141 PAs
Comment: The Mariners have one hitter in their starting lineup with an OPS of .700 or better. So I guess that sort of explains why Olivo has batted cleanup in 16 of the last 18 games.

* * *

So . . . not exactly the heyday of Fisk and Munson in the AL right now, is it? The somewhat educated guess here is that the Sox' catching tandem will probably rank in the middle of the pack among AL teams when the summer is over.

Cleveland's situation is enviable -- Santana is the definition of a franchise cornerstone. And Baltimore is set for a decade with Wieters. I'm a believer in Detroit's Avila, and you know V-Mart will help him any way he can. And the Yankees have unusual organizational depth at the position, though Jesus Montero can permanently leave his mitt in his locker when he gets to the big leagues.

Beyond those teams, there's a lot of uncertainty and flawed ballplayers. Who knows what the immediate future holds for Mauer and Minnesota -- currently, the Twins are the only team without a homer from its catcher. They were left alone at zero when Saltalamacchia finally got his. Pardon the optimism generated by his recent performance, but with occasional assistance from Varitek, there's no reason he can't be right there with Arencibia and Suzuki in the AL's capable middle class of catchers.

And should Saltalamacchia falter? Well, the Mariners are always looking for a cleanup hitter.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

The weather may have been lousy here, but it couldn't have been a lovelier weekend in the Bronx. The visitors took three straight to even their record at 20-20, and the victories came with a minimum of tension . . . at least outside of the Yankees clubhouse.

The Red Sox outscored the Yankees overall, 18-9, and in the two close games -- Friday's 5-4 win and last night's 7-5 victory -- Jonathan Papelbon earned uneventful saves in what has been a subtly superb start to his season. The closer appears to have found his old command, with 21 strikeouts against just one unintentional walk in 16.2 innings. Hard to believe now that Bobby Jenks was perceived as a reasonable alternative not so long ago.

As is the case in baseball more than any other sport, victories were the direct product of excellent individual efforts. Adrian Gonzalez made hitting the baseball a long way look effortless, and the best part is, this is who he is. Big Papi reminded those of us who forgot that he's still formidable, especially when confronted by pinstripes. The rejuvenated Josh Beckett aced out CC Sabathia, Kevin Youkilis mashed two crucial home runs, and no one slotted to bat ninth in Terry Francona's lineup begged off at the last minute. That's what you call a productive weekend.

A .500 record is not a milestone, of course, but a minor statistical stopover on the way to the fulfillment of bigger goals. Hopefully it means we've heard the last of the snide chortles of "I thought this was supposed to be the greatest team ever ha ha" -- often disingenuously coming from same people who used their forum to anoint them as such before the season's first pitch was delivered.

I suppose the cynics could technically say the 2011 Red Sox are half-bad according to the formal tallying of W's and L's. But that approach is for those of us who don't know better than to draw a season's worth of conclusions in April. Here at roughly the quarter pole, it's safe to feel comfortable and confident about where this horse is headed.

The Sox' cause has not been hurt by the general malaise/mediocrity that has plagued the rest of the AL East so far. Maybe the division just isn't that potent anymore, or maybe there's more parity than usual. But after the sweep, the Sox are in third place, three games back of the Rays, who had their own ugly start (0-6) to overcome, not to mention their designated hitter's abrupt adios.

Having gained three games in three days, the Red Sox trail the Yankees by just one in the division. If you watched this weekend, you have to believe the teams' spots in the standings will be flipped in a matter of days. While the likes of the sensational Robinson Cano and warm-weather slugger Mark Teixeira will find their swings, their thin (figuratively, anyway) starting pitching will be their downfall without a King Felix-sized blockbuster. And to the delight of Red Sox fans and the New York tabloids alike, the old Bronx Zoo drama is back in 108-point type. Perhaps Derek Jeter should worry less about his buddy Jorge's dented pride and more about his own recent 5-for-29 slide (five singles) that rendered those "The Captain Is Back!" columns from a week ago premature.

But those are their problems. The Red Sox still have their own -- John Lackey makes me long for the quiet consistency of Mark Portugal -- but most of their troubles have disappeared as that homely 2-10 start has given way to 18 wins in 28 games. If they play at that rate over the season's final 122 games, they'll finish, by my rudimentary calculations, with 98.428571 wins. I'm pretty sure that even without rounding up, that would be enough to take the division.

Asking them to play .643 ball the rest of the way might be greedy . . . but finishing in that 96-98 win range is absolutely doable, even with the 12-game tribute to the '62 Mets to start the season. In winning the division in 2009, the Yankees had a .636 winning percentage over the full season. In 2004, the Red Sox were 43-37 on July 4. They went 55-27, a winning percentage of .672, the rest of the way en route to 98 victories.

No one in this little neighborhood said the 2011 Sox were the greatest team ever. But the belief that they are capable of memorable accomplishments has never wavered. This weekend in New York, they finally pulled even. If you thought that was a good time, imagine how it will be when they pull ahead.

Where's Dwight Schrute with the pepper spray when you need it?

Chances are you've already seen this commercial for New Era baseball caps elsewhere today. it's the one where Yankees fan Alec Baldwin wheezes up the stairs like he's Bartolo Colon to confront Red Sox fan John Krasinski.

I'm posting the commercial here semi-belatedly anyway because it's . . . well, it's hilarious.

Krasinski: "You drove all the way over here to punch me in the face?"

Baldwin: "No. I ran. [Pause.] I was too angry to drive."

Krasinski: "And at no point did you stop and think, 'This is a bad idea.' "

Baldwin: "No. I still don't."

Beyond it being a clever parody of the absurd lengths we sometimes take the rivalry, I like it for another reason. I think we can all agree that there are few better ways to commence a Sox-Yankees series than to watch one NBC Thursday night star sucker-punch another.

I have no idea what that means, either. Have a good weekend, everyone.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Sometimes I do wonder how many Red Sox fans of a certain age -- say, 30 or younger -- know that Jerry Remy hasn't always been associated with the Red Sox, having begun his career with three seasons (1975-77) with the California Angels.

Heck, there are some among the younger demos who probably don't know (or are just vaguely aware) that he actually played for the Red Sox (1978-85). That's a tribute to the legacy he has built in his 23 seasons as the popular and respected analyst on the team's local television broadcasts, though I suppose it's also true that his usefulness as a player has been exaggerated by his prominence in his second career.

Anyway, consider that my long-winded introduction to this week's media column, which leads with the news that Remy expects to be back in the booth Monday. He's missed 14 games -- every one since April 27 -- with pneumonia, and I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to say his absence became increasingly worrisome as it grew longer. So to hear Remy say it's "just" pneumonia is actually reassuring given all he suffered through two years ago in the aftermath of lung cancer surgery. Here's hoping there are no further delays in his recovery and he's feeling well enough to return to his Fenway perch in the booth when the Red Sox return home Monday.

It should be noted that in Remy's absence, Don Orsillo has again demonstrated a remarkable knack for compatibility with just about any analyst with whom he’s paired. In 2009, he worked with 26 different broadcast partners, including Remy.

As of yesterday, that number is six, the best of which has been Dennis Eckersley, who could become a star nationally in the role with the right opportunity. Otherwise, sans Remy, the spectrum has run from Rick Dempsey, a chattering storyteller who apparently has discovered a way to avoid pausing for breath, to Gregg Zaun, whose mellow, NPR-ish intonations during this week’s Toronto series initially masked a subtle wit and a recent retiree’s deep knowledge of the league. Listening to them talk, it’s hard to believe Dempsey is Zaun’s uncle. That's got to be an interesting family tree.

In a sense, Remy feels like family to Red Sox fans. Here's looking forward to Monday, and hopefully hearing that familiar voice around 7:05 p.m. Buenos noches, amigos.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Don't get it, never will, though I am oddly impressed by their dedication and durability in waiting on hold for an hour for a half-minute of airtime with their favorite caterwauling host after Carl Crawford goes 0 for 4. These are the same people, right?

As for the rational majority among us, I'm pretty sure we'd have all been cool with it had the last words we ever heard about Game 6 of the 1986 World Series -- which rolls in at No. 3 on the MLB Network's countdown of the best games of the past 50 years -- been Vin Scully's cruelly pitch-perfect ". . . and the Mets win it!" as New England collectively stared at the television, impossibly staggered by the moment.

During those 18 seasons, from '86 through the magic of 2004, ESPN and Fox rarely passed up a chance to show Mookie Wilson's slow roller up along first base getting through poor Bill Buckner whenever the fates (inevitably aided by a doofus manager) turned against the Red Sox. One of the great cathartic realizations after the Sox formally exorcised all ghosts, demons, and myths seven years ago was that all of that well-worn footage of Buckner, Bucky and Boone would no longer torment us.

That it no longer torments Red Sox fans alone makes watching the MLB Network's take on Game 6 tolerable. It is, despite the outcome, a compelling chapter in the franchise's history. (Can you imagine the Papi-like postseason legend Dave Henderson would be around here had they held on?) As always, the MLB Network does a terrific job of presenting it. But what makes it recommended viewing -- it debuts Sunday at 7 p.m., with Buckner, Wilson, and Bob Ojeda joining hosts Bob Costas and Tom Verducci to discuss the game over a condensed replay -- is that it provides new information and fresh anecdotes that in some ways run counter 25 years of lore and conventional wisdom.

A few, if you're still with me and not cursing Rich Gedman or Bob Stanley right about now:

Ojeda, the Mets' starter, on Calvin Schiraldi coming in for Roger Clemens to start the eighth. [Ojeda had been traded to the Mets by the Red Sox in the previous offseason for Schiraldi, Wes Gardner, and LaSchelle Tarver]: "When Schiraldi came in – because they knew him as well as Boston knew me – they were fighting over the bat rack. No disrespect to Calvin Schiraldi, none meant, none intended, but these guys – getting Roger out and it happened to be Schiraldi – it was like the clouds had parted. They were ready."

Buckner, on the perception that Red Sox manager John McNamara blundered by not putting Dave Stapleton at first base for defensive purposes: "In McNamara’s defense, I was the best first baseman, defensively, that he had. Dave Stapleton, bless his heart, he wasn’t a great player by any means. He had his own issues. If I thought that Dave Stapleton was gonna do a better job than I was, then I’d have told McNamara. I wanted to win, so did everybody else. … I’d been in positions where my ankles were in better shape, where I could cover more ground but I wasn’t having an issue at this point. I was the best player we had to be out there. Was I Keith Hernandez? No. But I was the best that we had." (Video here.)

Buckner, on why he moved from Boston to Idaho: "The fans in Boston were great to me. … People ask me how I feel now about it, I feel very blessed. I played 21 years in the Major Leagues, I got to play in two World Series. Would I have liked it for things to change differently in the sixth game? Obviously. But it didn’t. Would I do it again, with the same results? Heck, yeah. I lived [in Boston] until 1993 and I moved to Idaho because that was a dream of mine since I was a little kid, since I watched “Bonanza” on TV. I wanted to buy a ranch in Idaho, which I did. People say I left Boston because of [Game 6]. That’s hardly the case."

Revisionist history? Maybe. But it's good stuff, though I should note there's still no definitive answer on whether Clemens asked out. (He totally did. You know he did.) Check it out. All those ancient scars have faded for good, right?.

* * *

Today's media column, on Jack Edwards's connection between royalty and Canadiens divers, can be found here, if you're into that sort of thing.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

The Red Sox fan's daydream that Jacoby Ellsbury could someday become the player Johnny Damon was in his prime is more than reasonable.

It's practically impossible to resist comparing them, and not just because Ellsbury was essentially Damon's successor in center field, excepting Coco Crisp's underwhelming place-holding for a year-and-a-half.

Both Ellsbury and Damon are fast, lefthanded-batting, presumed lead-off hitters. Both have noodle-arms in center fielder, though it must be noted that only one once had a throw cut off by his left fielder. Both have greatly assisted pink t-shirt sales in their day.

And then there is that trendy comparison of the moment; namely, that Ellsbury may be adding power to his offensive repertoire, just as Damon did after a couple of years in the bigs. And baseball-reference doesn't exactly discourage the comparison. Damon, in the third full season of his career in 1998, smacked 18 homers with the Royals after hitting just 17 in his first 1,297 at-bats. Ellsbury, with four homers through 73 at-bats this season, is showing signs of a similar slugging surge after clubbing 20 through his first 1,372 at-bats.

During his four years with the Red Sox -- it seems like longer, probably because of the lasting legacy he secured in 2004 -- Damon averaged 14 homers per season. During his four years in New York, where he found the short right field porch to his liking, he averaged a fraction more than 19 homers per season. If Ellsbury could approach producing that kind of power, he'd be such a force when he hits free agency that Scott Boras might actually be actually succeed in convince a team or two that he's the second coming of Rickey Henderson, an extremely hyperbolic approach he previously took with Damon.

But there are also causes for . . . well, not alarm or concern, exactly, because not even bunting fool Mike Scioscia is going to take issue with a home run or a dozen out of his lead-off man. So let's put it this way: Ellsbury's boost in power is a terrific development if it's legitimate and not a misleading, teasing conclusion drawn from a little bit of early-season data. The suspicion of the latter is magnified by this: Damon hit 18 homers during his age 24 season; Ellsbury turns 28 in September. And we're still not sure who he is as a ballplayer.

The other caveat is that swinging for the fences from time to time -- something Ellsbury appears to be doing, given his uppercut swing, his shrinking groundball percentage of 39.2 (he's at 50.4 for his career), and his increased fly ball rate (43.1 percent, nearly 13 percent higher than his career average) -- is fine so long as it doesn't become counterproductive. Eighty-one at-bats into the season is obviously too soon to conclude that it is, though it's curious that he's striking out in 28.8 percent of his at-bats this season. Reggie Jackson, the all-time leader in strikeouts, whiffed in 26.3 percent of his at-bats over his career.

Repeat, and repeat again: His current numbers are based on a limited number of at-bats, and they are subject to change for better or worse during the next few evenings in Baltimore. But in the big picture, there's no denying that there are other elements of Damon's game that Ellsbury would be better off emulating. You probably know what they are, and I don't mean growing long hair and a beard or running headlong into a utility infielder in a playoff game.

Ellsbury's No. 1 priority should be mastering the leadoff hitter's ultimate duty, not to mention the most important fundamental of a baseball offense: getting on base as often as possible. And during the 60-something percent of the time when he does make an out, he must at least make the pitcher work for it.

He's actually more effective at getting on base than dingbats like me usually give him credit for, owning an acceptable .342 lifetime on-base percentage, including a high of .355 in '09, which happens to match Damon's career percentage. You'd like to see him get up in that .380 range consistently, which Damon achieved or surpassed in 2000 and '04, but with just incremental improvements Ellsbury be a dynamic table-setter. It's rare that hitters improve their patience in the big leagues, but Ellsbury made a leap of .19 from '08 to '09, and with good health and the right priorities when he's in the batter's box he could do it again.

But he's not there yet, in part because he must become more patient. Or maybe the better word is selective. He's currently 52d in the American League in pitches per plate appearance (3.79), three spots ahead of the Royals' Jeff Francoeur, who rumor has it sometimes swings at breaking balls while he's still on deck. Again, a puny sample, but it falls right in line with his career numbers: He was 54th in the AL in '08 (3.59) and 52d in '09 (3.77).

Damon is just 37th in the AL at 3.92 this season, but history strongly suggests he'll climb the charts as the season progresses. Last year he was 10th in pitches per plate appearance (4.11). In 2009, 14th (4.06). And in 2008, 10th again (4.10). That's a long history of working the count, flicking a pitcher's best offering foul then doing it again and maybe again, and exasperating an opponent by methodically driving up his pitch count the way Chuck Knoblauch and Derek Jeter used to do to Pedro back in his electric prime.

Yankees fans who like to argue that the overlooked Brett Gardner is just as effective at the top of the order as the once-hyped Ellsbury will delight in knowing that Damon's successor in left field led the AL in pitches per plate appearance last season at 4.61.

A healthy Ellsbury should be a superior player to Gardner; he certainly has more raw talent. But at age 27, often the peak year for a hitter, what will he become? Can he be Grady Sizemore? Steve Finley? Kenny Lofton? Ellsburys similarity comps through age 26 don't exactly encourage dreams of Cooperstown: Johnny Grubb, Denard Span, David DeJesus, Felix Jose, the unforgettable Doc Smoot . . .

(Apropos of nothing, as my colleague Mr. Cafardo would say, his most similar comparison through ages 24-25 is Roberto Kelly, whose dual claims to fame were hitting a home run off Jeff Reardon to perform last rites on the Red Sox' playoff hopes in 1991, and being traded straight-up for Paul O'Neill, a deal with which Yankees fans -- and Seinfeld fans -- have no grievances.)

Ellsbury is off to an inconsistent start (.219 batting average, 296 on-base percentage), which is completely justifiable given his lost 2010 season when he played just 18 games after Adrian Beltre crushed his ribcage like a sleeve of saltines. He's shown real signs of life recently, with two hits in each of the last two games against the Angels. And with two at-bats tonight, he'll equal last season's total, a small victory unto itself considering all he's gone through.

Ellsbury deserves the benefit of the doubt, and it's cool to see him break into an unexpected home run trot (or four) early in the new season. But at as the at-bats accumulate, we'd almost rather see him run than trot, because that would mean he's not only fulfilling the lead-off man's duty of getting on base, but fulfilling his own vast promise in a way that best utilizes his skill-set.

No one is suggesting he should strive to be Jason Tyner; the homers are great. But here's hoping they're an accessory to Ellsbury becoming what his talent tells us he should be, not an alternative.

-- GlobeChadFinn

By Chad Finn, Globe staff

Jed Lowrie is 27 years old, which is often the peak season of a ballplayer's career. He's no kid, just eight months Dustin Pedroia's junior, yet because of a cruel run of injuries and illness that limited him to 87 games the past two seasons, he's still trying to establish his name in the major leagues.

But it's happening. It's legitimate. And it's about time.

Lowrie, despite some perceptions, does not belong alongside Sam Fuld on the 2011 Gritty Gutty All-Stars, as chosen by select fans and media members desperate for their next Eckstein and wondering whatever became of Bo Hart.

Perhaps it's been forgotten because he's been out of sight, out of mind for long chunks of the past two seasons, or maybe it's because his appearance suggests he fits the scrappy suit, but Lowrie is a talent, one with an impressive pedigree.

He's a former first-round draft choice (45th overall in 2005) who hit over .399 as a sophomore at Stanford, earned two first-team All-America selections, was regarded by Baseball America as the No. 5 prospect in the Sox organization in 2008 (behind Clay Buchholz, Jacoby Ellsbury, Lars Anderson, and Justin Masterson), delivered a winning hit that postseason as a rookie, and in 530 at-bats over parts of four big league seasons has hit 15 homers and driven in 90 runs.

His numbers are even more impressive under closer examination. In 202 at-bats since the beginning of last season, he has hit .322 with 11 homers, 25 extra-base hits, and 114 total bases. And dropping his 76 plate-appearance sample when he hit .147 in 2009 while first foolishly trying to play through and then recover from wrist problems, his career numbers would look like this: 147 games, 462 at-bats, 13 homers, 79 RBIs, .286 average, .462 slugging percentage. The only shortstops since Lowrie's debut in 2008 to equal or surpass those numbers in a single season are Hanley Ramirez (three times), Troy Tulowitzki (twice), Stephen, Drew Derek Jeter, Jose Reyes, and Jason Bartlett during his outlier season in 2009.

There may be some tangles in our logic there, but the conclusion remains the same: Lowrie is capable of being among the game's finest offensive shortstops, and those who get paid to recognize such matters should have seen it coming. But it is Lowrie's sizzling start to the new season -- after his 4 for 5, four-RBI performance on Patriots Day, he's hitting .516 with a 1.320 OPS through 33 plate appearances this season -- that has fans and media alike buzzing, with varying degrees of insight and hyperbole.

Yes, he's been noticed. Within my first hour here at the Morrissey Boulevard headquarters this morning, I cranked out a Globe 10.0 episode with Bob Ryan and a podcast with Nick Cafardo and Daigo Fujiwara in which Topic A in both was Lowrie. Even those of us who came into the season -- pathetic humblebrag alert -- expecting big things from him didn't figure he's be such a significant factor so soon.

Elsewhere, Dan Lamothe of the terrific Red Sox Monster blog draws compelling comparison between Lowrie and Bill Mueller, a player as universally appreciated by Red Sox fans as anyone I can recall. I'll also nod my approval for the Tim Naehring comp made in a Sons of Sam Horn thread titled only slightly facetiously, "Jed Lowrie Turns Water In To Wine," though here's hoping Lowrie's history of injuries ceases where Naehring's never did.

Then there was this headline on widely respected numbers-cruncher Ron Shandler's piece in USA Today this morning: "The only thing standing in the way of super-stardom for Jed Lowrie is a place to play." Even I wouldn't hit those heights of hype -- and Shandler's reasoned article actually didn't, either -- but I will reiterate something I said before the start of the season:

Lowrie, with good health and his name among the top nine on the scorecard every day, has an excellent chance of being the third-most-productive shortstop in the majors this season. And really, there's not an ounce of hyperbole there if you consider the competition (or play fantasy baseball and realized the shortage of quality shortstops on draft night).

There's Tulo, who is on his own high-altitude planet, and Hanley, who is jacked like an NFL tight end and really should be in the outfield by now, and then . . . who? Drew, possibly. Elvis Andrus or Starlin Castro could blossom. Reyes and Jimmy Rollins? Brittle and/or fading. And you know better than to give me Derek Jeter, whose 2010 season was essentially even with that of the player Lowrie should replace.

Which brings us to the elephant in the clubhouse: Marco Scutaro, the incumbent at shortstop and a player who earned the respect of his teammates and manager last season by putting up adequate numbers (.275, 11 homers, .721 OPS) while playing 150 games despite a shoulder/neck injury.

One of Terry Francona's perceived flaws is his willingness to stick with veteran players through prolonged slumps or at the expense of a younger player who may prove superior. (Think Millar vs. Youkilis/Olerud, 2005.)

Based on potential and his performance last year in the second half, Lowrie should have been in the lineup every day to begin the season. Francona's reluctance to do so was somewhat understandable given Lowrie's injury history -- he needed to demonstrate reliability.

Fair enough. Given that he's started four of the past five games -- and has eight RBIs and three two-hit games in that stretch -- it appears the manager is aware of what he has and what he must do. Lowrie can no longer lose at-bats to inferior players.

While Scutaro's selflessness is easy to appreciate, it also must be noted that he's a 35-year-old veteran of 10 big-league seasons who became a full-time starting shortstop just two years ago.

He's played 557 games at short, 322 at second, 98 at third, 18 in the outfield, and three at first base in his career. He's a utilityman who made the most of every opportunity. That's to be commended.

But he's a stopgap as a starter who is best suited to be a fine backup plan should injury or illness thwart Lowrie again. The hunch here is that Scutaro would do so, despite the disappointment, with his usual team-first attitude.

He knows who he is. And given his baseball intelligence, chances are he recognized who Jed Lowrie is and what he can become long before the majority of us caught a clue.

A couple of late-night scattered Sox thoughts and housekeeping items while wondering if Jed Lowrie can catch . . .

Coco Crisp's '70s swingin' A's flashback was cool. But to be honest, I'm just looking forward to the point when Carl Crawford stops reminding me of him.

He handled it well, but Crawford doesn't deserve to be booed. His brutal start is not from a lack of effort, he never bolted Boston for the Yankees, and it's pretty apparent he knows he's lousy. It's been 12 games. Give him a real chance.

How many of you Sox fans follow an NL team too, not necessarily passionately but just for the heck of it? I've pretty much got both feet aboard that Colorado Rockies bandwagon right now. Troy Tulowitzki is still swinging the bat like it's last September.

The Sox are -- and, yes, this is mind-numbingly stunning -- off to their worst start since 1996, when they opened 3-15 and then 6-19. Tim Wakefield was a 14-game winner for that team. And Kevin Kennedy probably took credit for all 14 of his wins.

The Disney ending would have been for Adrian Gonzalez to wallop a crucial ninth-inning homer on the day he signed his (anticlimactic) seven-year, $154 million deal. Instead, he grounded out feebly to second base for the final out in a one-run loss. Who's writing these lousy scripts?

I like Jarrod Saltalamacchia and I understand why the Sox want to give him an extended chance. He's just 25, and there have been occasional glimpses of the talent that made him a Baseball America darling not so long ago. But man, if his hitting wasn't so bad, we might notice that his throws to second seem to be getting more and more scattershot.

I'm not going to second-guess their lukewarm interest in Russell Martin, though, because I'm skeptical he makes in through the season in New York.

One legitimate concern as I see it: They might be a little too lefthanded. Papi has been surprisingly good, but I doubt Crawford, Ellsbury, and J.D. Drew could get a hit off Dennys Reyes at this point.

Momentum is only as good as . . . well, let's see, Josh Beckett goes tomorrow. A performance as dazzling as his effort against the Yankees Sunday would go a long way toward reassuring the crowd gathering on the Zakim (Tobin references are so pre-2004). It would probably also make John Farrell wonder where that curveball and changeup have been the past two years.

* * *
Anyway, to slightly less disappointing matters, here's some stuff I put together recently that appeared in various other neighborhoods on Boston.com. You know, in case you missed them by accident rather than choice:

Bruins-Canadiens historical playoff quiz: The answer is Ken Dryden. I'm not telling you the question.

Celtics-Knicks historical playoff quiz: Celtics in five, but 'Melo has one Bernard King tribute in him where he'll drop about 44 on the C's.

This week's media column looking at Toucher and Rich's fulfilled effort to get Charlie Sheen on their airwaves. I've long been all winning-ed out -- the most lucid thing he has said is that "2 1/2 Men" is garbage -- but I thought the creativity and hustle Rich Shertenlieb put in to get Sheen on the show was pretty telling. These guys work for their success.

Last week's media column chatting with Dr. Jack Ramsay about the Celtics and Heat. It's always fun talking NBA with him not only because of his unmatched depth of knowledge or because he coached those wonderful Walton/Lucas Blazers, but because he's almost casual in his candor. Among other things, he said he thinks Derrick Rose has been trying to do too much lately, revealed that he gets on Rajon Rondo about his free-throw shooting when he sees him, and that the Celtics will get out of the first round easily even if Shaq doesn't play.

One last argument . . . Taped this Globe 10.0 clip about the state of the Sox with my Joe boss Monday. Still believe every word of my it's-all-gonna-be-OK sermon, too, even after tonight's crusher. I mean, this is all a tremendous letdown given the expectations, sure, but it's still so early, and you have to believe the Sox are going to be an outstanding team when players start performing to their established norms. You'll exhale soon, I'm sure of it.

By Chad Finn, Globe staff

For someone who considers Manny and Pedro (no last names required) Nos. 1 and 1A in terms of the most charismatic and compelling superstars to call Fenway Park home in my lifetime, the ending to Manny's career was both disappointing . . . and appropriate. Leave it to the man-child who once used the inside of the Green Monster as his private urinal to have his career ended by a tragic case of peeing-in-a-cup-gone-wrong.

I suppose I should apologize for making light of that, since apparently levity is frowned upon by the national baseball media in such Serious Matters as Manny's disrespect for the game. Levity is apparently acceptable only when it's used to make Manny a punch line. The New York Times's outstanding baseball writer Tyler Kepner tweeted this when the news broke Friday: So which hat will Manny Ramirez wear when he's dropped from the Hall of Fame ballot after one year? It's a clever line, one even an accomplished Manny apologist such as myself wishes he'd thought of first. Unfortunately, it also foreshadowed some nonsense to come featuring the same sentiment but lacking the humor.

Heaven knows we've heard a lot of ridiculous commentary on ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" the past 20 or so years, most of it having to do with slidepieces and the Big Red Machine and stubbornly wrongheaded conventional wisdom. But Joe Morgan is finally gone this year -- I almost miss his habit of falling silent whenever a replay would prove him wrong -- and the thoroughly professional and informed team of Dan Shulman, Orel Hershiser, Bobby Valentine and reporters Wendi Nix and Buster Olney is in place.

My regard for all of them is high, particularly Olney, whose column, a mix of insight, statistics, and links, is worth the price of ESPN Insider alone. Which is why it was so aggravating Sunday night during the Red Sox-Yankees telecast to hear Olney say that he's voted for Mark McGwire for the Hall of Fame, that he will probably vote for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, but that he will not vote for Manny. He was one among a number of prominent writers to suggest in the aftermath of Manny's adios that he would not get the requisite five percent of the vote to remain on the ballot a second year.

To which I say: You have got to be kidding me. I mean, I don't even know which decoder ring I need to use to try to decipher that tangled logic. Olney sort of explained or implied that Manny is held to a different standard because his transgressions -- two failed tests since April 2009 -- came after performance-enhancing drug testing was implemented in 2004. (He also reportedly tested positive for a banned substance in 2003.)

[Update: According to The Big Lead, Olney has said Manny's transgressions are worse because baseball is trying to clean up the sport. In other words, it was OK to do it when Bud Selig and the players union turned a blind eye to the epidemic. Huh? I'm more confused than before.]

But the notion that Bonds (whose homer totals -- 37, 49, 73 -- grew at a similar rate to his cap size), Clemens ("Uh, them is Debbie's syringes"), and especially McGwire (whose benefits from PEDs are right there in bold type on his baseball-reference.com page, and yet are probably less fraudulent than that prolonged charade with the Maris family in the summer of '98) could and maybe even will get in while Manny, whose outstanding but hardly bloated numbers rarely fluctuated from season to season, is one-and-done . . . well, that's just warped. All of the aforementioned superstars cheated. The real difference between them and Manny, as I see it, is twofold: Major League Baseball was complicit in duping the public before testing was implemented. And Manny was dumb and dumber enough to fail the test twice.

Now, I realize I sound like a Giants fan defending the indefensible Bonds, or a Cardinals fan still deluded that their McGwire memories were the genuine article. So be it. Watching Manny hit -- when he was really locked in, when he'd set up the pitcher and annihilate a pitch he'd missed earlier in the game -- ranks among the all-time great joys of being a Red Sox fan. It's disappointing that so many fans around here dwell on the ugly scenes and the departures -- from Boston, from the game itself -- more than they do all of the good times, all of the endearingly goofy antics, the silly handshakes, the two championships, and did I mention the long drives over the Monster that looked like they'd soar all the way to Worcester?

Manny's legacy in my mind is best captured by his three-run homer off Barry Zito in Game 5 of the 2003 ALDS. The bomb, off one of the best pitchers in baseball at the time, was as clutch as it got at that point in Red Sox history. And yet before the baseball landed deep into the left field seats, the broadcasters were caterwauling about the disgrace of Manny pausing to watch it. Sometimes, he couldn't win for winning. And when he did something wrong or offensive, which was more than occasional, you get what you had last Friday: analysis that alternated between solemn and vicious, with the same tired conclusion. Manny disrespected the game, and it is our duty as alleged guardians to punish him for it. No Hall for you, Ramirez.

If you're familiar with the baseball nerdhood that powers this blog, you know I love the Hall of Fame. Love going to Cooperstown and the museum, love writing about who's on the ballot and who should be elected and who isn't quite worthy, love all of the nostalgia and circumstance. But I also have some longstanding problems with its machinations, beginning with the arbitrariness of who's in and who's out and the pretzel logic that often leads to such contradictions. Tell me again why Catfish Hunter is and Luis Tiant isn't, or why Lou Whitaker lasted just a single season on the ballot while the inferior Phil Rizzuto is in or . . . well, we could write a couple of chapters on all the scumbags, rascals and racists who are revered while the all-time hit leader remains banned.

Maybe I'm too much of a completionist, or maybe I'm not putting the appropriate stock in the morals of the game, but to me, the Hall of Fame is supposed inform us about the history of the game as much as it celebrates it, and that means acknowledging the dark days with the sunny. Legendary players who may have built that legend by nefarious means shouldn't be ignored.

Even with Jose Canseco's dubiously motivated but relatively accurate whistle-blowing, there's still so much we don't know about who and how many were using from the late '80s on. But this is certain: You watch a classic game from 1998 or 2001 or 2004 now, and you will be astounded at how much bigger almost all of the players are than they are now. The Mitchell Report was not an epilogue. There are other Radomskis and McNamees out there who will eventually tell another first-person sordid tale that indicts even more of the presumed innocent. It's premature and irresponsible to say a player who tested positive last week won't and shouldn't get in five years from now. The context is still hazy.

Admittedly, my opinion on who should be a Hall of Famer has changed by several degrees in the aftermath of the steroid era. I do believe Bonds should get in, I do believe Clemens should get in, and I will always loathe both of them. And I will listen to arguments for the likes of McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, both of whom would probably be distant afterthoughts on the ballot if not for their apparent chemical advantages.

Ultimately, the Hall of Fame is incomplete when the definitive players of each era are not recognized. Mention steroids and failed tests and obstruction of justice convictions on the cheaters' plaques; hell, put a giant asterisk on their bronzed foreheads. But give me honesty and perspective and the whole story over arbitrary judgment any day. I'd rather see all the juicers who turned the record book into a comic book get in than have a single clean player excluded because of wrongful suspicions, and I'd rather see all of the game's history acknowledged than just those moments suitable for all audiences. Bonds, Clemens, Manny . . . maybe they don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. They probably don't. But they belong in the Hall of Fame.

(OK, so that wasn't brief. Hopefully we'll say the same thing about Manny's stay on the ballot in five years.)

By Chad Finn, Globe staff

Last night's masterpiece was Daisuke Matsuzaka's 100th start for the Red Sox. Anyone for a commemorative home run ball to remember the occasion? Maybe inscribed with "Hanging meatball clobbered by [grateful player's name here] on a 3-2 count"?

Yeah, those probably won't be such a big seller over at Twins. Too bad. Such a nice, round number might be a cause for reflection and celebration had Dice-K even approached fulfilling his advanced billing.

Instead, it seems like an appropriate moment to draw a conclusion, which, the morning after yet another hideous performance by the perpetually disappointing righthander, is this:

I'd just as soon he not make start No. 101 for the Red Sox. Not just three days from now. Not three months from now. Not three years from now.

It's time, to paraphrase Peter Abraham's spot-on take from this morning, for Dice-K to become someone else's migraine.

He has to go.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't come to this conclusion easily. I try to avoid opining in lockstep with the sports radio conventional wisdom of the day. The panic button is usually well out of my reach. And I don't like trading an accomplished pitcher -- which Dice-K, a genuine icon in Japan who is 49-26 with a 4.18 ERA in the major leagues, certainly is -- just because of perceived depth. The lesson still lingers from the Bronson Arroyo-for-Wily Mo Pena trade.

Besides, there's the matter of who replaces him. His most similar pitcher through age 29, Tim Wakefield, a 43-year-old muscle-pull-waiting-to-happen? Alfredo Aceves, whose versatility would be missed should he take a regular turn in the rotation? Michael Bowden? Felix Doubront? Mark Portugal?

Well . . . yeah, actually, any of them will do, save for Portugal, I suppose. Because here's the dirty truth about Dice-K: He's not just maddening or inconsistent. He's plain lousy, and he has been for more than two years now. Pete laid out some of his numbers since the beginning of the 2009 season, a span of 37 starts, and here we've tallied a few more, for this final line:

13 wins, 14 losses, 220 innings, 232 hits allowed, 128 earned runs, 109 walks, 191 strikeouts, 5.24 ERA, 1.55 WHIP 1.06 HRs per nine innings.

That's not a decent No. 5. Heck, that's not even Wes Gardner or John Wasdin, and I'm not being a snarky weasel for once.

During his three-plus seasons (1997-2000) with the Red Sox, during which he became something of a punchline thanks to Jerry Trupiano's overly enthusiastic home run calls, ol' Way Back won 19, lost 16 and had a 4.66 ERA and 1.307 WHIP. He allowed 1.4 HRs per nine while pitching at the peak of the steroid era.

It's true: John Wasdin was better over the course of his Red Sox career than Dice-K has been since the start of the '09 season.

I know. Wasdin. Better.

Then there's Wes Gardner, whose greatest claim to fame as a Red Sox pitcher was giving up a home run to Bo Jackson hit so hard that it is very possibly lodged in the back wall of the center field bleachers?

During his five seasons (1986-90) in Boston, Gardner went 17-26 with a 4.73 ERA and a 1.439 WHIP. He was . . . pretty terrible, though he did have 2.2 WAR in '88. He was also better than post-'08 Dice-K. I can't decide if that's more frightening, hilarious, or embarrassing, but it's definitely all of the above.

I realize the clear-eyed reaction is to skip his turn in the rotation, or bury him in the bullpen, or send him on yet another injury-related (wink, wink) hiatus to Ft. Myers, or perhaps get particularly clever and tell the Blue Jays there was an oversight and he was really supposed to accompany John Farrell to Toronto. But I'm sure the Red Sox will be prudent, and as Pete noted, the no-trade clause and the money remaining make it very unlikely that he will be dealt anyway. As much as we'd like to track his plane out of town, he's not departing anytime soon.

Which, again, is too bad. He's just terrible, and any cure for this prolonged terribleness seems unfathomable to you, me, and probably Curt Young, too. His supposedly deep repertoire -- much of which never came stateside with him in the first place -- has been whittled down to a flat fastball and an adequate breaking ball. He either nibbles or serves up beach balls to the likes of Sam Fuld, an extremely likable, extremely limited ballplayer with exactly 26 homers in seven seasons of pro ball.

One more stat tangentially related to Matsuzaka before I sign off here: Only eight pitchers in history have pitched 220 innings in a single season with an ERA and WHIP at or above the respective 5.24 and 1.55 Matsuzaka has heaved up over his last 220 innings. The last to do it was the wonderfully named Harry Byrd in 1953. In other words, pitchers have rarely had the opportunity over a full season to be as brutal as Matsuzaka has been in sum over the past three.

Wait, wait . . . one more stat tangentially related to the previous stat: Only 15 pitchers in history have logged 200 innings in a season with an ERA and WHIP higher than his 5.24/1.55: Jason Jennings in 2004 and -- this was a bit of a surprise until I remembered his habit of pitching three good innings, then melting down -- Tom "Flash" Gordon in 1996, when he went 12-9 with a 5.59 ERA and a 1.64 WHIP in 215.2 innings in his first season with the Sox.

Gordon, of course, was soon converted to relief, saving a club-record 46 games in 1998, then six years later doing his part (in pinstripes) to help the Sox overcome the Yankees in the ALCS.

He last pitched in the majors in 2009, turns 44 in November, and you know what? I think I'd rather see Flash pitch for the Sox this season than Dice-K.

You think I'm kidding? Maybe. But I bet he could walk directly from the couch to the mound right now and snap off a better breaking ball than Dice-K.

And, he is younger than Wakefield.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Playing nine innings while wondering whether Orel Hershiser has gotten a word in edgewise yet . . .

1. Well, that was beyond encouraging, wasn't it? Josh Beckett's eight-inning, two-hit masterpiece -- against a Yankees lineup (minus A-Rod) that he held to a sparkling 10.04 ERA in five starts last season, with just nine homers allowed in 26 innings -- was as excellent as it was surprising. It's funny, I remember thinking before the game that it wasn't so long ago that Beckett vs. Sabathia would have been a matchup worth anticipating, but with his struggles last season and his recent ugly history against the Yankees, there was almost a sense of foreboding entering this game. Instead, he threw his rediscovered sharp curve for strikes, had the two-seamer working to keep the lefties in the lineup honest, and his velocity was consistently at 94. Derek Jeter said he was "filthy" after the game, and that was confirmed by the 10 strikeouts next to Beckett's name on the scoresheet. It was his first double-figure strikeout game since July 27, 2009, and this may well be the best game he's pitched since then. Now, for his next challenge: let's see him do it with Jarrod Saltalamacchia behind the plate.

2. The best thing about the Red Sox thus far this season is one of the best things about any recent season: Dustin Pedroia. After his third three-hit game of the Yankees series last night, he's now hitting .400, and any concerns we had during spring training that his foot injury might linger have been put to rest. Perhaps as importantly, he's been a voice of reason during the Sox' slow start, noting bluntly that they need to pitch better after Saturday's loss, but also putting it all into perspective last night: "We're four games out of first place with 153 to go. ... It looks doable." Robinson Cano might be a better player, but there's no way he means as much to the Yankees as Pedroia does to the Red Sox.

3. Over the past four seasons, Adrian Gonzalez has played 161, 162, 160, and 160 games. When he got drilled on the hand by a Sabathia pitch in the fifth inning, I immediately wondered if his remarkable record of durability would be a casualty of this bizarre, unpredictable start to the season, and the ESPN crew didn't ease our concerns by emphasizing how much he was shaking his beaned pinkie and speculating on whether it might be broken. So to read in the paper this morning that he didn't even get an X-ray . . . well, it felt good to exhale.

4. You could make the argument that Marco Scutaro's two-run double in the seventh inning last night was the biggest hit of the season. Suddenly, after taking two of three from the Yankees, it feels like the reset button has been hit on this season and all will be well going forward. Had the Red Sox wasted Beckett's gem and lost the game (and the series) by leaving 16 runners on base? Hell, I might have called the Whiner Line to howl that they're ruining my summah. So, huge hit . . . but I'm not changing my stance. Jed Lowrie should have more than 12 plate appearances at this point.

5. Carl Crawford has spent nine years in the major leagues before this one. In every single month from May through September, his career batting average is at least .296 and his lowest OPS is .770 (in August). In April, however, he's a .276 hitter with a .716 OPS. He's a traditionally slow starter who is off to an even slower start than usual in his new baseball home. This doesn't mean he's struggling with the pressure or can't play in a big market. You know what it means? That much better things are to come. Why some are so quick to screech about his problems -- particularly since he's a player we should be rather familiar with given that he's tormented the Red Sox -- is one of the real disappointments of the season's early days.

6. If you're one of those stubborn old-schoolers who remain adamant in the face of common sense that the won-lost record gives a good accounting of a pitcher's actual performance, I counter with this: John Lackey got a W next to his name for that mess Friday, a day after Jon Lester had nothing to show for his seven-inning, no-run, nine-K gem at Cleveland. Explain, please. And show your work. I want to see this logic unfold.

7. I don't think any of us are surprised that Manny Ramirez's departure from the game is bizarre; it just figured he wouldn't show up to the ballpark one day and that would be that. But I never thought it would be so sad, and I mean that in every sense. I'll miss him -- hell, I still miss watching him for the Red Sox, and you know there were many more good times as bad. But even his most ardent apologist can't begin to defend how he carelessly abandoned the Rays, and it's hard to defend his legacy when it's apparent how little it matters to him.

8. I know I've been preaching that it's much too early to draw any real, concrete conclusions about this season. But we'll slap an asterisk on that when it comes to judging the Yankees, because . . . well, because rash judgments are pretty darn fun when it comes a rival, as honest Yankees fans will attest themselves. So, three thoughts on the eventual 2011 AL East runner-up: 1) The Red Sox are grateful that Phil Hughes left his fastball in Florida, but as an impartial baseball fan, 2) Used to work with a Yankee fan who liked to tell me that Derek Jeter would make a run at 4,000 hits. Watching Jeter now -- and over the second half of last season, when he hit .265 with a .342 slugging percentage -- I'm wondering how many beyond 3,000 he'll get, and how long of a plod it will be to reach that milestone. He just doesn't seem to hit the ball hard anymore. 3) Not to kick a calm-eyed captain while he's down, but the Yankees' infield defense would be better with Eric Chavez at third and a slimmed-down A-Rod at short.

9.Carl Yastrzemski was the perfect choice to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day. But after last night, when Ron Johnson's beaming 11-year-old daughter Bridget did the honors, ol' Yaz is already relegated to the No. 2 starter in this rotation.

So we've got something of a special edition of the chat planned today, or at least a special location: I'll be firing up the chat engines live from Fenway beginning at the usual time of noon and going up until just before the festivities begin 2 p.m.

We'll emphasize Sox talk more than usual for obvious reasons, but the usual sports and media chatter is welcome as always. Check in below to air your grievances, share your reassurances, and everything in between. I still say they win 96, but it sure would be a relief to get No. 1 today.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Get it? Wait, wait, look at the picture again. Get it now?

Genius headline, right?

Oh, shut up.

I'm trying here. And surely you must sympathize with my honest attempts to be a voice of reason regarding the 2011 Red Sox, given that through four games and four losses, they are batting .186, their starting rotation has a 9.30 ERA, and they've been outscored 29-12.

Optimism tends to get dented a little when the 3,000 fans who bothered to show up in Cleveland last night are chanting "0-4!" before the eighth inning is complete.

But I'm not lunging for the reset button on this thing just yet, and neither should you. I never thought we'd be clinging to moral victories . . . well, really at all this season. But hey, the real thing has been strangely impossible to come by through four games, and there were several harbingers to be found last night that suggest good things ahead for this team.

So excuse me while I point them out:

The bullpen was outstanding, particularly Bobby Jenks and Matt Albers, both of whom struck out the side in an inning of work. (Cue random afternoon-drive caller: "Yeah, but they'd have both struck out four with 'Tek calling the pitches! Maybe five, Felgah!")

Josh Beckett wasn't lighting up the radar gun, but his curveball and changeup were as sharp as we've seen them in a long time, and I'm beginning to believe in him again. The missing velocity? Meh. It's April. Let him get warmed up.

The much-maligned Salty got his first hit of the season. Dustin Pedroia (.333) had two more knocks. Papi looks locked in -- the plan for more spring training at-bats looks like a savvy one -- and ready to put the two previous miserable Aprils behind him.

Like I said, good things. I'm not dwelling on the bad, because, again, it will all get better soon enough and we'll forget loaded statistics such as the one about a team that began 0-4 never having made it to the World Series when the Sox are 20 games over .500 on July 1.

While I understand the frustration that comes from the delayed fulfillment of such high expectations, I think some -- and by some, I mean 99 percent -- of it is misguided, particularly when it comes to Carl Crawford.

Peter Abraham and I talked about this in this week's podcast, but I'll emphasize it here too: The suggestion that Crawford is going to be fazed by the pressure of playing in Boston -- which, to be frank, is mostly a self-congratulatory creation of a certain segment of the media -- is preposterous. And thinking Red Sox fans should recognize this for the nonsense that it is.

Yes, he does look like he's -- for lack of a better word I don't hate quite as much -- pressing. He wants to make a good first impression on his new team and fans, the reality of his performance has been, oh, 178 degrees from that, and for now, it's resulted in a vicious cycle. He's frustrated, and it shows. Happens to the best of 'em.

But Crawford is in his 10th big league season. This is not his first turn in the spotlight. He was perhaps the biggest star on a Tampa Bay team that shoved aside the Red Sox and Yankees for the top spot in two of the past three AL East races. He had a .932 OPS in the 2008 World Series. He hit .345 in the ALCS against the Sox, a team he has tormented for years. If you're familiar with Carl Crawford -- and there's no excuse not to be -- you know you're seeing a wonderful player at his worst right now.

I'm reminded of something a wise, mustached sage named Dennis said on NESN last night: "If this were happening in July, no one would give it a second thought."

Amen to that. The Eck wasn't speaking specifically of Crawford, but of the state of the Sox as a whole. But the implied advice applies to both floundering player and floundering team.

Please, try to resist all of these overwrought and reactionary second thoughts. Soon, Crawford and his new teammates will play to their established high level. And that's when your faith will be rewarded, and everything really will be looking up.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

A half-inning's worth of thoughts on the Red Sox while presuming the final 53/54ths of the season will go slightly better . . .

That picture sort of sums up the weekend, doesn't it?

You've got a Sox starter standing on the Rangers Stadium mound looking defeated, something the box score will eventually confirm with all of the gruesome data punctuated by an "L."

You've got Terry Francona ambling out the mound to take what appears to be a live grenade out of yet another shell-shocked pitcher's hand.

And you've got Jarrod Saltalamacchia standing around awkwardly, perhaps wondering whether this is the point where Crash Davis would attempt to lighten the mood with a joke about Kinsler or Cruz's latest moonshot having a stewardess on it.

After watching these guys throw batting practice to the Rangers, Josh Beckett has to wonder how the heck he's the fourth starter behind this crew of Wasdins.

Of course, what transpired over the past three games did not inspire comedy. The three Sox starters -- Jon Lester, John Lackey, and Clay Buchholz -- combined for a 10.57 earned run average in the series. Last season, their respective ERAs added together equaled 9.98. I know, that's hardly a mathematically-sound approach, but it confirms just how brutally out-of-character their performance was this weekend.

Which brings me to a point that I'll emphasize later on: Not much of this is worth fretting about. Lester may plod through another April. Buchholz is expected to have some regression due to his good fortune on batted balls last season. And Lackey is probably going to be baseball's most well-compensated 14-17-game winner with a 4.20 ERA.

I have small concerns about this team, the same ones with which they entered spring training. Saltalamacchia looks the part, but can he play it? I want to see more of Jed Lowrie, even if it comes at the expense of Marco Scutaro. And to a far, far lesser degree, I wish Carl Crawford didn't look so tense in his first few days with his new team.

But the starting pitching? Don't sweat it. These guys are high-quality, established major league pitchers, despite looking like anything but this weekend. If they remain healthy, they'll progress toward their mean, which should mean about 50 wins and that current 10.57 ERA divided by three.

* * *

For those of us -- humblebrag alert -- who haven't been smitten for years with the idea of Adrian Gonzalez playing for the Red Sox, it must be a blast to watch his fast start (.385 average) and discover just how great he is.

Actually, it's been a blast even for those of us who followed what he accomplished in the relative anonymity of San Diego the past five years, and yes, I know I sound like a jerk right now. It's just that a lot of the people racing to praise him now once told me there's no chance the Sox could ever make a deal for him. Blogboy wins, suckers! Now you go back to your mom's . . . upstairs. (Burn.)

I loved that Gonzalez immediately proved his skills against southpaws, staying with the pitch against C.J. Wilson (who held lefties to a .176 slugging percentage last year) and effortlessly lining a two-run single to center field in the opener.

I got a kick out of Shaughnessy reminding us not to compare him to Ted Williams. I don't think I'd dare compare Gonzalez to Ted Williams even if he hit .407 this year and singlehandedly brokered peace in the Middle East.

I thought Jerry Remy's comment that Gonzalez is reminiscent of Manny in that he has no wasted motion and then explodes through the baseball was spot-on.

In fact, Remy's comment jarred a memory of Manny's fast start with the Sox 10 years ago, so I looked it up . . . and man, I'd forgotten just how awesome he was from pretty much the first pitch he saw in a Red Sox uniform.

In April 2001, Manny batted .408 with nine homers, 31 RBIs, a .735 slugging percentage, and a 1.217 OPS in 112 plate appearances. On May 23, he was batting .414, and as late as June 5 he was at .388.

Can Gonzalez be Manny's equal? Well, no, I don't think he'll prove to be in that all-time elite class, though looking at his numbers from a sharper angle leads you to believe he could be capable of about any achievement now that he gets to play half his games at Fenway. But of this much I'm sure. It's going to be incredibly fun to watch him try.

* * *

All right, I warned you. We've reached the portion of the program where we plead for reason. Beg, even.

Please don't overreact to this. Don't activate your long-dormant Fellowship of the Miserable membership card. Don't be, as Peter Abraham perfectly put it, a merchant of panic. Don't wait on hold for 45 minutes to howl at Felger or the Big O or your doomsayer of choice that Theo can win only with Dan Duquette's players and that Francona's job should be in jeopardy because let's just admit it, he was lucky in '04 and '07.

Don't. Just . . . don't.

Take today as a mental health day. Shut off your radio. Turn that part of your mind perpetually occupied by sports toward Butler and UConn.

Exhale. And please do not equate three lost days in Texas to a lost cause.

Should the requisite Yankees fan in your office begin chirping, remind him of 1998 since there's a decent chance that was the year he boarded the bandwagon. The Yankees of that vintage are perhaps the greatest team of this era and one of the best of all-time, winning 114 games in the regular season, then tearing through the postseason with 11 wins, 2 losses, and yet another championship.

They were awesome. They also began the season 0-3, then 1-4 . . . and then ripped off 14 wins in 15 games, annihilating the rest of American League by going 59-21 from May through July. Now the only time you hear about that lousy start is when another presumably excellent team starts 0-3. Like, you know, this one here.

This slow start would be but a blip had it happened, say, June 18-20. It's exaggerated because it comes at the beginning of the season. As ESPN's David Schoenfield pointed out this morning, the 2004 Red Sox had six stretches of three or more losses, and the 2007 Sox had four. I'm not going out on a limb to guess that you might own a championship DVD or two from those particular seasons.

Then there's the stat, which I first saw on Schoenfield's Twitter feed, that just three of the last 80 playoff teams began 0-3. I wasn't surprised whatsoever; the vast, vast majority of them were lousy teams. The 2001 Brewers, 2002 Tigers, 2006 Pirates, 2007 Orioles, and on and on. Strangely, none of those teams were managed by Joe Kerrigan.

Then there are the weird aberrations -- the 2002 (Devil) Rays began 3-0 and ended up with 55 wins and 106 losses. In 1999, the Diamondbacks and Reds began a combined 0-6. They somehow managed to win 196 games and two division titles between them that year.

Contrary to what they've shown through three games, the Red Sox are not lousy. Nor are they the Greatest Team Ever, a headline that other newspaper in town used on Opening Day and one we here on Morrissey Boulevard have unfortunately pounced on over the weekend.

What they are is a damn good team off to a stunningly awful start. And that stunningly awful start happens to be magnified (amplified if you still have your radio on) because of the anticipation that came with the long winter and that five-day stretch in December when Gonzalez and Crawford arrived and anything seemed possible.

We waited so long to see them and this is what we get?

I've heard the more reasonable among us say Sox fans will look back on this 0-3 start and laugh.

I say you won't. Know why? Because the 2011 Red Sox are built to deliver so many good times and memories from now through October -- yes, through -- that you'll barely remember how it all began.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Collectively, the 2011 Red Sox are the odds-on favorites to get to the World Series, and considering their remarkable talent individually serves as a pleasant confirmation of why they should be an outstanding team.

Now, can 4:05 p.m. Friday and the yep-it's-for-real debut of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford please hurry up and get here?. . .

Jed Lowrie: The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of using him in this superutility role. He's never thrilled me defensively at shortstop -- his range is just a step better than Jeterian, and he's either scattershot or careless on too many routine throws. But he can play every infield position at least adequately, and with those old comps to Pedroia as a hitter dancing in my head, I am convinced that his excellent performance in the second half last year (nine homers, .526 slugging percentage, .907 OPS, and some pretty good company) was a legitimate representation of the player he can be come. There's the proverbial big "if" with him regarding his health, obviously, but if he can stay on the field, his value will be immense.

Marco Scutaro: I'll never get why so many fans -- and by fans I mean sports-radio hosts, their most witless callers, and yes, certain media brethren -- are so eager to trade depth just because it's there. Keeping Scutaro, who arguably had a superior season to five-time Golden Globe winner Derek Jeter (what . . . you say he's won five gold gloves? Like I'm buying that) despite playing with a messed-up shoulder, and the promising Lowrie is a good thing, just as retaining veteran Mike Cameron as baseball's most overqualified fourth outfielder is also smart. Doesn't anyone remember Arroyo-for-Wily Mo? Theo learned his lesson and we should too: just because a team has multiple quality players at one position doesn't mean it should swap one of them for a player of lesser value at a position of relative need or a handful of magic beans.

Dustin Pedroia: Laser Show . . . activate! Of all the encouraging developments this spring, there's nothing more encouraging that watching Pedroia look exactly like the player he was last June 25, when he walloped three homers at Colorado the day before his season was effectively ended by a foul ball that broke a bone in his foot. He's running the bases without a limp, his range isn't affected at second base, and he's smacking . . . well, lasers, all over the field. He's the same old Pedey. I think it's OK to exhale now.

Kevin Youkilis: Youk has had a bit of a rough spring (.175 average, no homers in 57 at-bats) coming back from that unusual thumb injury. He's traditionally a fast starter -- he has a career .902 OPS in March/April -- so if he struggles early, I suppose there will be some reason for concern. But I'm not about to do it now. I like Mazz's optimism -- wow, I don't think I've ever strung those words together in that sequence -- in picking him for the MVP, though I think he has the wrong Sox hitter pegged for the award. Youk will have fewer RBI opportunities than we might expect with Adrian Gonzalez batting in front of him, but a .300-28-105 season seems reasonable, even if he doesn't improve his OPS for a seventh straight year.

Scott Atchison: Well, you have to figure that's not the first time he's lost out on making an Opening Day roster for reasons other than performance. The 35-year-old righthander probably deserved the final spot in the bullpen over Matt Albers, but Atchison had options left, Albers did not, and the Red Sox, wisely if coldly, prioritized retaining their organizational depth over keeping the slightly more deserving candidate. If there's any solace, it's that Terry Francona likes him and we're all but assured to see Atchison again this summer. In the meantime, maybe he can pass some of his time in Pawtucket by reading The 26th Man, former pitcher Steve Fireovid's terrific diary/biography (co-authored with the great Mark Winegardner) about being just good enough to be the last man cut.

Mike McKenry: Do you realize that in parts of eight big-league seasons, spanning 246 games and 714 plate appearances, Kevin Cash has a .183 batting average, 12 homers, 195 strikeouts, and a 37 adjusted OPS? The point: I know little about McKenry, but considering he's a 26-year-old catcher who threw out 36 percent of attempted basestealers and has an .812 OPS in his five minor league seasons, it's safe to say he's a far better alternative than another Cash sequel should the Red Sox require an emergency catcher sometime this spring or summer.

John Lackey: I wholeheartedly agree with PeteAbe's prediction yesterday that Lackey "is going to have a very good season. A 3.85 ERA, 15 or 16 wins . . ." Beyond that, I was fascinated and encouraged by something else Pete wrote within the same blog post: "Here's hoping he improves his on-camera demeanor because more people should know what a funny, personable guy he is. His teammates love him." Watching Lackey mutter to himself in four-letter increments after a bad pitch or appear to call out a defensive player who made a mistake, I had no idea he was so well-regarded among his teammates. He's got a clean slate with me entering his second season with the Sox.

Daniel Bard: Hard to believe last year was just his first full season in the majors, isn't it? He's such a mainstay now -- heck, he was the only beginning-to-end reliable option out of the 'pen last year -- that it feels like he's been throwing smoke out of the Sox 'pen since, oh, about 2007. His strikeout rate actually dipped last season (from a Dibblesque 11.5 in '09 to a still outstanding 9.2), but his BB/9 dropped from 4.0 to 3.6, and he allowed a phenomenal 5.4 hits per nine (45 in 74.2 innings). If Papelbon punts away a couple in April, Bobby Jenks will probably get the first opportunity to close, and that's fine. Bard will still get at least as many high-leverage, crucial outs as a setup guy as he would as a closer, and probably more.

Tim Wakefield: Practically, I'm not sure what his role is or whether, at age 44, he's capable of being anything other than a proud, accomplished mop-up man. Nostalgically, who among us isn't pleased that he's here for season No. 17 of his long and winding road into Red Sox lore? I was talking to my old man about Bob Costas's interview with Pedro on the MLB Network tonight, and we agreed that there will never be another one like him. And you know what? There will never be another one quite like Wake, either.

Josh Beckett: He was horrible and hurt last season. He was the former for the most part this spring, though at least he looked healthy as he was getting lit up. But as I sit here typing this, there is he is, mowing down the Astros by flashing a little bit of the ol' giddyup on his fastball and featuring a changeup so crisp and deceptive that it made me blurt to my TV friends Jerry and Don, "What was that?" I know it's the lowly Astros, and I know it's just one start . . . but the Beckett I'm watching right now is as good as I can recall him looking in over a year. How about that for an optimistic note to take you into the season?

Just for the sport of it, and with the knowledge that we're setting ourselves up for much mockery and derision when these are proven grotesquely incorrect in September (if not months sooner), here's a brief look at how TATB sees the six division races lining up in the new season . . .

AL EAST
Red Sox: Mentioned this in the preview podcast yesterday, but I'm curious how many runs Carl Crawford will drive in batting in the No. 3 spot in this loaded lineup. If he remains there all season, he could end up with a ridiculous stat line of something like 18 homers, 120 RBIs, 110 runs scored, and 50 stolen bases. And yes, I'm being conservative with those numbers, as well as with this one: The Sox will win 96 games, and October will be one to remember.

Yankees: I like their starting pitching better than most of us internet baseball know-it-alls -- 18-game-winner Phil Hughes won't be 25 until June, and Ivan Nova is interesting as a No. 4 starter. But I also think the aging offense regresses from its 859-run juggernaut of a season ago. Let's put 'em at 94 wins, the wild card, and an ALCS loss to the Sox so crushing that Randy Levine will be left to question his very existence.

Rays: Sure, losing Crawford -- and within the division, no less -- is a vicious blow. And the bullpen must be rebuilt almost from scratch, though there are intriguing pieces in place, beginning with rookie lefty Jake McGee. But do not overlook them -- this is still an 88-92 win team, and if Manny plays for Joe Maddon the way we think Manny will play for Joe Maddon, another three-horse race isn't a possibility as much as it is a likelihood.

Blue Jays: If Jose Bautista remains a reasonable facsimile of the slugging beast he has been since September 2009 . . . if Adam Lind's lousy '10 proves the aberration rather than his breakthrough '09 season . . . If this is the year Travis Snider's numbers reflect his talent . . . If Aaron Hill gets a few breaks on batted balls . . . If Brett Lawrie arrives sometime during the summer looking every bit as dynamic at the plate as he looked this spring . . . If John Farrell connects with a talented young pitching staff . . . well, this is probably still a fourth-place team. But it's a damn interesting one at that.

Orioles: He didn't live up to that Benchian rookie season PECOTA projected for him as a rookie, and his .721 career OPS is a bit of a disappointment. Still, Matt Wieters is just 24. It makes sense that catchers almost always long to develop (which is also why Jarrod Saltalamacchia is such a shrewd low-risk move). I'll bet you that three years from now, Wieters is the consensus best offensive catcher in the AL, presuming Joe Mauer is playing another position or has been completely driven crazy by Target Field.

AL CENTRAL
Twins: Seriously, Mauer had one homer -- equaling the fearsome Trevor Plouffe's home output -- and 29 RBIs in 281 plate appearances at Target Field last season. I know the new ballpark is death on lefties, but still, how does this happen?

Tigers: If Miggy Cabrera is this consistently awesome with all of his sad off-the-field issues, just imagine what he might do if he gets his life in order.

White Sox Almost picked the White Sox for first, but I just can't get a fair read on them. If Carlos Quentin and Jake Peavy perform well and are reasonably healthy -- say, 145 games and 25 starts, respectively -- this could be a playoff team. They could also spontaneously combust. That's life with Ozzie.

Royals: Should Lorenzo Cain prove as good as he looked this spring, that Zack Greinke deal that I for one hated might start looking pretty good, too.

Indians Not that I'm bitter from spending a fifth-rounder pick on him in fantasy last year, but there's a better chance of Ted Sizemore making a complete comeback.

AL WEST
Rangers: A reluctant choice to repeat, since I'm not sure Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler can stay out of the trainer's room. And without Cliff Lee, they should have committed to Neftali Feliz as a starter, just as the Sox should give strong consideration to doing the same with Daniel Bard over the next couple of seasons.

Angels: That golden-gloved Wells-Bourjos-Hunter outfield trio will have some new best friends: the entire Angels pitching staff.

A's: Love the young rotation Curt Young left behind, especially Brett Anderson if he's healthy. But a lineup with Coco Crisp leading off and David DeJesus hitting third isn't winning anything of note.

Mariners: Few have a cooler name for a hitter than Justin Smoak, but it was tough to tell last year whether he was more prospect or suspect. The Mariners probably already regret not taking the Yankees' package led by Jesus Montero in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes.

NL EAST
Braves: Old friend Derek Lowe is pitching Opening Day, but this is the year Tommy Hanson becomes a genuine ace.

Phillies: The rotation could be legendary, but tell me, from where do they get their support? Utley's on the verge of a lost season, Werth's in Washington, and Howard had fewer homers than Papi last season. Halladay, Lee, Hamels and Oswalt deliver a wild-card bid, but the offense fails them in the end.

Nationals: The Zimmermen(n) shall lead them to respectability.

Marlins: Last year, Hanley lost 42 points on his batting average, 101 points on his OPS, three homers, 30 RBIs, and 14 doubles off his '09 totals. Now 27 and presumably healthy, the bet here is that his performance is back to his previous exceptional norm.

Mets: Celtics fans griping about the loss of Kendrick Perkins sound a lot to me like the Sox fans who thought letting Jason Bay depart was a colossal mistake. So keeping in mind that Bay had just 401 at-bats last year because of a concussion, here's a partial list of Red Sox players who had more homers than Bay last season: Marco Scutaro, Jed Lowrie, Darnell McDonald, J.D. Drew, Bill Hall, and Jason Varitek.

NL CENTRAL
Reds: If he can do anything at all against lefthanded pitching, Jay Bruce will join Joey Votto in the superstar stratosphere. In a related note, how would a rematch of the '75 World Series work for you? Because we've just talked ourselves into it.

Brewers: A trendy sleeper pick, but one that makes a lot of sense, especially if/when Ryan Braun improves on his 25-homer output of a year ago and Greinke comes back from his foolish injury with redemption on his mind.

Cardinals: Even if Albert Pujols's contract situation doesn't have an averse effect, losing Adam Wainwright to Tommy John surgery is probably too much to overcome.

Cubs: Good riddance to Red Sox killer and All-Expectorate Team selection Matt Garza, a fly ball pitcher who probably won't find Wrigley much to his liking.

Pirates: They haven't had a winning season since 1992, way back in the dead ball era when Tim Wakefield was a rookie and the condition of Barry Bonds's anatomy was not headline news. There is a sliver of hope now. Andrew McCutcheon and Pedro Alvarez are capable of being the core of a quality team. Hopefully it will be this one. Pittsburgh deserves better.

Astros: Poor, poor Millsy.

NL WEST
Rockies: You read it here first (unless Tim Kurkjian or someone said it a month ago, I suppose): Tulo finishes a close second to Pujols for MVP, with CarGo earning the bronze.

Giants: Come to think of it, Brandon Belt is an even better hitter's name than Justin Smoak . . . and based on this spring, a better hitter, too.

Dodgers: Clayton Kershaw, our pick for the NL Cy Young Award this season presuming he gets any run support at all, was picked seventh overall in the 2006 draft -- but was the sixth pitcher selected, behind Luke Hochevar (1, Royals), Greg Reynolds (2, Rockies), Brad Lincoln (4, Pirates), Brandon Morrow (5, Mariners), and Red Sox project Andrew Miller (6, Tigers). Tim Lincecum (10, Giants) and Max Scherzer (11, D-Backs) also went in the top 11 picks that year.

Diamondbacks: Not that they're counting on Daniel Hudson to blossom, but last season, they had five pitchers who made at least 17 starts. Their respective win totals: 9, 7, 7, 6, 6. Not exactly the days of Johnson/Schilling, is it?

Padres: San Diego hit 132 home runs as a team last season; Adrian Gonzalez had 31 of them. The leading returning home-run hitter is Will Venable, with 13. Anthony Rizzo can't make it soon enough.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

As I've said here many times (and usually via an overdose of maudlin nostalgia, I know), I wanted to work for the Globe since I was a little kid covertly swiping the Sunday sports section from my dad so I could read Gammons's baseball column before him. If Gammons said the Sox were going to get, say, Shane Rawley from the Mariners, well, I had to know it first, dammit.

So it's probably no surprise that all these years later I still get giddy about the baseball preview section. To be able to contribute to it these past few years is a privilege, probably my absolute favorite thing about my job. I couldn't be cynical about it if I tried.

Anyway, here are two of my small contributions to this year's preview: A look at ESPN's new Sunday Night Baseball broadcasting team, with the requisite jabs at the departed Joe Morgan, and a brief that expanded into more than that on Dr. Frank Jobe and Dr. James Andrews, the former the pioneer of Tommy John surgery and the latter the man who pretty much made his career by saving Roger Clemens's way back in 1985.

Along with Sean Smith, I also pulled together a page on Red Sox seasons that were derailed or affected by injury, the theme this year being that attrition is the only thing that can stop this stacked roster. If you know me, you know I got a '78 Butch Hobson mention in there. I think you'll have to check out the section in the paper yesterday to see that, though.

One that did not make our cut was 1986, when Tom Seaver's late-season knee injury kept him out of the postseason, indirectly leading to more than a cameo for Al Nipper in the World Series. Nipper pitched OK in his Game 4 start, but in Game 7 he got lit up like he was . . . well, he did have his moments (four starts of eight or more innings in which he allowed three or fewer runs). It's fair to presume that a healthy Seaver might have risen to the occasion against the Mets, the team with which he made his name.

That makes a lovely segue to one other item about the '86 Sox. (I was about to say "has it really been 25 years?" but come to think of it that season actually feels longer ago.) This is about a member of that Sox club who did get a chance to accomplish some memorable things that season -- the admirable Hendu, Dave Henderson.

Tonight at 9 p.m. on the MLB Network, its "20 Greatest Games" series will continue with Game 5 of the 1986 ALCS, which checks in at No. 8. It's compelling stuff -- here's a sample clip of the episode -- not only because of Hendu's season-saving ninth-inning home run, but of course because of the tragedy that happened in the years afterward.

Donnie Moore, the pitcher who served up the homer, shot his wife and committed suicide three years later. Henderson, who is joined by former Sox lefty Bruce Hurst and Angels second baseman Bobby Grich on the panel that discusses the game as it is being replayed, said he appeared on the program to give context to the effect the homer had on Moore. Henderson said to this day he will hear people whisper when he's out in public, "That's the guy who killed Donnie Moore." Which is just terribly wrong in every way.

In a lighter moment, Henderson noted that he felt no pressure from the supposed Curse of the Bambino.

"I’m from California," he said, "and we don’t do curses there.”

The Red Sox haven't had many more likable players than Hendu. Tell me again why they gave him away for Randy Kutcher?

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

So as you may have heard, Orioles manager Buck Showalter shared these deep thoughts on Theo Epstein in an interview with Men's Journal . . .

"I’d like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay payroll. You got Carl Crawford ’cause you paid more than anyone else, and that’s what makes you smarter? That’s why I like whipping their butt. It’s great, knowing those guys with the $205 million payroll are saying, ‘How the hell are they beating us?’ ”

. . . so in the spirit of equal time or an eye for an eye or stupid is as stupid does or whatever the saying is, how about this? How about we share a few not-so-deep thoughts on Buck Showalter with a long overdue Silly Friday Baseball Post while the Orioles prepare to raise their 2010 September AL East Championship banner.

Yes? OK! The rebuttal is on!

• Nope, that card is not a photoshop -- he really did play pro ball in the Yankees system. Seven seasons, in fact, and he was pretty good. He hit .294 while rising as high as Triple A, and his '80 season at Double A Nashville is fascinating statistically: He hit .324 with 1 homer, 82 RBIs, 53 walks and 23 strikeouts. Unfortunately for him, slow 5-foot-9-inch first basemen/outfielders with 17 homers in 793 career games are yet to be recognized as an undervalued asset in major league baseball.

• His Triple A experience was brief -- 14 games for the '82 Columbus Clippers and 18 more in '83 -- but man, he got to be part of one the most interesting and eclectic minor league teams of all time. Check out these names from the '83 roster: Don Mattingly, Steve Balboni, Butch Hobson, Rowland Office, Rex Hudler, Bert Campaneris (this was at the height of Steinbrenner's hoarding of washed-up stars), Dan Pasqua, Dennis Werth (Jayson's step-dad), minor-league legend Matt Winters, Rick Reuschel, and a handsome devil named Otis Nixon. In fact, of 21 hitters to play for Columbus that season, Showalter is the only one who didn't play in the majors.

• His real name is William (Billy Showalter?), but lore has it that he got his nickname because of his charming habit of walking around the clubhouse naked. As in, buck naked. Creepy in the real world, relatively witty and normal for the baseball world. I guess we should all be grateful that Charlie Manuel isn't the one nicknamed Buck.

• Showalter, who'd probably be uptight at a Jimmy Buffett concert, doesn't strike me a Men's Journal type of guy. Miniature Tyrannical Baseball Manager Monthly seems more likely. Never heard of it? Niche publication. Earl Weaver was on the inaugural cover, I believe.

• If he said stuff like this on "Baseball Tonight," he might have actually been, you know, interesting.

• As for payroll making Theo smarter . . . well, yeah, of course. The Red Sox' financial advantages allow him to cover for his major mistakes in a manner that Andrew Friedman can't. And you almost feel a twinge of guilt when your favorite team snaps up Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez in a span of, what, five days? (Almost, I said. Then I remember the Yankees exist.) But what's mildly annoying about Showalter's statement is that he doesn't acknowledge that Theo has proven pretty damn smart over his nine seasons here, even with the built-in advantages. His list of shrewd moves (Papi, Mueller, believing in Pedroia, keeping Youkilis and Ellsbury . . . hell, you know the list) is far longer than poor ones (Arroyo for Wily Mo, Lugo, Renteria, Lugo, and don't forget Lugo). To put it another way, if every team in baseball had the same payroll down to the dime, I'd be extremely confident that Theo would put together a terrific team with a productive farm system.

• All snark, facetiousness, and feeble one-liners aside, it's pretty obvious what Showalter was trying to do: Give his team an us-against-the-rich-boys attitude, an actual identity that goes beyond their usual Punchline/Punching Bag of the AL East status. The Orioles are interesting team this year, with the acquisitions of Mark Reynolds, Vlad Guerrero, and Derrek Lee and the reasonable assumption that Brian Matusz, Adam Jones, and Matt Wieters continue to improve and give hope to the next generation. They finished 34-23 under Showalter last year. They have more hope than they've had in awhile, and embracing the underdog role makes sense. You can't blame Showalter for trying to build on that, even if his words could haunt him when he looks up from the bottom of the standings at season's end and realizes the Orioles went 6-30 against the Red Sox and Yankees combined.

• All of that said . . . man, was he ever spot-on about Jeter.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Collectively, the 2011 Red Sox are the odds-on favorites to get to the World Series, and considering their remarkable talent individually serves as a pleasant confirmation of why they should be an outstanding team.

Now, can Opening Day Jon Lester's first Opening Day start please hurry up and get here?. . .

Carl Crawford: There's so much we're looking forward to in the longtime Ray's first season with the Red Sox: The spectacular range in the outfield, particularly his ability to turn what appear to be surefire bloop hits off the bat into routine outs . . . His catcher-tormenting speed on the basepaths. Having Crawford as a teammate must make Jason Varitek feel 10 years younger . . . The possibility of an inside-the-park homer every time he launches one toward the triangle or rips a grounder down the right field line in the vicinity of a visiting outfielder who is unwittingly about to be embarrassed by the ballpark's nuances . . . And there's the intriguing possibility that he will continue to increase his power, keeping in mind that he had just two fewer extra-base hits than Adrian Gonzalez last year. You know what might be the most fascinating thing of all? Seeing how much of a run producer he becomes batting third in this lineup. His career-high in RBIs is 90, set last year. He's had between 77 and 81 in three other seasons. Should Crawford stay in the third spot all season, with Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia batting in front of him (they combined for 209 runs scored in 2009 when they were both healthy), he should easily surpass 100 RBIs.
Such a milestone --- even with RBIs being a rudimentary counting stat -- would serve in terms of conventional wisdom as his confirmation as a genuine superstar.

Jacoby Ellsbury: Ignoring players' preferences and egos for a moment, I still think the most practical Sox lineup has Crawford leading off, followed by Pedroia, Gonzalez, Youkilis, and Papi, with Ellsbury batting ninth. But Ellsbury likes leading off, Crawford does not, and let's face it: Chattering about lineups is a helpful way to get through the winter drudgery, but no matter how Terry Francona organizes his starting nine (within reason), this team is going to score in the range of 850-900 runs. Besides, leading him off and restoring his status as the center fielder (Crawford will help cover some of his deficiencies as a defender) could benefit the Sox in another way, for putting him in those familiar and favored spots almost could be interpreted as a gesture that his controversial 2010 season is already forgotten by his bosses. Not that Ellsbury has anything to apologize for -- that duty falls on those of us who repeatedly questioned his toughness without an honest clue at our disposal.

Jose Iglesias: He kind of looks like Nomar there, doesn't he, slinging one from the hole while the Sea Dogs' Plywood Monster lurks in the background. By all accounts, his defense falls somewhere between dazzling and holy-cow-did-he-really-just-do-that?, sort of like Pokey '04 or Gonzo '06. His glove will get him to the majors soon, perhaps even this summer. It's all a matter of how he hits. You have to believe he'll be better than Rey Ordonez, to whom he's often compared, because there's no way the Red Sox give a regular job to a guy with a sub-.300 OBP unless he's on the grounds crew or something. (Ordonez was at .289 for his career, and no, his .310 slugging percentage didn't make up for it.) I actually don't believe there is all that much hyperbole in a Omar Vizquel comparison, especially if you notice that the longtime defensive wizard and possible future Hall of Famer didn't have an OPS over .600 until his fourth season and failed to surpass .700 until his eighth year.

Felix Doubront: Before the Adrian Gonzalez trade, which sent three players rated higher than him to the Padres, Baseball America tabbed the smooth lefthander as the eighth-best prospect in the Red Sox organization. ESPN's Keith Law ranked him seventh, fourth among pitchers. Those are both great sources, but I like him much better than they do, and I suspect you do, too. During his 12-appearance, three-start stint with the big club last season at age 22, he showed the poise of an established veteran, not to mention a much sharper curveball than was advertised, which helped account for his impressive 23 strikeouts in 25 innings. Provided this minor elbow situation is not a harbinger of problems ahead, I'm confident in saying that five years from now, when you pick up that dusty copy of the 2011 Prospect Handbook, you'll wonder how and why he wasn't rated higher.

Bobby Jenks: I'm sticking by what I said in the chat Friday: He's out of shape and had a 4.44 ERA last year, nearly a half-run higher than Papelbon. I realize he was unlucky on batted balls and had a high K-rate, but I'm not convinced he's the answer, either. He puts the fear of Gagne in me. Now, I'm not saying that signing him was a lousy decision. I love the idea of another late-inning option who can get a key strikeout: Manny Delcarmen never really became that guy. Jenks could become a spectacular success or a spectacular flameout, and neither would surprise me. What I'm saying is that those who will pine shrilly for Jenks to become the closer should Papelbon blow one in the season's early days had better be aware of what they're doing.

Junichi Tazawa: He's something of an afterthought at the moment, though not for the same reason as Michael Bowden, whose future is trapped in that Baseball Purgatory between Triple A and the majors. (I think Mike Rochford might still be there.) Tazawa is almost exactly a full year removed from the Tommy John surgery that cost him entire second season stateside, and full recovery typically takes 18 months, meaning his third season in the Red Sox organization will be dedicated to building up his arm strength more than anything else. I wasn't sure what his potential or ceiling was after the '09 season -- he featured a wide repertoire of pitches, but was neither overpowering nor looked overpowering, if that counts for anything. But he did have his flashes, and he won't turn 25 until June.

Matt Albers: Have to admit, I didn't quite understand why the Sox signed him to a major league deal for $875,000 back in December. He's had one above-average performance in five full or partial seasons. His career ERA is 5.11, he gives up more than 1.5 baserunners per inning and his strikeout-to-walk ratio is 1.4 to 1 over his career, and he pitched in relief for the Orioles the past three years, which is a strong hint that he hasn't been particularly successful. So after a little bit more research, here are the two possible clues to his appeal to the Sox as far as I can tell: He was third in the AL with 75.2 innings out of the bullpen, and he didn't give up a homer in 36 appearances after June 8. Hey, it's something.

Clay Buchholz: Now here's a fascinating case. In his age 25 season, Buchholz broke through as a legitimate top-of-the-rotation starter, a destination predicted for him since at least Sept. 1, 2007. He won 17 games, finished second in the AL with a 2.33 ERA, threw harder than ever and with much-improved command of that mesmerizing fastball-slider-changeup repertoire. Yet advanced metrics suggest that he had a considerable chunk of luck on his side last year. His fielding-independent pitching number, 3.61, was more than a run higher than his ERA, his batting average on balls in play, .261, suggested good fortune (or at least good positioning of his fielders), and his strikeout total (120 in 173.2 innings) was low. While I appreciate the predictive clues FIP and BABIP are giving us, I tend to think Buchholz, with his outstanding stuff and the poise and knowledge to help him utilize it, will have a very similar season to 2010, albeit with a slightly higher ERA, probably in the 3.00-3.20 range. I like the succinct way Baseball Prospectus put it in its annual: "Pitchers can have fantastic stuff without racking up strikeouts, and Buchholz is Exhibit A."

Mark Wagner: Meet the next Dusty Brown. That's not an insult. He's one of, what, probably a couple dozen catchers in Triple A who could carve out a nice career as a big league backup if only they were fortunate enough to fall into an opportunity. Wagner, a good defender who commands his pitchers' respect, was considered a decent prospect a couple of years ago, but he's struggled in two trials in Triple A (.210 average, .597 OPS), has battled injuries, and will turn 27 this summer. The odds are against him at this point, but at one time they were also against Mike Redmond and Francisco Cervelli and Matt Treanor and . . .

Hideki Okajima: I suppose it's not the worst-case scenario to have him back as the primary lefty in the 'pen. He was pretty effective in September/October (1.38 ERA, 1.00 WHIP in 13 innings over 15 appearances) But what had been a slight annual regression in his effectiveness since his terrific and unexpected 2007 season became an all-out cliff dive last season. Even with the relatively encouraging finish -- how much of that success came against September callups and Baltimore Orioles? -- he ended up with career worsts in H/9 (11.5), BB/9 (3.9), WHIP (a hideous 1.71), and ERA (4.50). You're feeling about his worthiness of a place on his roster probably directly correlates with a belief that his final month last season was not a mirage. Me, I'd rather see Dennys Reyes win the job.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

Collectively, the 2011 Red Sox are the odds-on favorites to get to the World Series, and considering their remarkable talent individually serves as a pleasant confirmation of why they should be an outstanding team.

Now, can Opening Day please hurry up and get here?. . .

Adrian Gonzalez: Gonzalez had a .980 OPS on the road last year; Mark Teixeira had a .968 OPS at home. Gonzalez had an. 821 OPS at home; Teixeira had a .728 OPS on the road. In 2009, his first in New York, Teixeira had a 141 OPS+; in 2010, his only season in Boston, Adrian Beltre had a 141 OPS+. What do these statistics mean in context? I have absolutely no idea, but I do know this: The number of Boston.com sportswriters who are still howling at the Red Sox for not signing Teixeira before the 2009 season is, by my count, down to a lonely one. Come toward the sunshine, Mazz. Gonzalez is here, Teixeira isn't, and that's a great thing going forward. To put it another way: If the former isn't superior to the latter over, say, the next five seasons, I'll eat both of Dennys Reyes's stirrup socks without any spices or condiments.

Jon Lester: Random stat: Red Sox lefthander-who's-totally-going-to-be-the-opening-day-starter Jon Lester and Rays southpaw ace David Price both faced the exact same number of batters last year (861). Random prediction: Lester and Price finish 1-2 in the AL Cy Young voting in 2011.

David Ortiz: Five players who hit fewer home runs than Papi's 32 last season: Ryan Howard (31), Adrian Gonzalez (31), Alex Rodriguez (30), Matt Holliday (28), Ryan Braun (25). Sometimes we focus so much on his slow recent Aprils and his slippage from the impossibly high standard of his prime that we forget that he's still one of the AL's better power hitters. At this point in his career, he's ideal as a No. 5 or 6 hitter, and he's capable of finishing in the top 10 in the AL in homers again (he was tied for 10th in the majors last season). One caveat: Should he struggle early against lefthanders like he did all of last year (two homers and a .599 OPS in 200 plate appearances), it's on Terry Francona to dole out some of his at-bats against lefties to Cameron, McDonald, and Jed Lowrie, even if it temporarily dents Papi's ego.

Andrew Miller: I'm as encouraged as anyone about the spring showing of Daniel Bard's college teammate and a former first-round pick of the Tigers (chosen sixth overall in 2006, a pick ahead of Clayton Kershaw and four picks before Tim Lincecum). Curt Young's first significant project as the Red Sox' pitching coach is shaping up to be a success, and I hope he sticks on the roster, because I do believe some alert big-market team will claim him if he is put on waivers even with his $1.3 million sticker price. The idea of actually counting on him, at least early this season . . . well, that's not a good idea. Miller is a long-term project, and if you're skeptical, consider these numbers from his nine-appearance, seven-start stint with the Marlins last year: 32.2 innings, 51 hits, 26 walks. His WHIP: 2.35. BB/9: 7.2. H/9: 14.1. That was his low point. To help him get to reach the high point of that potential, caution is the only wise approach.

Darnell McDonald: He was everything the Sox could possibly have hoped for in a replacement-level player, and his emergence after 13 years ricocheting around the minors was one of my favorite stories of the past several years, let alone 2010. With his versatility and useful righthanded stick, he'd be the ideal fifth outfielder for this team even presuming he regresses a bit. The suggestion, however, that he and Mike Cameron are redundant is foolish. McDonald had a 103 adjusted OPS last season. Cameron did better than that every year from 1999-2009, and he will again this season. The Sox shouldn't and won't have to choose between both players -- there's a spot on the team for Cameron and McDonald. But if they did keep just one, taking sentiment out of the equation, Cameron would be the easy choice, even at his advanced baseball age.

Lars Anderson: Those Justin Morneau comparisons from his heady days as a top-20 prospect a couple of years ago? They seem to have become Lyle Overbay comparisons, which isn't quite the same thing. He was surpassed last year by Anthony Rizzo and is blocked for the foreseeable future by Gonzalez, the superstar for whom Rizzo, Casey Kelly and Rey Fuentes were packaged. Much of his lost luster as a prospect is because he hasn't hit with the power projected, with just 10 homers in 409 at-bats at Pawtucket last year. But it's easy to forget because he's been on the prospect radar so long that he's just 23, and there's still hope. The best-case scenario for him and the Red Sox is that he goes back to Pawtucket, hits his way back into serious prospect status, and brings a useful piece in return come July 31.

Josh Reddick: His situation really isn't much different than Anderson's, with the main difference being that he's been surpassed by another prospect at the same position in Kalish (and perhaps Juan Carlos Linares soon). I'm wary that he'll ever command the strike zone well enough to be an everyday player in the majors -- I wouldn't be the first to make a Jeff Francoeur comparison -- but his .351/.372/.627 line in the second half in Pawtucket last year has to be worthy of some optimism. He's a great kid and I hope he makes it, but it would take a few unexpected plot twists for it to happen here.

Michael Bowden: For a pitcher who's just 24, has proven himself in Triple A (3.38 ERA and 1.17 WHIP over three partial or full seasons), does all the right things necessary to earn a steady big league job, and was rated a top-100 prospect by Baseball America each year from 2007-09 (not to mention No. 2 in the Sox organization entering 2009) . . . and yet, he's become pretty much an afterthought in terms of competing for a job this spring, mentioned after the likes of Alfredo Aceves, Miller, and Matt Albers if he's mentioned at all. I realizes he's stagnated, though no fault of his own, his stuff hasn't played well at the big league level so far (6.69 ERA in 36.1 innings), and his delivery is funkier than The Lionel in 1980. I still think he deserves more of a shot than he's had, and you could probably convince me that he's more capable than Tim Wakefield of filling the long relief/spot starter role effectively. Hey, it was just a year ago that the Sox apparently refused to part with him for Miguel Montero.

Alfredo Aceves: I'd like to think his switch from the Yankees to the Red Sox is the baseball gods' way of paying back Boston for the Ramiro Mendoza debacle. And Aceves's role with the Yankees -- he went 14-1 with a 3.21 ERA in 59 appearances (five starts) over parts of three seasons -- was reminiscent of the crucial role the rubber-armed Mendoza filled on their championship teams in the '90s. He could -- should -- be a savvy pickup by Theo Epstein, if for roster depth if nothing else. My lone concern comes when you read between the lines of Yankees general manager Brian Cashman's explanation as to why the Yankees didn't offer anything more than a non-guaranteed deal to a useful pitcher who is just 27 years old: He couldn't get healthy. I don't know whether Cashman, whose been on a candor kick since last offseason, meant to imply that Aceves is a malingerer. But his words certainly could be interpreted that way, and it's enough to convince me that the pitcher needs to earn his place on this staff.

Dan Wheeler: Don't know about you, but I haven't given the former Rays setup man a second thought this spring. I mean that entirely as a compliment. It's probably a bit unusual to be so confident in a new player who is being counted on to help the Red Sox' most glaring problem from last year (the bullpen as a whole, putting it in the broadest terms, but middle relief in particular). But he's so familiar, having spent the last three full seasons holding his own in the fierce AL East with Tampa Bay, and he's so uncommonly consistent for a reliever that he's about the least of the Sox' bullpen concerns, or certainly right there after Daniel Bard. That 0.00 ERA in nine appearances against the Sox last year probably doesn't hurt his perception around here, either.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

I've had it all wrong around here lately. (Whaddaya mean lately, Finn? BAHAHA. BURN! See there, I did it for you.) What I mean is this: This Red Sox season is as eagerly anticipated as any in recent memory. And yet in small part because there is so little drama and debate during the club's preparations in Ft. Myers, I haven't written about this team as much as I should.

That's a lousy approach to take to the plate, and it's time to remedy that. So here's the plan. Starting today and carrying through Thursday, I'll chime in with observations on 40 players; if you're lucky, some might even be insightful. That number seems appropriate, with the acknowledgment being that some of the non-roster invitees are more relevant than kids like Stolmy Pimentel and Oscar Tejada on the 40-man roster, at least in relation to this year's edition.

In the casual spirit of spring training, I'll write them up in no particular order, with the first 10 checking in below. Collectively the 2011 Red Sox are the odds-on favorites to get to the World Series. Looking at their remarkable talent individually serves as a pleasant reminder why they should form an outstanding team.

* * *

J.D. Drew: His career OPS against righthanded pitching: .921. Mike Cameron's career OPS against lefthanded pitching: .866. I don't know, looks like an extremely productive semi-platoon in right field to me.

Mike Cameron: Seriously, I don't get the suggestion of trading him whatsoever. Sure, it's a bit of a luxury to have a fourth outfielder on the books for $7.25 million. It's also a luxury the Red Sox can afford, one of those big-market perks that separate them from other shrewd teams without a permanently open checkbook such as the Rays. The Red Sox' three starting outfielders are lefthanded hitters. Two have been known to spend a few weeks of the summer on the disabled list. Cameron is a righthanded hitter, and a relatively accomplished one, with eight seasons of 20-plus homers on the back of his baseball card. You don't deal him for someone else's spare part just because he's overqualified for his role. You keep him, knowing that such high-quality depth is going to matter at some point, and you're going to be happy you kept him around when it does.

Daisuke Matsuzaka: I know, he drives me absolutely crazy too, and he didn't even wait until the regular season to break out his full enigma routine this year. But if, as the rumor goes, the Red Sox would consider trading him to the Angels for Scott Kazmir, there can be only one logical reason: Theo is convinced Matsuzaka is Victor Zambrano in disguise. Otherwise, as -- well, annoying -- as he can be, his immediate future is brighter than Kazmir's. The Angels lefty's once-great slider has abandoned him, his velocity is way down (his K-rate of 5.6 last season is roughly half of what it was in his best years in Tampa Bay), he walked 4.7 batters per nine innings last year, and he has never had the command to make that Tanana-style transition from power pitcher to savvy control artist. Dice-K is frustrating, maddening, all of those things, but at least there's hope. Kazmir? Let's put it this way: His most similar pitcher is Dontrelle Willis. His best days are behind him, and the good old days weren't always good anyway.

Dennys Reyes: His K/9 ratio dipped to a career-low 5.9 last season, one indication that his days as an effective lefty specialist are waning. Sox fans may also shudder at the discovery that his most similar comp is J.C. Romero, who was a washout in a similar role here in 2007. But Reyes is arguably the most qualified pitcher vying for the lefty relief role with the Sox -- check out that stellar 2006 season -- and should the rotund southpaw win the role and find early success, you know he will be wildly popular at Fenway, a latter-day lefty version of Rich Garces. (The Guaposite? I know, I'm sorry.)

Rich Hill: Best-case scenario: The new motion takes, and he becomes the 2009-10 version of Randy Choate, who made 146 appearances for the Rays over the past two seasons, holding lefthanded hitters to a .385 OPS in '09 and a .529 OPS last year. Worst-case scenario: It doesn't take, his command is still his downfall, and he bounces to his fifth organization since February 2009 before the season is through.

Jarrod Saltalamachia: The pitchers are frequent -- and sound genuine -- in their compliments for how he calls and manages a game, his throws back to the mound have been crisp and uneventful, he's just 25, and he did hit .266 with 11 homers in 308 at-bats as a 22-year-old rookie. Maybe it's just a side effect of the natural optimism of this time of year, but I've convinced myself that the Sox will reap the benefits of picking up a player they have long coveted at the perfect time.

Jason Varitek: Tek's OPS as a righthanded batter against lefthanded pitching each year from 2007-10: .801, .863, .807, .868. Again, I'm a convert and a believer. This catching situation really could work well.

Yamaico Navarro: Now, this isn't a prediction that he'll have a similarly distinguished career, but the kid's stance and swing remind me of John Valentin. (Related to absolutely nothing for our purposes here, every time I hear about Chase Utley's patellar tendinitis, I get flashbacks to Val blowing out his knee on a routine play in May 2000.)

Daniel Nava: The first-pitch grand slam was an unforgettable storybook moment, but the non-fiction reality here is that he's 28 years old, didn't hit another home run from plate appearance No. 2 to No. 188 last season, and has been weirdly flighty this spring to the point that Terry Francona seemed to call him out about it with the media. Realistically, his best hope for steady playing time is either Pawtucket or a trade to, say, Pittsburgh.

Ryan Kalish: Watching him now as such a likable young prospect, it's very easy to foresee him having a long, productive career that ends up a dozen or so years from now right there in the J.D. Drew/Trot Nixon color wheel. If he can avoid their familiarity with the trainer's room, perhaps he can even surpass what they have done. But . . . it's the right thing to do to send him back to Pawtucket and let him play every day this spring. He won't turn 23 until later this month, he has a little more than 300 at-bats above Double A, and for all of the acclaim during his turn in the big leagues, he did bat just .252 with a .710 OPS. The Red Sox are wise to give him time.

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

If you're among those Red Sox fans convinced that the offseason exodus of Carl Crawford among others means the Tampa Bay Rays will cease being anything more dangerous than a nuisance in 2011 and beyond, well, let's just say we have some suggested reading for you.

Jonah Keri -- the esteemed baseball and business writer, Expos fan, and, lest we forget, ambassador of the Friendly Toast, the official breakfast place of this blog -- makes a case as entertaining as it is thorough in his new book that the Rays, even with their financial disadvantages, are as smart, thorough, and progressive as any organization in baseball.

The book, titled The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took A Major League Baseball Team From Worst To First, details how the Rays' current management team -- namely owner Stu Sternberg, president Matt Silverman, and general manager Andrew Friedman, all of whom come from a Wall Street background -- resuscitated the franchise after the disastrous inaugural ownership regime of Vince Naimoli.

"The Extra 2%," which hit the shelves today, is a worthy companion to "Moneyball" on that edge of your baseball bookshelf that bumps up against the business section. It's a terrific read, insightful, breezy, and overflowing with fresh anecdotes. Long before you turn the final page, you will respect not only the Rays' results, but the process in which they got to them.

What follows is a fun conversation I had with Jonah a few days ago regarding the book , the Rays, and how it all relates to the Red Sox. Warning: The Q&A; is long. We think you'll find it worth the read; we know you'll love the book.

Before we get to all the good baseball stuff from the book, let's start with the prologue to the project. How did the "Extra 2%" come about?

Keri: "It's a funny story. I used to post on an Expos message board in the late '90s. I read Bill James as a kid, wrote about stats before -- well, Rob Neyer was writing about stats before, but not a lot of other people -- and I was just some guy. I was not a professional writer, I was just some guy. And I would write things down. Some people thought I was totally bonkers or an idiot or whatever, and some people were like, 'Oh, that's kind of interesting.' But nothing came of it and I went about my business and I started writing more about baseball.

"So almost a decade later, like in 2007, I got an e-mail from this guy. He said, 'You don't know me, but I was username AZbullpen coach on the same Expos board as you.' He said, 'I love what you did, kept tabs on you, and now I'm editor at Random House. We should totally work together.' I was like, 'Cmon.' I thought it was one of my buddies or something. But no, it turned out the be for real. The next summer, when the Rays started doing well, I got a call from that guy [Paul Taunton] along with Steve Wulf, who is part of the ESPN book venture, and they both said, 'Hey, we want to do a sports and business book, and we feel like you would be a good fit.' I went to New York, met with them, and it was a great fit as far as my curiosity for sports and business is concerned. Michael Lewis was not available is my guess."

We talked a couple of times about the project as you were working on it in various phases, and it seemed there was always some new discovery or piece of information that you were fired up about discovering, whether it was the tragicomic tyranny of the Vince Naimoli ownership era or Joe Maddon's background that almost destined him to become a manager or the remarkable business acumen of Sternberg, Silverman, and Friedman, and the current regime. Was there one thing that stood out to you as the most interesting?

Keri: "No, it was a lot of things, really. One of the things about 'Moneyball' -- and there are going to be some comparisons to 'Moneyball' -- Michael Lewis is a fantastic storyteller, but he has a specific narrative and he's going to go with it. That's not a criticism, that's just the way it is.

"I did not go out and say the scouts are fat and lazy. That's just not my style. I'm not saying I'm right and he's wrong, it's just a different approach. So I really dug in and found out kind of the opposite, that the Rays were really built on scouting and player development. I wanted to get into that they drafted, whoever, David Price first overall, that's all good, but tell me a little more behind that. Tell me a little something more about player development. I wanted to know how it is they kept their pitchers' mechanics consistent throughout the minors. I wanted to know how they created fully-formed prospects who come up to the majors and contribute immediately, and call them up at the right time so they weren't wasting service time. A lot of teams will bring guys up and for the first two or three years [they're terrible] and don't mature until later. That's terrible for the Rays, they need rookies to be good.

"I learned about that, I learned about Joe Maddon after spending a day with his family and friends and everybody that he ever knew in his hometown, I learned about stadium economics, I learned about Vince Naimoli. Good god, Vince Naimoli. There's definitely a narrative that flows throughout the book, but you can also read it as 12 different entities or 12 different messages as far as the chapters go. I really tried to give something to the reader that they could learn from, hopefully, and I was learning a lot with them."

The aspect that is going to be eye-opening to my audience is not only the collective intelligence of the Rays front office, but their desire to seek every possible advantage and the progressive ways in which they do so . Entering the project, how aware were you of the depths of the Rays' quest for information and how they got the organization to this point?

Keri: "It occurred to me as I'm researching the book, I'm thinking 'Well, wait a minute.' Maybe this whole extra two percent idea, I came in thinking they just scout well and they draft well.' But there's a whole chapter about marketing, and that's not something I set out to do when I started the book.

"It became obvious as I went that that was very important to them because of all of the damage Naimoli and his cronies had caused. So to send all the ushers and everybody to Disney World basically for reorientation . . . you know, some people aren't going to find that all that interesting, they're going to want to talk about batting average. But I thought it was fascinating, and I thought it was part and parcel for how they turned this organization around. So that's what I found with the extra two percent. It's two percent of anything you can absolutely think of -- what their parking attendants are like, that they upgraded the quality of their food. They still don't draw all that well, and they've got some financial issues, 13 percent unemployment in Tampa Bay doesn't help. But listen, but they are much better off, on the field , but even off the field, they really, really are much better off than they used to be."

Speaking of the original ownership, Vince Naimoli comes across as the right man to get a franchise in Tampa/St. Pete after MLB jerked them around for so many years, and the absolute wrong man for just about every other aspect of ownership. To call him temperamental and thrifty is probably generous on both counts. Hypothetical question, playing off his most infamous moment as the owner. If you were a Tampa/St. Pete cop, you pulled over Naimoli, and he pulled the "Do you know who I am card," what would your answer be?

Keri: (Laughs): "Uh, not good, not good . . . do-you-know-who-I-am doesn't usually play well, and Vince Naimoli's tenure is encapsulated perfectly well by do-you-know-who-I-am. There's a story about that he lobbied the city of Tampa complaining that he didn't have a parking spot reserved just for him at the airport. When a raccoon lurks around his property, he writes these letters to the city about the quote "pesky raccoon who's terrorizing his family." And then there's the stuff just within the day to day operations. One of the great stories -- and this is something that I found out that I'm not sure has ever been reported before -- he didn't have e-mail until 2003. That's really weird. Every company had e-mail by then unless you're talking about some mom-and-pop shop or something. You can't run a major league organization that way, but he did. And it's not just that he hadn't heard of e-mail. He knew what it was. He just didn't feel like it was useful. He wanted people to write memos, he wanted people to write on both sides of memos [to save paper] for that matter. And it had to be his way. Just to have a micro-manager of that degree, and someone who kind of ruled with an iron fist, sometimes that can be a positive thing. This was not a positive way. People were scared for their jobs. Ushers threw an old lady out of the park because she brought in a Ziploc bag full of 15 cashew nuts. And manifested itself all the way down from the top.

"It's the opposite with Stu -- and with Stu, I don't even mean Stu. I mean Matt Silverman, because it's not just that Stu delegates. He lives in New York and gets criticism from people in Tampa. But he hands off. He talks to Matt every single day. But Matt's the guy who is in charge of the team. And from that, Matt is going to delegate. The guy in charger of stadium operations, he is going to do his thing. The guy who is in charge of public relations is going to do his thing. And on and on it goes. And that's a very Wall Street mentality. When you're at Goldman Sachs and you're the CEO, you do not get your hands duty. You're down like seven levels before there are people trading. From that respect, I don't think Stu thought it was below him to do that kind of stuff. The culture was always, hire good people, and then trust them to do a good job."

Joe Maddon, then Mike Scioscia's bench coach with the Angels, was a candidate for the Red Sox managerial opening that went to Terry Francona after the 2003 season. He got the Rays job in November 2005, and it's fair to suggest both franchises ended up with their ideal manager. You posed the question in the book: What would have happened had Maddon gotten the Boston job and, hypothetically, Francona ended up running the Rays? New England demands an answer!

Keri: "You know, in my mind, Joe Maddon is probably the best manager in baseball. Nobody does tactically . . . I love the fact that he's open-minded. He will try things. I talked about it in the book, the Danks Theory, but there was a point where they were getting slaughtered by Mike Mussina every single time. A couple of their stats guys said, hey, look, maybe we should start righthanded hitters against [the righthanded-throwing] Mussina because he kills lefties, and they smoked the guy. They did the same against John Danks and Shaun Marcum and it kept working. It's two or three games per season, but in the AL East, if you can find a way to win 2-3 games by turning your bats around, that's gigantic. He was willing to do that.

"I think Francona has some of that, I don't think he goes quite as far as Joe, but he is somewhat intellectually curious, and he still has good player management values. Both of those guys do that very well. Dustin Pedroia is his own character. I think that Francona has a way with him. Manny Ramirez is his own character. I think Manny Ramirez is going to do fine under Joe Maddon. All these things play out well because they are good managers of men and they are open-minded. So I think it's possible that the two teams would have ended up with pretty similar results. Maddon's my No. 1 manager in baseball, but you could make a case that Francona is No. 2."

I'd have them flipped. Francona has to deal with more ancillary stuff because of the demands and magnitude of the market, for one thing. But we all have our biases.

Keri: "Well, it's exposure, and you see how he is all the time. Forget about the subjective things with Francona. He's an old-time Expo, so I've been a Terry Francona fan for 30 years. He was a great singles hitter. He wrecked his knees, but until then he was a real good hitter. Underrated player. And you wouldn't know it now, but he had great hair." (Laughs.)

Talking to Red Sox fans and hearing from readers, I get the sense that the majority of fans around here think the Rays have peaked. A big part of that perception is because of all of the departures in the offseason -- Carl Crawford switching allegiances, trading Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett, basically having to rebuild their entire bullpen. But given the depth of their farm system and that they have may have internal upgrades in a couple of spots, it strikes me as dangerous to presume that they will be going away anytime soon.

Keri: "Yeah, I think that predicting them to be as good as last year is probably pushing it, even for the biggest Rays optimist or cheerleader. But they do do a good job of plugging holes, and someone like Garza for instance, and Bartlett, too, they got those guys in an unbelievably good trade that was considered very [gutsy] at the time. They gave up Delmon Young, who was coming off what seemed like a very good rookie season, very good young guy, No. 1 prospect according to Baseball America, 96 RBIs as a rookie. And they traded him for Garza and Bartlett, who became linchpins of the 2008 AL champs. So to flip them just three years later, that was interesting.

"But they have replacements, just like they did with Delmon Young. And in this case, the replacements are great. Jeremy Hellickson might be as good as Matt Garza or even better than Matt Garza right now. He's a frontrunner for AL rookie of the year. And I like Reid Brignac at shortstop. Bartlett was a serviceable player but not great. Brignac is younger, certainly a better fielder, and he has upside. He's hit some big home runs at Yankee Stadium, done some things over his short career.

"With the bullpen, had they kept all those guys [Rafael Soriano, Joaquin Benoit, and Grant Balfour were among the departures], they would not have been as good as last year -- every single guy had a career year. Benoit, I don't know if many people realize, that was almost Eckersley-esque what he did last year. Forget about Soriano. Benoit was un-freaking-hittable. He had something like an 7-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He was dominant, just a killer. Obviously Soriano was great, Balfour was great, so they just had the 7th, 8th, and 9th locked down. If you were trailing in those innings, you were going to lose automatic.

"But had they kept them, they wouldn't have been as good. Major League baseball teams pay for whatever happened most recently, and because these guys had career years, the got monster contracts. Soriano got $35 million to be a setup man. That's crazy. Benoit, who was coming off major surgery a year ago and was signed by the Rays on a minor-league contract, ends up making $750,000 last year. He got what, $18 million from the Tigers? Just unbelievable. They were not going to be in the running then even if they had a $90 million to $100 million payroll.

"Now, it is a question mark. You don't know what young guys like Jake McGee will do. I really like Adam Russell, think he's the guy to watch in that bullpen. But we don't know if they're going to succeed. [Kyle] Farnsworth has a bad reputation, but he's actually been pretty good the last two years. But we don't know. It's one thing to say we're going to save money, and it's another thing to find the right guys. We don't know if they've found the right guys. But there's a process. They get guys with good strikeout rates who keep the ball in the ballpark who on paper at least have a chance to succeed."

The one guy who is the most challenging to replace is now here in Boston. While Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon were intriguing signings and Matt Joyce and Desmond Jennings have promise, there's no way around the fact that Carl Crawford leaves a tremendous void, is there?

Keri: "Yeah, the one thing that is going to be hardest to replace is Crawford. Manny Ramirez, there's a chance he's the best hitter on the whole team, including Evan Longoria. If you talk about advanced metrics wOBA, things like that, he's better than Longoria even at this point in his career. So if he's healthy he'll be fantastic. But Manny's value is hitting, and that's it. Crawford brought everything, of course. Sox fans are going to love that -- he can run, obviously, he can catch the ball, he has become quite a dangerous hitter. That's going to be tough to replace. Carlos Pena [the longtime Rays first baseman who signed with the Cubs over the winter] hit .196 last year, so a lot of the losses aren't a terribly big deal and made a lot of sense. But Crawford is the double-whammy in going over to the Red Sox."

It's been fun this spring to learn about Crawford as more than just Mr. Tampa Bay Ray, the guy who tormented Jason Varitek for nine years. His work ethic, his leadership skills, his personality away from the field. What are the Sox getting in him away from the field, and how is he evolving as a player from your perspective?

Keri: "The No. 1 characteristic of Carl Crawford is that he works like a lunatic. The guy's running up mountains, squatting 800 pounds, and it's not for show. He doesn't do it because there's a reporter there, he does it all the time. And you know what's so funny about Crawford? In the 2008 season, which is kind of the reason the book took place, he was hurt, he had a hamstring problem, even when he was in the lineup he was clearly playing hurt. It's hard to know how much that affected him that season, especially when he had hamstring problems, because to a player of his skills, hamstrings are everything. But he really just kept getting better from there. In 2009 he got better, and 2010 he got even better than that, adding power, too. [A career-high 19 home runs.]

"It's unfortunate that Fenway doesn't play well for lefthanded pull-hitters, really. It takes a bomb to get it out of there in right-center. Adrian Gonzalez is going to be awesome because he sprays the ball around the field with power. Crawford's not going to hit it 360 feet to left-center, because that's not really his skill-set. But tons of double and triples are in play. He might be on a home-run trajectory -- had he signed with the Yankees, he might have hit 25 or so home runs this year. He will show an incredibly broad set of skills, though I do think it's a quasi-waste to have him playing in such a shallow left field as Fenway's. His instincts are amazing. If you've ever watched him play left field at Fenway, he fields the Monster as well as Yaz, Jim Rice, anyone whose played out there for 10 years and knows all the nooks and crannies. Crawford gets that. He'll go up the wall when he needs to, he'll play the carom, he'll hold guys to singles, and that's as a visitor. Forget about the fact that now you've got him for seven years.

"This is a guy who works extremely hard, he's supremely talented, has very good baseball instincts . . . and I reject the notion, by the way, that this is a lot of money for a speed guy. What often happens with speed guys, and Bill James has talked about this, is that they tend to develop other skills. If you have five tools to start, even if speed is your most prominent, those other skills will develop. Like Bobby Abreu was super-crazy fast when he was a young player and a great fielder, and OK, those skills kind of went away, but he kept the on-base ability, throwing, started hitting for more power and other things came on. I think you could see that with Crawford as his career goes on. Right now, he's kind of a hacker and has moderate power. Maybe he just notches it up a little bit, a few more walks, a few more bombs, as the stolen bases and baserunning goes down just a check, and we're still talking about one of the three or four fastest guys in baseball as we sit here right now."

The Bobby Abreu reference reminds me of how many great what-if stories there are in this book. What if Chuck LaMar hadn't traded him for Kevin Stocker? What if the Rays had drafted Mark Teixeira instead of easy-sign Dewon Brazelton with the third pick in the 2001 draft? And the greatest one of all, and one Red Sox fans can relate to since they have a similar story with this player: What if the Rays had listened to the scout who desperately wanted to draft Albert Pujols?

Keri: "You know, I think if you talked to somebody within a lot of teams, the story may be apocryphal or maybe not, but they'll be like, 'Oh, yeah, we were in on Albert Pujols too,' because you have 29 teams who don't want to have egg on their face, they want to make you believe they were in on him. But this particular scout [who coveted Pujols for the Rays], Fernando Arongo has a great reputation in the game, scouted and signed a ton of guys, Jason Bay and a ton of others.

"This story about Pujols had been reported before, but I don't think it was quite teased out as much as I did. I really talked to Arongo for a while, about driving down to meet Pujols for breakfast at Denny's and all of this and how much he got to know Albert and how much he believed in him. It was really fascinating how it went down.

"And yeah, the what-if, you can talk about that with any franchise, you can talk about the Sox and all that, but for the Rays, especially when they were the Devil Rays, it was much more painful. It was such a vicious cycle. If they had Pujols, then maybe they don't go out and spend for the [Hit] Show [when they signed fading sluggers such as Jose Canseco and Greg Vaughn], dumping all of this money on them, losing a guy like Abreu. . . they didn't do a good enough job with homegrown guys at first, and because they created a spiral situation, things kept getting worse on top of worse. They could just never recover. One of the things I talk about in the book is what is [then-GM] Chuck LaMar's role in all of this. Some of the blame goes on the scouting directors and player development and all of that. But LaMar is a good scout, a very good baseball man, and the nicest guy you could ever meet. He took two hours of his time to tell me how he went wrong. Who does that? But he even said, 'I was not cut out to whip a domineering boss into shape.' And that's what they needed because of Naimoli. And because they didn't have that, they got screwed, and because stuff like missing out on Pujols went down and Teixeira and all of that, LaMar didn't lobby enough, and then he didn't lobby harder to prevent further damage.

"So there was a vicious cycle going on with the Rays that, frankly, can happen with any team. You look at the bad years of the Red Sox, there's things compounded on top of each other, in the latter Yawkey years and before the current regime. It wasn't just one thing that was bad, it was a lot of things. A losing climate, dot-dot-dot. That was the story of the Red Sox at those times, and it was the story of the Devil Rays for sure."

By Chad Finn, Globe Staff

In this installment of our overly nostalgic homage 12-part series on the greatest Topps cards of all-time -- which, naturally, will conclude long after the cardmaker's own countdown -- let's hit a few grounders to shortstop . . .

1976 Robin Yount

I understand if you wonder why we didn't go with Yount's most famous and pricey card, his 1975 Topps rookie, even though it had a color scheme so gaudy it looked it must have been picked out by a young Vinny Testaverde. (He's colorblind. Get it? Oh, never mind.) We prefer the '76 in large part because Yount looks like Jeff Spicoli if he'd run with Jefferson and the jocks rather than hanging out in the van with the burnouts. With the references just getting timelier and timelier around here, let's move this thing along and take a poke at a baseball question. It's a fun one, I think:

Which player had the better career, Yount or his longtime Brewer teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Paul Molitor?

My guess, before checking the stats, is Molitor, who started faster and played at a supreme level longer, but because of injuries didn't have the consistent greatness in his prime that Yount did. Let's hop in the baseballreferencemobile and find out:

In his 21 seasons and 12,160 plate appearances, Molitor -- the third overall choice in the 1977 draft -- had 3,319 hits, scored 1,782 runs, hit 234 homers, drove in 1,307 runs, went .306/.369/.44 with an .817 OPS and a 122 OPS+, and is tied for 68th all-time in BR.com's version of WAR (74.8).

In his 20 seasons and 12,249 plate appearances, Yount -- the third overall choice in the 1973 draft -- had 3,142 hits, 1,632 runs, hit 251 homers, drove in 1,406 runs, went .285/.342/.430 with a .772 OPS and a 115 OPS+, and is 61st all-time in BR.com's version of WAR (76.9).

The objective verdict: Too close to call. Our subjective pick: Molitor by a headfirst slide, though anyone who prefers Yount's durability and defensive superiority certainly does not need to provide an explanation. And if you're curious, the players who fall between Yount and Molitor in WAR, from 62d to tied at 68 are: Eddie Plank, Bill Dahlen, Frank Thomas, Pete Rose (a logical comp for Molitor), and Frankie Frisch.

2001 Heritage Derek Jeter

Yeah, this is a bit of a cop out, using Jeter's 2001 Heritage card instead of something from one of Topps's more conventional sets, such as his 1992 draft pick card in which he appears to be wearing a Yankees uniform culled together from a shopping spree at the Sports Authority.