Presented without comment: Red Sox by fWAR:
1. Dustin Pedroia - 6.8
2. Jacoby Ellsbury - 5.6
3. Adrian Gonzalez - 5.3
Link time!
I wanted to write more about this but time is my enemy. So are goats. In any case, Sons of Sam Horn have a thread up about The Tim Bogar who, as you may recall, has sent many a player hurtling around third towards certain doom. In Tuesday night's game he sent pinch runner, starting catcher, and heir to Ichiro!'s exclamation point, Jarrod "Salty!" Saltalamacchia home on Jacoby Ellsbury's single to center field. He did this with less than two outs and the last two AL Players of the Month coming to bat in Dustin Pedroia and Adrian Gonzalez. Thanks to a great slide and a crappy throw Salty! was safe, but it doesn't take much to imagine him being thrown out and/or getting injured. Look, in a playoff game, you send him. With the back of the lineup due up, you probably send him. With two outs, sending him is defensible. But none of those were the case. We've all conveniently glossed over this partially because we're all at least a bit Bogar'd out, but mostly because Salty! was safe and the Red Sox won. It's nice to be able to ignore this, but it's a dangerous bit of coaching, and as SoSH notes, it's not like this is the first time Bogar has made bad decisions. Here's hoping the Red Sox don't get into a similar situation in a game that really matters.
A few times on the OTM Podcast, the subject of Tony La Russa has come up. I've always tried to redirect the conversation primarily because I don't think the listeners want to hear me swear for five minutes. This is part of the reason why I might. Tony La Russa may be a great baseball mind, but mostly it seems he's interested in showing everyone that he's a great baseball mind. A manager's job isn't to show off how smart he is and I find the practice to be unbecoming. What's more, La Russa put another player's health and career at risk not to mention his own team's welfare. That first part should be a suspendable offense and the second part should be a fireable one. Call me old fashioned but I dislike a manager actively attempting to torpedo his team's position in a tight playoff race.
In more humorous news, Alex Rodriguez is being investigated for his alleged part in an underground poker ring. SB Nation's Jeff Sullivan wonders whether or not any of this actually matters.
Kudos to Grantland for adding a few writers I like a lot in Rany Jazayerli and Jonah Keri. We'll start off with Mr. Keri who has penned two pieces about the trade deadline (one and two), both of which list the teams in order of their winnerness and/or loserness, both of which, I'm happy to report, aren't actual words. The Red Sox, in case you were wondering, finished sixth for their acquisition of Erik Bedard according to Mr. Keri, while the Yankees finished seventeenth for their acquisition of no one at all. What's more, deep within the caverns of his Red Sox paragraphs, Mr. Keri is kind enough to mention Over The Monster and author extraordinaire Patrick Sullivan. Join the revolution, gang.
Speaking of Grantland and the above mentioned Mr. Jazayerli, here's his piece on Carlos Beltran, who as we all know is a clutchasaurus.
Finally, Rob Bradford at WEEI.com has the inside scoop on the Red Sox pursuit of a number of players at the deadline. Most interesting was their attempt to pry Albert Haynesworth from the Redskins, but Theo Epstein deemed a fifth round pick too high a price to pay.