Financial ruin... *

Well, we had better enjoy the last days of our Boston Red Sox - admit it, it has been fun, we enjoyed it while it lasted, heck, we even got to see them win it all in our lifetime!

But sadly, it is all over. The media has decided - there is no way that the Red Sox can survive the financial mistake they are about to make... $42m on a guy that has never pitched in the majors... ever... why that is just crazy... apparently we should have spent that money on Johnny Damon... or Bobby Abreu... then we wouldn't be silly, and the future of the earth would be assured...

So basically I read it this way - if the Sox don't spend the resources that they have, they are just being cheap - not 'going the extra mile for their supporters' as one observer so memorably put it. If they do spend that money, they are not being smart, no "it wouldn't be because the Sox were particularly visionary. It would be because they were lucky." as Ken Rosenthal tells us in his Fox Sports column today. This really is a case of damned if they do, damned if they don't.

At some point, the national media will get over the fact that the Sox didn't re-sign Damon last year - may not happen in any of our lifetimes, but presumably at some point they will. But to assess whether Rosenthal et al have a point, lets look at the similarities between Damon and Matsuzaka, based on their 2006 stats:

	Damon	Matsuzaka
Age	33	26
Position	CF	P
IP	0	186.1
W	0	17
ERA	0.00	2.13
WHIP	0.000	0.923
BAA	0.000	0.199
K	0	200
K/9	0	9.66
BB	0	33

(Unadjusted for the fact that these were achieved in the equivalent of low A ball / Little League, while Damon played all his games against the AL All Star team).

Seriously, the Japanese guys ERA is over 2 runs higher than Damon - that is like us buying a guy with a 7 ERA relative to Beckett, and we all know that we should never have traded for that guy, not when we gave up the NL Rookie of the Year, and future multiple MVP, and a future multiple Cy Young award winner (guaranteed - guys that are that good in their rookie seasons always, ALWAYS, follow that up with HoF level careers), and don't even get me started on the embarrassing stats that I couldn't bring myself to quote to save me from the reflected shame... (hint, check out the number of losses each pitcher put up last year).

So, go on, criticize the Red Sox for over spending on a 26 year old pitcher, you would have criticized them for coming up a million short behind the Yankees as well, but that doesn't matter - they are just as bad as the Yankees now - and we all know how that hasn't worked out.


* PS - we don't even know whether the Sox have won, what they have bid, whether or not they can get the guy signed... but again, no matter!