The Futility Infielder

The Fragile Equilibrium of Unhappiness

"They don't have it this year" is Page 2 writer Bill Simmons' simple eulogy for this year's Boston Red Sox, writing of their absence of the inexorable IT of which winning ballclubs are made--luck and good timing, "mindless gimmicks" and "quirky stretches," to use the writer's own words. I'd planned my own postmortem of the Sox as Tuesday night's work, but Boston denizen Simmons did the definitive job with his piece, so I'm tempted to save my schadenfreude for another day.

Which comes down to essentially the same point Simmons makes: these Sox didn't have enough of IT to get riled up about as we rooted against them. Not the way we could enjoy watching 2001's Duquette-led ship of fools hitting the iceberg, as its passengers choked each other to death on their way to drowning. This year's ship developed a slow leak a good ways out of the harbor--during the first round of interleague play--but aside from casting Jose Offerman overboard in spectacular fashion, never rewarded us with their typically unified front of divisiveness.

That was the case, at least until the team was truly dead in the water (OK, I'll stop with the maritime theme...) following their last go-round with the Yanks. Since then, the Sox's triumverate of superstars each found time to become embroiled in petty controversy (...which mean's it's time to bust out that can of schadenfreude after all):

• Manny Ramirez, whose bonehead-first slide in a May 12 game cost him six weeks with a broken finger, thus foreshadowing the team's initial swoon, caused a flap over his at-bat theme music and then was vilified for not running out a routine groundout against Tampa Bay. Manager Grady Little didn't immediately yank Ramirez, which apparently caused him a sleepless night. Now, with all due respect to Little and anybody else who was kept awake by his gnashing, in my book any guy with an OPS over 1000 and a history of hamstring problems can pull up once in awhile if there's nothing on the line. Given that Ramirez has shown via his absence just how valuable he is, and given that he's tied to the Sox with a supposedly "immoveable" or "untradeable" contract (to use the words of two writers), doesn't it make sense to think in terms of the big picture of having him as healthy as possible?

• Nomar Garciaparra, who has lost considerable ground to Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada in the Great Shortstop Trinity or Quartet or Whatever since injuring his wrist and missing most of last season, evoked the ire of one Steve Buckley of the Boston Herald with a flippant remark. Responding sarcastically after a tough loss to a question about why the Sox road record was better than their home mark, Garciaparra triggered a bitter back-page tabloid rant in which the writer told the shortstop, "You don't deserve to play in Boston." Buckley attempted to hang Nomar for the high crimes of complaining about the fans and the media, even fabricating a story which had the Boston shortstop calling the pressbox to complain about a scorer's decision. He's right about one thing; Nomar doesn't deserve such horseshit treatment. "If we're all so negative, so cynical, so pessimistic, so Calvinist, believing that every pennant is predestined in spring training," writes Buckley , "then you should probably not be here." Probably not.

• Pedro Martinez decided that he's calling the shots up and down the Boston organization. On Saturday, Martinez threatened to leave the Sox after 2004 ""if they don't pick up the option soon and negotiate with me." Invoking the heartwarming free-agency saga of Alex Rodriguez by threatening "to hear what other teams have to offer" Pedro reminded the Sox that "that could be very risky." Never mind the fact that he's got a ticking time-bomb for an arm and that contract Armageddon is not one but TWO years away; he doesn't get to hear jack shit from other teams for a long while no matter how the Sox treat him.

That hasn't slowed his Napoleon complex, however. Fresh off of his 20th victory, Martinez declared himself shut down for the season without consulting manager Little--this before the team was actually mathematically eliminated from the Wild Card. Now explain to me again why the Sox should eagerly commit money to this delicate flower well before they have to?

Look, contrary to Simmons' excellent analysis, the Red Sox failure this season is simple to explain. They underperformed in 1-run ballgames (13-22), and this skewed their Pythagorean projection (a simple prediction of a team's Won-Lost record based on Runs Scored and Runs Allowed). The Sox, with 799 scored and 621 allowed, project to a winning percentage of .613 and are 6.6 games below that projection. The Yankees, with 848 scored and 676 allowed, project to a winning percentage of .602 and are 3.7 wins above that--a 10-game swing between projection and performance. That's where the Sox season died.

There's a fragile equilibrium to an unhappy ballclub. In order to make a team truly worthy of one's enmity, poor performance on the field must be accompanied by ever more sour missives delivered at and by the players through the media. Just when it seemed the Red Sox didn't have enough of IT to pull this off, just when I'd dismissed them, it's apparent that they've hit their stride after all. With writers and players finally pointing the fingers, the team has arrived at last during the season's final weeks. What an amazing comeback!