Boston fans: Aren't the Red Sox EVERYTHING You Claim to Hate About the Yankees?

Cafe Society
1

First, while I’m a tepid Yankees fan who’s enjoyed ribbing the Red Sox over the years, I bear the Red Sox no ill will. Really! They’re a superb team, they won fair and square, and Red Sox fans are entitled to a big celebration. By all means, Sox fans, enjoy the moment.

But…

Just thought I’d point out something. For as long as I can remember, Sox fans have grumbled that my Yankees were “arrogant,” that they were the Evil Empire, that they epitomized everything that’s wrong with baseball, that they “bought” pennants instead of winning them the old-fashioned way, with home-grown players. The Red Sox, they’d say, were DIFFERENT. They were gritty, scrappy little underdogs.

Now, this is bound to sound like sour grapes, but… this year’s Red Sox don’t look like scrappy little underdogs to me. They look like a team of mercenaries and high-priced free-agent superstars (which would mean they were underachievers during the regular season, not overachievers in the post-season). Moreover, I dont see a single home-grown star on their roster (I’m not sure- are there ANY home-grown players on this squad at all?). As for “arrogance,” well, any team with Curt “I Like Making 55,000 people Shut Up” Schilling on its roster has no business calling anyone else "arrogant (can you imagine Bernie Williams or Derek Jeter talking trash like that?).

Again, this doesn’t diminish what the team achieved. They won the World Series, they have every right to be proud, and you have every right to party in the streets. Just don’t EVER give us any crap about how the Red Sox are “the little guy” or “the underdog.” Today, the Red Sox ARE the Yankees: a mega-rich, big-market East Coast team that bought the pennant.

That’s not illegal and it’s not immoral- but it DOES mean you have to stop pretending to occupy moral high ground.

2

Hmm, speaking as a lifelong Sox fan:

First, I would never have claimed any “moral high ground”. This is baseball, mkay, not politics. I would agree with you: the Red Sox, like the Yankees, are some of the highest-paid players in baseball (is that correct?) Bostonians are very proud of their team, and are not humble about it.

Furthermore, don’t all teams buy their pennants? Isn’t this how Major League Baseball works? Show me any team with mostly “home-grown” heroes. No way, this is big business, and big players are chess pieces that move from city to city. The only we locals can call our own is our team colors, history, and some favorite players for a few years at a time (so long, Nomah!)

The thing about Boston and New York is that it’s a little brother-big brother rivalry. The little brother has a great team, which would be first in its division every year (at least recently) were it not for the big brother who’s also in that division. The Red Sox, one of the better, richer teams, are nonetheless usually outplayed by the usually even better, richer Yankees. I think that’s Boston’s issue. We know our team is great, and we’d be a lot more prominent if not for the $#&%# YANKEES!! We’re sick of New York saying “who’s your daddy” to us; we want to be New York’s daddy; this we were New York’s daddy, and we can’t contain our gleeful excitement, and we secretly wish that maybe now we have a slightly more equal rivalry.

3

Which is the main point you are incorrect about. Most of team are castaways from other organizations signed at very low prices who came together and did very well. Yes, Manny is making $20 million a year, and yes Pedro and Schilling are making big money, but Ortiz is making around $5 million (if that), Millar was almost playing in Japan before the Sox got him. Mueller, Cabrera, Bellhorn all make little comparively.

The Sox mainly consists of players whose former teams did not think were worth even average salaries (once again Millar was Japan bound before the Sox pulled him back and the Twins were almost glad to be rid of Ortiz). That is where the scrappy underdog comes from. From these players trying to show their former teams (and everyone else) that they were worth it.

This team may resemble the late 90s Yankees in that way (who picked up Brosius, an underrated player who was a key), but they bear no resemblance to the star ladened, prima donna Yankees of today.

4

Corrections:

(Paragraph 2)
The only ^thing we locals can call our own is…

(Paragraph 3)
This ^time we were New York’s daddy…

5

Two points:
Factually, in case anyone reading this doesn’t know yet, the Yankees salary for 2004 was $184 million, or 2.6 times the league average. The Red Sox salary was $127 million, 1.8 times the league average. So the Red Sox were outspending the league, but still nearly an entire average team behind the Yankees.

Second, Red Sox fans don’t despise the Yankees players. Hate them, for beating the Sox so often, and for being so confident to the point of arrogance (maybe a little bit of despising their arrogance – it’s a little easier to be the best player at your position when you have eight All-Stars playing around you, so don’t act like you and you alone are God’s gift. But whatever.) Hey, they’re doing what they get paid (very very well) for.
No, what Red Sox fans despise are Yankees ‘fans’. Ones who were actually born and still live in The Bronx, Brooklyn, or possibly even Manhatten we can deal with – yeah they stuck it to Red Sox fans, but that’s sports. No it’s the “I cheer for the Yankees because I have the loyalty of a rattlesnake-laywer hybrid and I’ll suck up to whoever is winning, and then act as if I personally had something to do with the wins and am therefore superior” kind of Yankees fans that Red Sox fans despise. Undoubtedly, there will be a bunch of new Red Sox ‘fans’ next year (mostly ex-Yankees ‘fans’), but you can’t really blame long time RSN sufferers for that.

And finally, yes, your post does sound like sour grapes.

6

Plus the fact that some of us just hate New York. All of it. Every aspect. :smiley:

7

Oh come off it, the only players you can really say that about are Millar, Ortiz and Mueller. And Ortiz wasn’t so much that the Twins didn’t think he was worth it, but they had a huge backlog of firstbasemen/DH’s at the time.

Just going off of teams with recent success - Minnesota Twins, Oakland A’s, the Anaheim Angels prior to 2004.

In fact, the 2002 Angels had nearly an entire team that was home-grown. The outfield was entirely home grown (Erstad, Anderson, Salmon), the catcher (Molina), the third baseman (Glaus), a good chunk of the bullpen (Percival, Rodriguez, Shields, Schoeneweis) and three fifths of the rotation (Washburn, Ortiz, Lackey). Most of the bench was home grown, as well.

8

Which means the same thing as they thought he wasn’t worth it ;). They thought the other 1B/DH were worth more for a few million less (and Ortiz wasn’t asking that much).

As for you other point, that’s waaaay simplifying. Bellhorn is making a pittance (under $500,000) as well as his backup Pokey Reese. Nixon, who is making ~$5M, was hurt most of the year, so Gabe Kapler, who is making
$750,000, started in his place. If we look at the starting pitching, Lowe is making $4.5M (not that much), Wakefield makes $4.3M, and Arroyo makes $340,000 (NOT a misprint!). In the bullpen, Foulke makes $3.5M (pretty low for a top flight closer).

To say that only 3 people are making average or below market level is not being true.

9

Sorry, you’re wrong. Ortiz did not swing well playing on the ratty carpet in MN, and the Twins doubted his ability to hit for power. There was an article in the MN Star Tribune just the other day stating exactly that. The Twins didn’t think he was worth the relatively small amount of $$ he was getting. Theo Epstein and Co. recognized that he was built for Fenway, and the rest is history.

10

That’s not what I said. I said that the idea that most of the team is made up of underappreciated castoffs from other teams is not true.

Derek Lowe has only ever played with the Red Sox, aside from cup of coffee with Seattle before he was traded for Seattle’s immediate needs in 1997. If he’s underpaid, it’s not because he was unappreciated by another team. Same with Wakefield.

Bellhorn and Kaplar were signed as backups, that’s why they’re not getting paid much. They weren’t supposed to be playing this often. It’s Boston’s good fortune that they played as well as they did.

Fouke’s not underpaid, his contract is just backloaded. He gets more than $7 million the next two seasons, plus performance incentives.

11

Lowe and Varitek were traded for Heathcliff SLOCUMB! If you are a prospect thrown into a deal for a good, but not great, relief pitcher then I’d say you were unappreciated. Unless you think when Jeff Bagwell was dealt for Larry Anderson that since that was in Boston’s immediate needs it wasn’t a case of underappreciation. I think whenever a prospect gets dealt for a player who he eventually has a better career then (comparing entire careers, not just after the trade), that he is underrated by the team that dealt him. Especially Derek Lowe. I mean Varitek for Slocumb is a bad deal… but Lowe in it? Obviously the M’s didn’t think those prospects would be as good as they have turned out to be.

Wakefield as well! He was a Free Agent in 2000. No one wanted him, so he resigned with Boston!

Bellhorn and Kapler may have been signed as backups, but they are still making little money and Bellhorn, for instance, is making more than his current backup. Just because Boston had good fortune with them, doesn’t mean they weren’t underappreciated.

12

Mientkewicz has said that all that standing on concrete made the heavy Ortiz’ knees just kill him. He simply couldn’t play 1B every day there, and it had to affect his batting too.

Time to take the bubble off the Dome and plant some grass, wouldn’t you say?

13

Re: the OP: Trot Nixon is the only truly “home-grown star” on the roster, though as other posters have mentioned, there have been a large number of players who have gone from relative mediocrity with other teams to stardom with the Sox.

Re: the payroll issue… the biggest thing for me is that the difference between the Yankees (the highest payroll in MLB) and the Red Sox (the second highest payroll in MLB) is about equal to what the MEDIAN team pays their entire ballclub - in other words, the Yankees don’t only spend the most, the degree to which they spend the most is more than fully half of the league spends on their entire team. Furthermore, just about every other team in the top 5-10 is looking to cut payroll or at most stay the same going into next year - the Red Sox had been looking to stay in the $120 million range, but I have a feeling with W.S. Champion revenues and the large number of free agents, they may end up somewhere generally in the 130 or possibly as high as 140 million range, and they will be the exception, because of that additional revenue and pride resulting from the championship. The Yankees are not looking to cut payroll - by all reports, they are looking to ADD payroll, and will in fact need to do that to be competitive, given their recent propensity to pursue aging and overpriced stars.

When the Yankees were winning it all in the late '90s, it was a result of a combination of home-grown stars (Jeter, Posada, Williams, Pettitte, Rivera, etc.) and WISE free agent spending on role players who would perform. Their payroll was at or near the top of the league every year, but not nearly to the excessive degree that it is now; Cashman and the scouting corps won those championships as much or more than George’s money. If nothing else, those were teams you could respect, as they were upstanding players who played the game right as opposed to mercenaries who came begging for George’s money and the ring they ‘deserved’. Now, we’re looking at an offseason where the Yankees, already in the $185 million range and with no especially significant contracts running out, are looking to be in the market for Beltran, at least one and likely two starting pitchers, at least one bullpen arm, and possibly a second baseman, first baseman, or both. It is almost guaranteed that they will break the $200 million barrier next year, unless Mr. Steinbrenner cannot convince the free agents he wants to play for his money.

In other words, you are welcome to compare this year’s Red Sox to the Yankees that won the world championships in the mid to late '90s, in that they are both clubs with strong scouting staffs and GMs that went after the players they needed to win, backed by an owner who was willing to pay those players and take the risks that his GM told him he needed to take to win. To compare this year’s Sox to the current incarnation of the Steinbrenner-driven, bloated payroll, throw money at whomever we have to Yankees? Just not accurate.

-K.

14

Brilliantly said! I agree with it entirely. I don’t remember many Red Sox fans who were calling the mid-late '90s Yankees as the ‘Evil Empire’ or buying pennants. It was only after George starting spending in the 2000s ('00s?) as his well constructed teams in the 90s were getting old.

15

I don’t think so. It’s more of a net present value of money type thing. You may well know that this prospect is going to be the second coming of Todd Helton, but if you feel that you have an extremely good shot to win if you pick up this guy who won’t be as good, most teams do it. You don’t know what the future holds, so if you have a good shot, you push your chips in.

The thing about Slocumb was that the three years before the trade, he was a GREAT reliever. ERAs of 2.86, 2.89 and 3.02. Seattle was desperately in need of some relief pitching, so they did what they had to do to pick him up.

No one wanted him because he hadn’t had an ERA below 4.50 since he was in Pittsburgh in 1993. He wasn’t unappreciated, there was just nothing in his performance to that date that indicated he was going to be anything more than a fifth starter/spot reliever.

Oh come on, they totally got lucky with Bellhorn. Bellhorn had a career high in BA, his second highest OBP and second highest SLG since 1997 this year.

16

I am speaking only about this year, but there is a big philosophical divide between the Yankees and Red Sox.

The Yankees philosophy is that if you have an all star at every position you are bound to win. If you don’t win, it means that you need to upgrade at any position where your prospective all star failed to come through.

The Red Sox come from the Moneyball lineage, and are concerned with value as well as talent. They want players who play for a reasonable dollar amount relative to their talents. The Red Sox know they can’t outspend the Yankees, so some of the glee in Red Sox Nation comes from knowing the Theo Epstein and his front office undoubtedly spent their money more intelligently than the Yankees did.

I work in the investment industry and this philosophical divide translates well to that arena. Some investment managers will purchase stock in companies that they percieve as the strongest in their industry, the price of the security is a secondary consideration. With this type of management, there is the risk that you will overpay, even though the underlying company is strong. The other side of the coin looks for stocks trading at a discount to their percieved value.

We see this in players like Mark Bellhorn and Bronson Arroyo. Neither are superstars, or prospective all stars. They are paid $500,000 and $350,000 respectively. The Red Sox correctly judged that they were a bargain at those salaries.

17

Howyadoin,

Remember that the Red Sox’ principal owner is John Henry, who made a killing in the commodities markets. He’s acknowledged as one of the best financial minds around, especially when it comes to perceiving value and where each part of the portfolio impacts other parts.

The current ownership inherited the contracts of Manny Ramirez, Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez. The deals were in place. Add to this a boatload of other players whose contracts were simply bloated, like Jose Offerman, Mike Lansing, Troy O’Leary and others. These contracts were negotiated by the previous administration, who desperately wanted to win a championship before ownership passed from the Yawkey family. One of the reasons the contracts were so mammoth was that then-GM Dan Duquette wanted to show Pedro Martinez that the Sox were committed to winning in order to get him signed to a long term deal. The Sox signed a series of over-the-hill free agents like Dante Bichette, Mark Whiten, Bret Saberhagen, Ramon Martinez, Kent Mercker and others, who bloated payroll and limited flexibility.

The Sox’ new ownership ditched the overpaid players like Offerman and O’Leary. They attempted to jettison Manny and his $200M contract, and found no takers. They traded Nomar, rather than pay him the $60M or so he wanted despite a career in decline. They acknowledge that they are not going to be able to resign all their free agents, even in a contracting salary market.

The new ownership has shown a sensitivity to the new reality of baseball, which is becoming more like football in that most upper-echelon teams (Boston, Chicago, Anaheim, St. Louis, Houston, L.A.) will have a few highly paid superstars, surrounded by a cast of lesser lights. Since most teams at the higher end of the salary spectrum are going to be similarly staffed, the team with the deepest cast of supporting players is going to have an advantage. The race is to the smart, not to the rich. Although being rich doesn’t hurt… Not many teams could afford to sign Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke in a single offseason, but that’s small potatoes compared to acquiring Alex Rodriguez and Javier Vasquez and Garry Sheffield.

The Yankees, on the other hand, have stripped their farm system for the likes of Felix Heredia and Gabe White, have lavished massive contracts on players they might never see again, like Giambi and Brown and Loaiza, and have $170M committed for 2005 before they sign another player. And they will sign another player. And another, and another, and another…

-Rav

18

During the ALCS, some idiot on Fox actually praised the Yankees organization for their talent and hard-work in scouting and building the team.

:rolleyes:

Yankee scouting consists of:

  1. Watch All-Star game.
  2. See which all-stars are about to become free-agents.
  3. Offer s***load of money. Write check.
19

That’s what the OP is addressing, though. The Yankees are pimps, but the Red Sox pretty much are, too. That they’re smart enough to add the odd cheap player doesn’t change the fact that the Sox are probably the LEAST homegrown team in the history of baseball to win a World Series.

20

Longtime Yankee fan living in Boston here, and I have to agree with this.

I’m really curious how the next few years are going to play out with both teams. I am wondering if we are going to see an
Alice in Wonderland Red Queen type scenario, with both teams feeling they need to spend more and more money just to stay competitive with the other? In any case it seems likely that we are going to have replays of this year for the next few years…both teams are going to make the playoffs, one as Division winner and one as wildcard, and they will fight it out in the playoffs.

I have to say the Nomar trade was a brilliant move and one that the former Red Sox management never would have made. It shook up the whole team chemistry, got rid of what was apparently a corrosive clubhouse situation, and served notice that for the first time in 86 years the team was really serious about winning it all.
Quercus the last part of your post describes perfectly a lot of newly minted Red Sox fans where I work. They were invisible early in the year when things weren’t going well but now that they have won? “Oh, I was behind them all the way!” :rolleyes: