by Ian Tasso
In a long awaited and highly expected move, the Boston Red Sox designated shortstop Julio Lugo for assignment Friday morning. This means that the Sox have exactly one week to either trade or release the underperforming bench-player.
It also means the page has officially started to turn on perhaps one of the most unsuccessful and misguided off-seasons in recent Red Sox history. I’m talking of course about the winter of 2006/2007, when the Red Sox apparently blindfolded their entire front office and played a wheel-of-fortune-meets-Russian-Roulette game with over $200 million dollars in cash and multiple free agents on the table.
After the game was through, the Sox ended up with the outstanding trio of Julio Lugo, J.D. Drew, and Daisuke Matsuzaka, all of which seemingly are doing everything they can to not fulfill their luxurious contracts. Meanwhile other 2007 Free-Agents such as Carlos Lee, Carlos Pena, and Alfonso Soriano are enjoying All-Star worthy seasons to this day with teams that are not named the Boston Red Sox.
Now of course, of the three signings the Sox did make, some are worse than others (Julio). But still, none of the three aforementioned players are performing up to the standards to which they were paid.
Take Julio Lugo for example. Lugo was brought to Boston to be a decent offensive shortstop whose errors you could stomach due to his statistical output on offense. That experiment backfired horribly, and the Sox have had to deal with seasons in which Lugo batted .237 and .268 in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
But the offense hasn’t been the problem with Lugo (I can’t believe I just said that). Lugo’s defensive miscues have been painful to watch ever since he signed that four-year deal with the Sox. We knew Lugo was going to be a liability defensively, but liability takes a huge leap towards uselessness when you examine his defensive output thus far in 2009.
So far this season, Lugo ranks dead last among all active MLB players with a .928 fielding percentage. If you factor in all the balls he never even got to because he has the range of a dead tree, I don’t even want to think about what his percentage would be. Not only that, but the Sox are a mere 11-16 when Lugo starts at shortstop, compared to 42-15 when Nick Green takes the field.
It took two and a half years, but at least the Sox finally came to their senses and dumped Lugo and his outrageous contract. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about other 2006/2007 Red Sox signees.
I’m talking of course about Daisuke Matsuzaka and J.D. Drew, who continue to baffle fans, players and coaches alike with a cash-input-to-output ratio worse than a night in Vegas.
I’ve always been a staunch Matsuzaka supporter, even with the gross amount of money we pay to him yearly, as well that the outrageous sum we dealt out to even talk to the man. But the bottom line is that the expense has been paid back in a tremendous 2008 season, a 2007 World Championship, and a following in Japan that is unequaled anywhere else. Not to mention the fact that Hideki Okajima, Takashi Saito and others joined the Sox organization despite better offers in numerous other places.
Still, even with all that considered, as a Red Sox fan the industrial output isn’t my concern, while the highest ticket prices in Red Sox history are. Plus, one would hope those millions of dollars would be put towards winning games, and not winning popularity contests. When everything is weighed together, the Daisuke experiment has thus has to be considered a wash. A $150 million wash.
But neither Daisuke Matsuzaka nor Julio Lugo can compare to the virtual Soduko puzzle that is J.D. Drew and his five-year $70 million contract.
When the Sox signed the injury-prone outfielder to this gigantic contract, they knew it was a high-risk high-reward situation. And now, in the midst of a season where Drew is batting a measly .246 with 12 home runs and 38 RBI, that scale is tipping more towards high-risk than high-reward.
Right now, Drew is currently the highest paid player on the Red Sox roster. For those of you that aren’t very good with numbers, that means on a team that includes players such as Dustin Pedroia, Josh Beckett, Kevin Youkilis, and even David Ortiz, it is J.D. Drew that brings home the most money per-year.
That fact alone should help dictate how the winter of 2006/2007 went for the Red Sox front office.
Granted, we all know Theo loves those OBP guys. And J.D. Drew was brought in to be just that, and is thankfully providing it with a very nice .372 on base percentage.
But for the amount of money he is being paid, anything less than a .300 average with 30 home runs and over 100 RBI should be considered a colossal failure. After all, Drew makes just under what Albert Pujols does in a season, meanwhile his statistical output is anything but just under what Pujols brings to the table.
2009 Pujols: .334 AVG, 34 HR, 89 RBI, .458 OBP, .740 SLG, $14.25 million/year
2009 Drew: .245 AVG, 13 HR, 38 RBI, .372 OBP, .465 SLG, $14 million/year
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Drew also makes more money than perennial MVP-Candidate Chase Utley ($12.7 mil), Florida Phenom Hanley Ramirez ($11.3 mil) and Home Run Derby Champion Prince Fielder ($9 mil). Their season-to-date statistics are as follows:
Chase Utley: .312, 21 HR, 64 RBI, .427 OBP, .577 SLG
Hanley Ramirez: .347, 14 HR, 61 RBI, .409 OBP, .559 SLG
Prince Fielder: .312, 23 HR, 81 RBI, .442 OBP, .615 SLG
Now, of course, there is a bit of silver lining in all of this. Luckily for our man Drew, each of the aforementioned players are in the National League, meaning with his yearly salary he should bring home the A.L. MVP without question. Right?
Wrong. Sox fans should consider themselves lucky if he’s even healthy enough to play in this year’s postseason.
The more you look at the moves the Sox made that year the more depressing the 2006/2007 off-season becomes. In fact, the deal that helped out the Red Sox the most was one that they didn’t make, in choosing not to send Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester to Minnesota for Johan Santana. Had the Sox pulled the trigger on that one, we might be looking at an off-season that ranks right up with the winter of 1920, when the Great Bambino packed his bags for the Big Apple.
But with Julio Lugo on his way elsewhere, at least one of three things on the Red Sox “To-Do” list has been checked off. Now only two remain:
1. Ship J.D. Drew and his $50 million contract somewhere far, far away
2. Construct a time machine to return Daisuke Matsuzaka to his 2007 form.
Funny thing is, I don’t know which is more plausible, the first or second option.
But until then, I will be forced to continue to toss and turn at night, visions of Trot Nixon triumphantly soaring through my head, only to wake up and find that J.D. Drew will miss tonight's game due to a sore-ish back.
And something tells me these nightmares won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Is it 2012 yet?
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