You're booing the wrong guy.

Anyone going to Fenway Park tonight to boo Johnny Damon is an idiot with a small 'i'. If fans are looking for someone to boo, it's pretty obvious who the target should be: Theo Epstein. With his Baseball Prospectus membership and infamous stats spreadsheets, Theo has been at the forefront of tossing aside common sense for the gospel of mathematical calculations. The end result? Kicking out every member of our championship team, with entirely predictable results. We can start with Doug Mirabelli. Talk about clutch hitting. The guy was practically a part-timer, but every time he came up to bat you knew anything could happen. You can forget about Bard's passed balls, the real issue is that when Wake pitched, you'd lose Varitek's bat, which meant we now had only six capable bats working. If we were facing a lefty, we'd lose Nixon, bringing our hitters down to five. Who had the bright idea to remake an American League Championship team into a National League clone? What is this kid smoking?!?!

But hold on, stop the presses! DOUG'S BACK!!! Literally as I'm typing this post, it looks like our snotty manager managed to actually manage. Obviously an acknowledgment that numbers DO lie sometimes, we've got our ace knuckleball catcher back in the lineup.

Well, maybe Epstein had a bit of a premonition that his by-the-numbers style wasn't working. But bringing Doug back isn't going to cure all our woes. Anyone take a look at Pedro's and Arroyo's records lately? Two pitchers from our Championship team, both let go, both excelling in their careers. Willy Mo has one more homer this season than Arroyo. When that deal was made, everyone, including Wells, knew it was STUPID. And I want to say something about loyalty. It matters. Not in a Bush, "it doesn't matter how much you suck I'm going to keep you around" way, but in a "hey you're a valuable contributor to our team and we're going to do right by you unless you really fuck up" kinda way. The Nation remembers how Arroyo got us into the playoffs last year by getting us wins early in the season when everyone else in our lineup was SUCKING. Why on earth would you give up a guy like that? For what? A guy who throws a better right hook than a change-up? A guy so fat his knees can't hold him up? Ridiculous.

I can sympathize with those upset by all the whining from Damon over the season's first couple of weeks, but the reality is, he wanted to stay, but just like with Pedro, Epstein insulted him. It was Theo's intransigence that made Damon go over to the dark side. We needed his bat, and the worse possible thing Theo could've done was to let it fall into the hands of The Enemy.

I could go on, after all, where is Orlando Cabrera now? And how did the Angels do against the Yankees? Why does our young wunderkind insist on playing the short-stop shuffle? Why hasn't anyone called him on that?

Look, I'm all for the ability to play short ball, but this isn't the National League. I understand we got our asses handed to us last year by an over-reliance on the long-ball, but fer Chissakes we didn't have to go throw the baby out with the bathwater. We needed better pitching, and we had it with current lineup + Arroyo + Pedro (we prolly coulda made it last year if we still had Martinez). If we had Orlando and Damon with us, we'd be unstoppable. This isn't 20/20 hindsight, this is COMMON SENSE. Our GM needs to get with the program. If this season goes the way it looks like it's going, I hope the fans start to realize what I'm saying. He might be largely responsible for getting us the Championship, but he's on track for being on the hook for two consecutive failed seasons. Cheer Johnny. Every time he's up. If you wanna boo someone, save it for Theo Epstein. But you can let him off the hook tonight. Thanks for bringing Doug back, and giving us a fighting chance after your disastrous Excel-heavy off-season performance, Theo. But seriously, man, get your shit together.

Tags:
Red Sox, Baseball, Yankees, Sports, Mirabelli, Doug Mirabelli, American League, Johnny Damon, Theo Epstein