Best of a bad situation…

Posted by Ted McEnroe July 31, 2008 at 5:27 pm

Sometimes, it’s addition by subtraction.

If you had said to Boston fans at the All-Star break that the Red Sox would be shipping Manny Ramirez out of town at the trade deadline, people would have thought you were nuts. We had Teixeira, Holliday and Bay in the rumors, but for prospects, not Hall-of-Famers.

But Manny forced management’s hand, and today the Sox gave up a guy who gave up on them this week.

That said - JASON BAY WILL BE A BIG CONTRIBUTOR FOR THE SOX. He has two more homers than Manny so far this year, turning in a .282-22-64-7 line for the Pirates. And 64 RBIs in Pittsburgh is a heck of a lot harder than 68 RBIs in Boston.

He’s a decent leftfielder, with a mediocre arm, but he has his head on straight, and because of that, he doesn’t make a ton of errors/ At the plate, he had a lousy 2007 — .247 avg., just 21 HR and 84 RBI (of course, Manny had just 20 HRs and 88 RBI), but otherwise, he’s shown 30-homer, 100 RBI power, a .280-.290 average and double-digit steals.

We may miss Brandon Moss, and Craig Hansen may get it together - but without Manny, the Sox have a chance to get their heads back on straight and make a run. With Manny, this could have been a very talented, very unfocused, third-place ballclub.