I'm not sure anyone is totally blaming injuries. Most of what is written is along the lines of 'injuries have hurt, but some pitchers haven't pitched to their potential' (read: Lackey, Beckett, Matsuzaka). For certain, the Sox would have been more of a contender if Beckett had his average season of 12 wins, 8 losses and ERA of 3.94. I mean, there are 8 more wins right there. Lackey is actually
pretty much on his averages other than ERA, but his contract certainly made for higher expectations, rightly or wrongly. Dice-K - who knows what his average is, but expectations were much higher for him this year, given his apparent acceptance of the off-season conditioning program. And Wakefield has been awful and sure seems done, again not what was expected by most people. Thank God for Buchholtz and Lester. And the defense certainly hasn't been stellar either. Some of that is, of course, due to have back-ups and AAA players on the field a lot, which is, of course, caused by injuries.... Dan D Central NJ USA ________________________________ From: Ray Salemi <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, September 1, 2010 8:54:34 AM Subject: The Injury Inconsistency There is no doubt that injures will have cost the Sox something like 5 games this year (91 wins vs 96 perhaps). The narrative goes like this, "The Sox would have had a great season because of their pitching, but were decimated by injuries." The Sox were 9th out of 14 in ERA this year. So one should look at the list of injuries and expect to see a lot of pitchers. Here's what we see: Pitchers Injured Clay Buchholz (2 15d) DiceK (2 15d) Oki (1 15d) Beckett (1 d2d, 1 60d) Delcarman (1 15d) Lester(d2d) Players injured Beltre (d2d) Pedroia (d2d, 15d, d2d, 15d) Patterson(15d) JD Drew (d2d, d2d, d2d, d2d, d2d, d2d) Ellsbury (15d, 15d, d2d, 15d, 15d) Salty (15d) Veritek(season) Lowrie (60d) Hermida (15d) Cash (15d) Youk (d2d, d2d, d2d, season) Cameron(d2d, 15d, 15d) Lowell (15d) Martinez (d2d, 15d) So this team,built upon pitching, pitched very poorly. But it didn't have that many pitching injuries to point to. (And, despite all the injuries to players, the replacement players did a great job. The Sox are 2nd in Runs Scored.) So I think all this puts the lie to the idea that this season was lost due to injuries alone. If that were the case, one might just keep roughly the same team and try again next year. Instead, I think that this pitching focused organization failed in its primary strategy this year of delivering strong pitching, and that is the question that needs to be addressed in the off season. Ray -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Red Sox Citizens" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/redsoxcitizens?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Red Sox Citizens" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/redsoxcitizens?hl=en.
