Okay, I have been watching all the comments coming through on the groups I
belong to and I do think people are being too quick to respond with their
hearts and not their heads on what is an emotive subject in Nomar. Now before I
go any further I need to state that I am a big fan of Nomar and have no time
for gump, sorry francona but the latter has nothing to do with the former
leaving.
First off, it has to be accepted by even the staunchest of nomar fans that
he was not going to be playing for us next year. Yes, he made all the right
noises about wanting to stay with us for his entire career but the simple fact
is that when he was offered a substantially increased contract of $15mill a
year last year , up from his current $11.5mill , he turned it down. Bear in
mind that this was before he was badly mistreated over the arod fiasco and
before francona became manager , so neither can be used as an excuse for his
not
signing on for four more years. The stats since his stellar seasons of '99
and 2000 do not justify a contract in excess of $15mill as he hasn't hit those
levels since mainly because of injury.
Since those great years he has become victim to many and varied injuries and
has publicly stated that to get through this season he would need 3 day
blocks of rest every couple of weeks for the remainder of this season. Now,
this
does not make him a reliable player for the immediate future and we need guys
who can play every day if we are going to go anywhere past the regular
season.
Bearing in mind he was going to leave and that the whole of baseball knew
this our hands were tied in terms of what we were likely to be offered...and I
somehow doubt anyone here would have been happy with us receiving picks after
the season is over as we all know how unreliable they can be with no
guarantees of future success.
Now, the amount of errors and unearned runs we have given up this year is
totally unacceptable and had to be addressed. Since Nomar's return, he has
consistently made stellar plays at ss only to throw the ball wildly past first
base. To top this, we have also persisted in playing dh's and outfielders at
first base despite all concerned being frankly hopeless in that position.
So what did we get for nomar ? Two former gold glove winners who will vastly
improve us defensively, not slightly improve us, but vastly. Yes, neither of
them are going to bat in the 300’s like nomar can when fit but both players
can hit in the .290’s if returning to form and using the green monster to
their advantage, as they should.
As of a week ago the skankees had no one hitting .300 or above and we had 4
players doing that and look at our respective records…this game is about
doing all the jobs right, not just some of them and we are now better
positioned
to do them all better rather than just the hitting.
Also we have to remember that with so many players out of contract this
season we was always going to lose some of them. When you look at the list of
players at this moment in time varitek , as the real team captain, has to be
the
priority and with the way we pitch middle relief Williamson has to be second
on that list as no matter how good our starting pitching is, without quality
middle relief we are done for anyway…and this is without even mentioning
pedro who I am sure most would like to keep given a chance…
Okay that is my piece said for what it is worth…apologies to any who see
this on more than one yahoo group J
Cheers
Rich


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