More Stupid Red Sox

The resignation of GM Theo Epstein has left Red Sox Nation feeling a bit verklempt. Take a casual stroll through downtown Boston and you'll undoubtedly see dozens of jersey clad morons standing out on their window ledge, contemplating the jump that will end the pain of Theo's departure.

I Stole Your Lunch is here to assure you that everything is going to be all right. Come down off the ledge...unless you have a mullet and/or a two-strand combover, then you may feel free to jump. In fact, it's encouraged. And aim for the sidewalk, not the dumpster.

Guess what, boys - Theo was good, but he wasn't great. Look at this way: Ramirez, Lowe, Pedro, Varitek, Trot, Damon, Mirabelli, and Wakefied were all added to the team by Dan Duquette. Theo brought in Schilling, Foulke, Papi, Billy Mueller, Millar, and Cabrera. Anyone really think Duquette wasn't a shrewd enough operator to have signed at least four out of those six in Theo's place?

Now look at it this way: Pedro, Cabrera, Dave Roberts, and Lowe, some of the team's biggest influences last postseason, wound up in different uniforms. Granted Lowe pitched like he never made it out of tee ball, but Pedro was absolute filth, Cabrera was a spark for a strong Angels team, and Roberts was replaced as the fourth outfielder/pinch runner extraordinaire by the dynamic Adams, Stern and Hyzdu.

Add to that this previous season's "big" acquisitions. Edgar Renteria couldn't hit his own body weight or make a play on a ball that wasn't hit right at him, and even that was a bit of an iffy proposition. Boomer pitched ok, but not great, mostly because the bars close three hours earlier in Boston than they do in New York and thus he was unable to consistently meet his daily alcohol requirements. And one of the Devil Rays clunked Clement so hard he thought he was pitching for the Cubs again and thus was supposed to do stupid things, like lose. This year's team was a slight downgrade from last year's.

So what does all that mean? Bring back Dan Duquette? Wrong answer.

Bear with me for a second as I launch into a rant that at first glance has nothing to do with the open GM job. Trust me, I'm going somewhere.

It all boils down to luck. Any moron with a $130 million payroll can build a team good enough to get to the playoffs. Because the season is so long, statistical analysis can accurately predict a player's usefulness 95% of the time, barring injuries, roids, or a surprise appearance by Steve Ballmer's pit stains. However, because of the relative abruptness of the postseason, and the heightened pressure that comes with it, statistics and probability go out the proverbial window like Raphael Palmeiro's awesome fake mustache in a strong breeze.

This theory can be summed up in two words: the Braves.

The Braves have won about 30 bazillion regular season games dating back to the early nineties, and they've got only one championship to show for it. The Braves consistently win their division, yet several teams with weaker regular season records and three teams who finished in second place in their division but were better than all the other losers in their league have won the Fall Classic.

The postseason does not make sense. The playoffs are to the regular season what quantum theory is to relativity.

To win a championship, a team needs to be constructed to win the playoffs, not compile the most victories over the course of 162 games.

And to win a championship in today's expanded playoff format, a team needs a little something extra. It needs a scrappy manager. It needs a bunch of underrated kids coming seemingly out of nowhere. It needs a group of veterans who can't not win. It needs a bloody sock, and an asshole who would plunk the Babe, a man who doesn't know how to screw up a game changing opportunity, and an ancient curse that has foiled all who've tried to end it.

That's why the other Sox won the World Series and ours didn't. Chicago had Crazy Ozzie; a pair of angry Cubans out to prove they were just as good as they'd been billed when the Coast Guard rescued them from their respective rafts despite being jettisoned by the Empire; an underrated first baseman in a contract year looking to make his mark and thus his fortune on the national stage; a whackjob who refuses to let his kids watch the Flintstones because dinosaurs are blasphemy; and the backing of a whole city tortured by over two hundred years of ineptitude (don't tell me Cubs fans didn't just give up and start rooting for the White Sox).

What did the Red Sox have? Big Papi and a whiny baby who wanted to take his bat and his MP3 player sunglasses somewhere with fewer talk radio shows. They didn't have attitude, and they didn't have heart.

My point is that championships are won by players, not numbers. Sure, Theo's sabermetric wheeling and dealing happened to be a part of a championship team, but strip that team of its personalities, and it doesn't make it out of the first round. Theo's team won because of a lucky biproduct of his approach, not because of his approach itself.

Which is a thing the next GM needs to understand if the Sox are to win again. A team needs leaders, it needs characters, and it needs personalities. Otherwise no one cares, not even the players themselves.