Desperation has set in, Red Sox fans. The front office in Beantown has gone numerological instead of philosophical.
Forgetting the make-or-break karma of chemistry vs. the false sanctity of numbers, the folks who run the Red Sox have hired Bill James of sabermetric baseball statistical fame. He's a guy who makes up all these inventive stat formulas to explain who's the best of the best in the International Pastime.
But in a team sport where the best teams and not the best superstars win, juggling numbers to the ultimate exclusion of social synchronicity is like cooking a 4 course meal with an egg timer and pretending rotten eggs won't ruin a winning formula, because well the dish is gourmet with all the best ingredients that will surely taste good together. Yeah, right.
If there is a laundry list of concrete humanistic character tenets the anti-statitician can learn from the 2002 Anaheim Angles, it is that to build a winning ballclub you...
1. Need a cool, calm manager who exudes a non-pressure confidence built on team unit heart as opposed to stat-based individuality.
2. Have to rely on a core of role players who can play together without conflict and can produce without having to start.
3. Require smart baserunners and not just fast ones. Clutch situational hitters and not just stand-up-and-gawk-at-it one run homer types.
4. Gotta draft more local players. Many Angels hail from the SoCal area. Enough said.
5. Should add a few missing links down the stretch. Guys who might produce because they're just happy to play and win and worry about making the big bucks later.
The problem with the Red Sox is that talent is there, but cast chemistry is not. Trade away Primadonna Pedro and Slacker Manny and let them play for an expansion team in the Dominican Republic. Go after younger diamonds in the rough like Barry Zito and Miguel Tejada instead.
Bring back the former heart of the ballclub Mo Vaughn and sign Joe Morgan to a megabuck 3 year deal to manage. Like Scioscia, he's a proven winner. In short, there are no stats for chemistry and heart in the post season or in October. And no baseball math wizard can build a winning formula out of the law of averages when personalites win it all and the numbers game is just box score window dressing.
» Hank Festa is a freelance writer who lives in Los Angeles.
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Copyright © 2002 by Hank Festa. Posted November 18, 2002.
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