Quote:
Originally posted by 123dsa
This year's Sox are among the most productice offensively of all time. Only team in recent history to have 8 players with 80 or more RBI's.
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And yet they STILL finished behind the Yankees. And, three other teams in the majors posted more wins. Yes, the Sox will go to the playoffs, but with the Wild Card because Seattle flushed it down the toilet.
There's no denying, the Sox hit a ton, the stats don't lie. But they don't come through in the clutch (the word clutch is not, nor has it EVER been, a part of the Sox vocabulary, with the exception of David Ortiz, who SHOULD be the AL MVP but won't be) and that's what's necessary to succeed in the postseason. See: New York Yankees. A statistically inferior team to Boston, yet they just won their division for the 6th straight year by winning the important games.
And of course, it goes without saying that Boston's pitching beyond Pedro is dreadful. Particularly their bullpen, which was supposed to have been vastly improved. Instead, they will wind up costing Pedro the Cy Young.
As of tonight, the Sox have scored 950 runs this year, by far the best in the majors. Yet they have allowed 799, while the Yankees have allowed only 710. The Sox went 40-33 against the AL East as of today, while the Yankees went 45-28, or 5 games better. What a coincidence... the Yankees are 5 games up on the Sox.
That's what I mean by winning the games that count.
And if you want a really interesting fact that does not bode well at all for Boston in the playoffs: The Sox won their season series against every team in the American League this season except three: Oakland, Minnesota, and the New York Yankees.
-Mikey