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.
