Josh Beckett had a superb season in 2007, leading Boston to the Promised Land. If the voting for the Cy Young Award had come after the postseason, there is no doubt he would have had that trophy as well as a World Series ring.
Photo by Brita Meng Outzen
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y
The Red Sox played like champions for the entire 2007 season. They moved into first place two weeks after opening day and never gave it up for the remaining 166 days of the season.
In spring training I thought that the Yankees and the Red Sox would once again be the two best teams in the division. If anything, I thought the Yankees might have had a slight edge because of their offense—it turned out to be the best in the league—and I thought that perhaps they could squeeze out one more decent year from some of their veteran pitchers like Andy Pettite and Mike Mussina.
But coming out of the chute the Yankees had one after another injury with their pitchers. They were starting kids from Double A and Triple A.
In Boston, the Red Sox had strong pitching and very good luck when it came to injuries. Never once after they built a lead over the Yankees did I feel that they were in jeopardy of not making the playoffs. And I really didn’t fear they would lose grip of first place.
Everybody was aware that at some point the Yankees were going to make a run. They were too good; once they got people healthy you knew that was coming.
I know a little bit about that myself; I experienced it when I played for the Red Sox in 1978. In that year we owned the league for half the season. On July 19 we were 9 games over the Milwaukee Brewers, 12½ above Baltimore, and 14 above the Yankees. New York was in great turmoil on the field and in the clubhouse. Jim Rice was having his MVP season, ending up with 46 home runs, 139 RBIs, and a .315 batting average.
But somehow in 1978, the Yankees put it together and by the beginning of September, they were breathing down our necks, down only four games, and after they swept us in four games at Fenway, we ended up dead even on the last day of the season. We faced them in a one-game playoff, and well, we lost.
But back to 2007: The Red Sox were a model of consistency all year long, mostly because of their starting pitching and the bull pen. As we got to the last three weeks of the season, the Yankees were closing the gap, but I didn’t see panic anywhere in the organization.
The low point was the three games the Sox lost up in Toronto. They got swept in mid-September and the Yankees closed to within 1½ games. Then we went back to Tampa and got well again. That was the closest the Yankees got to first place at the end of the season.
This is where the Wild Card has had an impact on baseball. The Red Sox knew they were going to be in the playoffs one way or another, so they could rest some of their players. Getting people healthy and ready for postseason play was the most important thing.
To me it doesn’t matter whether you get to the playoffs as division champion or by winning the Wild Card; remember, the Red Sox got to the 2004 World Championship—the one that ended the eighty-six-year drought—as the Wild Card team, and I don’t recall anyone complaining about it.
In 2007 it was sweet because they hadn’t won a division in so long and they finally finished ahead of New York, but the goal is to win the World Series. Whoever pitches the best and whoever gets hot at the end is going to win.
There was some panic in the streets that the Red Sox were in a slide and that they were going to finish second. But they had a plan. For example, nobody could have predicted Manny Ramírez’s injury late in the season, but they focused on getting him back in the lineup by the last week of the season so he would be ready for postseason.
Many fans and reporters focus on the day-by-day goings-on with the team. While they are thinking small picture, management is thinking big picture. The big picture is winning the World Championship; they played it very smart.
For example, Hideki Okajima—one of the season’s heroes—began to struggle after throwing many more innings than he had been used to throwing in Japan. So they shut him down for about ten days to give him some time off; they hoped he would be able to bounce back and be the pitcher he was in the first half of the year. And so he did.
You have to give credit to the front office, including Theo Epstein and his crew and to Terry Francona for doing that, even with the immense pressure that was on them from outside to finish first.
In the end it could not have worked out better. They were able to line up their pitching for every single series. They had Josh Beckett ready to start the first game of every series.
A second World Series trophy in four years proves that Boston now has a very solid organization.
It wasn’t easy. In my opinion, this new ownership group—which took over in 2002—has three times been on the brink of disaster.
In 2004 they fell behind the Yankees three games to none in the American League Championship Series; if the Red Sox had been swept there it would have been a second consecutive heartbreak loss to New York. But they came back from the brink, winning four in a row and went on to win the World Series.
The fans loved the team in 2004, but like generations before they expected bad things to happen. The comeback changed the whole culture for today’s Red Sox rooters. It was the perfect cure.
The second test came after the 2005 season when Theo Epstein resigned as general manager; that could have been a disaster. But Epstein and the front office worked out a new arrangement and he was back in January of 2006.
And then there were the final six weeks of the 2006 season when the Red Sox fell out of the race because of injuries. There was lack of interest at the ballpark, the media lost interest, and they knew they had to do something. They made a big splash going out to get Daisuke Matsuzaka from Japan.
Management has shown itself to be pretty smart; when things seem to be heading in a bad direction, the organization goes out and does something about it.
In 2007 the Red Sox came back from a 3–1 games deficit against the Indians in the ALCS; again they were just one loss away from elimination. But in 2007 the fans had changed: fans now expect good things to happen.
And the players don’t have to hear about how Boston hasn’t won a championship in eighty-six years. They are champions, twice over.
As the 2007 playoffs began we wondered whether the Red Sox would have to face the Yankees once again in the ALCS. The Cleveland Indians took care of that problem for us, and I can’t say I was disappointed.
The Yankees are a little tiring. The Red Sox play them nineteen times in the regular season and they are all brutal battles, like nineteen World Series games. I was a little tired of seeing the Yankees myself.
We have already been through the Bronx. As far as the players and ownership were concerned, the only thing that mattered was winning a championship. That said, I felt that the Indians would give the Red Sox a bigger challenge than the Yankees would, and the series against Cleveland proved that.
Remy Says: Watch This
Invasion of the Midges
One of the memorable moments of the New York-Cleveland ALDS in 2007 was the invasion of the Yankee-hating midges in the late innings of the second game.
This sort of thing happened to us a few times in the old parks in Cleveland and Minnesota. You used to have to spray yourself down from head to toe before a game.
In 2007 it seemed like it affected Yankee rookie Joba Chamberlain a little bit. It was weird, but even stranger was that this was the kind of thing that used to happen to the Red Sox and this time it was affecting the Yankees—so you know that’s a good thing.
But Cleveland lost because their two big starters, C. C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona—two of the best pitchers in baseball—couldn’t win a game against Boston.
Wire to wire, the Red Sox showed they had what it took to win. Josh Beckett had a Cy Young Award-like year. Hideki Okajima and Jonathan Papelbon showed the rest of both leagues how a great bullpen worked. Dustin Pedroia swung out of his shoes for a Rookie of the Year season. And old pro Mike Lowell and newly proven Kevin Youkilis anchored the corners. These are the strengths that built the foundation for a trip to the promised land.
2007 Regular season: W–L 20–7, 3.27 ERA, 200.2 IP, 194 K, 40 BB, 1.14 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 4–0, 1.20 ERA, 30.0 IP, 35 K, 2 BB, 0.70 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 1–0, 1.29 ERA, 7.0 IP, 9 K, 1 BB, 1.00 WHIP
Josh Beckett had a superb season in his second year as a member of the Red Sox, winning 20 games and coming in second in the voting for the Cy Young Award; if the ballots had been cast after the postseason, he almost certainly would have been the winner.
Beckett was locked in all year. There were times when I couldn’t figure out how anyone was getting any hits at all off him.
When he came to the team in 2006, Beckett had that Texas mentality: I am going to blow you away. I think he realized that he couldn’t get by in the American League just throwing fastballs. He was convinced to use his curveball and his changeup more, and from day one in spring training for the 2007 season, he never wavered. That shows both a physical gift and a mental toughness.
He kept mixing his pitches and became one of the top pitchers in the game. He didn’t have a bad streak all year, and he was lights out in the playoffs.
2007 Regular season: W–L 15–12, 4.40 ERA, 204.2 IP, 201 K, 80 BB, 1.32 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 2–1, 5.03 ERA, 19.2 IP, 17 K, 8 BB, 1.53 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 1–0, 3.38 ERA, 5.1 IP, 5 K, 3 BB, 1.13 WHIP
I still haven’t quite figured Matsuzaka out; all through the 2007 season, I felt that he didn’t use his fastball enough, but pitching coach John Farrell said that sometimes he used it too much. But what I don’t know about pitching could fill a book.
For part of his first season, he became a cut fastball pitcher. They called him a power nibbler: a guy who strikes out a lot of batters but nibbles at the strike zone instead of challenging hitters.
But how can you complain about 15 wins in his first season?
When I first saw him in spring training, I said he was something special. But I also knew that he had never faced the kind of competition that he faced day in and day out in the American League. And add to that the travel and the adjustment to a new culture.
I think that Matsuzaka, like Beckett before him, has to figure out what is his best stuff. He has a good fastball, breaking ball, and curveball. He also has a very good split and changeup. I think he is going to get better in years to come as he adjusts.
I never really spoke with him, just exchanged a couple of bows. He seems like a good kid and the players accepted him very well.
He worked very hard all season long. He was so used to throwing complete games that he was stunned early in the year when Francona came to the mound to take him out in the seventh inning. He couldn’t believe it. But pitchers are treated differently here because of the huge financial investment the team makes in them.
2007 Regular season: W–L 9–8, 3.87 ERA, 151.0 IP, 101 K, 23 BB, 1.25 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 3–0, 3.00 ERA, 24.0 IP, 16 K, 3 BB, 1.17 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 1–0, 1.69 ERA, 5.1 IP, 4 K, 2 BB, 1.13 WHIP
Curt Schilling is one of a kind, and Boston really is the perfect spot for him. In Baltimore he was a kid, in Philadelphia he was a good pitcher on a terrible team, and in Arizona nobody cared.
He signed what he says will be his last pitching contract to come back for the 2008 season; he began it on the disabled list. He has won two championships since coming here and has a chance for a third.
He loves the attention and the passion of the fans in Boston. And he loves baseball.
Schilling goes out there every day and gives you the best that he has. Being in the playoffs doesn’t faze him. He has been there and he has been very successful. That knowledge has to rub off on other pitchers and players in the clubhouse.
He got a wakeup call in 2007. He pitched a game in Atlanta on a warm day and he was out of gas. They told him he had to get himself into better shape. They sat him down for a while; they said his elbow or shoulder was bothering him, but basically they gave him time off to get into shape.
He came back after that and people talked about Schilling reinventing himself because he wasn’t throwing 96 or 97 miles per hour anymore. Well, he hadn’t thrown that hard in a couple of years; he was throwing somewhere between 88 and 92 miles per hour or so.
What’s most important is that Schilling knows how to pitch. It doesn’t matter if he is throwing 88 or 98. He is still a great control pitcher; he has been his whole career.
For Schilling, everything works off his fastball. He still has a very good split and he threw a few more curveballs in 2007 than he used to. When he is able to locate his fastball, he is going to win. It is that plain and simple, because he can outthink hitters.
So when they say he reinvented himself, it is really that he went to more pitches than he has in the past: changeups, curveballs, splitters, and cutters to go along with this fastball. It gave hitters something else to look for.
And then came the postseason and he was rested and healthy and did his thing. He went out and won three of the eleven postseason games the Red Sox needed to get the World Series trophy again.
2007 Regular season: W–L 17–12, 4.76 ERA, 189.0 IP, 110 K, 64 BB, 1.35 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 0–1, 9.64 ERA, 4.2 IP, 7 K, 2 BB, 1.50 WHIP
2007 World Series: Not on roster
As a knuckleball pitcher, Tim Wakefield gives the Red Sox pitching staff a lot of different styles to show other teams.
It is tough to manage a knuckleball pitcher because he could be flying along and all of a sudden he gives up a three-run home run and you don’t have time to get a guy up in the bull pen.
A coach can look at a fastball pitcher and see that his location is off tonight or his velocity is down, but what do you say to a knuckleball pitcher? There are certain fundamentals that he may be doing right or wrong, but when the ball leaves his fingers, nobody knows where it is going.
I don’t think Wakefield knows what is going to happen from pitch to pitch, much less from inning to inning.
Some people made a big deal about slotting Wakefield in the rotation between fastball pitchers like Beckett or Matsuzaka. I don’t think that makes a big difference. I faced knuckleball pitchers when I played; it might have had an effect on me in the middle of the game when a knuckleballer leaves and the next guy you see throws 98 miles an hour.
Let’s say Wakefield goes seven strong innings and they bring in a guy like Papelbon; that’s a little bit of a shock. But when it comes to the next night, there is no hangover effect at all.
2007 Regular season: W–L 1–3, 37 saves, 1.85 ERA, 58.1 IP, 84 K, 15 BB, 0.77 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 1–0, 4 saves, 0.00 ERA, 10.2 IP, 7 K, 4 BB, 0.84 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 0–0, 3 saves, 0.00 ERA, 4.1 IP, 3 K, 0 BB, 0.46 WHIP
Every pitcher starts out wanting to be a starter and so did Jonathan Papelbon, but now he loves his role as closer.
He has the perfect mentality for a closer. He loves the competition. You have to be a little bit goofy to thrive in that job, and he certainly is. He is a fun kid and it is all genuine. It is not phony.
The Red Sox did a perfect job in handling him in 2007. There was no way they were going to allow this guy to be overworked. He was given plenty of time off. He was healthy and as free and strong as he could be entering the playoffs.
Right now Papelbon is one of the top closers in the league. When he comes in throwing fastballs at 95 to 98 miles per hour, plus a nasty splitter and an average slider, he is lights out.
Papelbon saved three of the Red Sox’s four wins in their World Series sweep of the Rockies, and he came in for the final five outs of the last game. He, and Hideki Okajima, had nothing left in the tank. Actually that should have been a night off for both of them, but when you have a chance to wrap up the World Series, you go for it.
Even if you are on fumes, you find something a little extra and he did.
2007 Regular season: W–L 3–2, 5 saves, 2.22 ERA, 69.0 IP, 63 K, 17 BB, 0.97 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 0–0, 0 saves, 2.45 ERA, 11.0 IP, 11 K, 3 BB, 1.09 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 0–0, 0 saves, 7.36 ERA, 3.2 IP, 6 K, 0 BB, 1.09 WHIP
The Red Sox had scouted Hideki Okajima in Japan. They probably figured he might be a complementary left-hander out of the bull pen and some thought he was hired to give Daisuke Matsuzaka someone to talk with close up. I am sure that they didn’t think they were getting what they ended up with.
I watched him when he arrived for spring training in 2007 and I didn’t see anything that impressive. I didn’t see any success for him.
He throws about 88 miles an hour, and his curveball was only average; that was supposed to have been his big pitch in Japan. But then they came up with this little split-finger fastball that turned his whole year around and turned out to be very, very important to the success of the Red Sox, especially in the first half of the season.
All of a sudden he became the most valuable pitcher out of the bull pen because he made it so easy to get to the closer, Jonathan Papelbon.
Okajima showed he could get both right-handers and left-handers out. Francona didn’t have to mix and match when he got to the seventh or eighth; Okajima would come in and get it done.
It all started out a bit scary; Okajima gave up a home run on the first pitch he threw in the major leagues on April 2, against Kansas City. Catcher John Buck turned around a flat fastball and deposited it over the centerfield fence. “First pitch didn’t go as we planned,” Terry Francona said after the game.
But just over two weeks later, on April 20, the Red Sox roared back with five runs against Luis Vizcaíno and Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the eighth inning to take a 7–6 lead over the New York Yankees. And then Francona handed the ball to Okajima to close the ninth inning; Papelbon had closed out the two previous games in Toronto and was not available.
Okajima set down the Yankees, including Alex Rodríguez—already 3 for 4 with two homers in the game—and earned his first major league save. It was his coming out, and a huge confidence builder for him.
That changed it all around for him. There are so few good pitchers at that stage of the game to hold that lead until you get to your closer, and he did it better than anybody this year.
His workload was much more than he had ever pitched in his career, the same kind of experience that Matsuzaka had, and late in the season, Okajima needed to be shut down for a few weeks because he was getting really tired. It worked out perfectly because he pitched great in the playoffs.
2007 Regular season: W–L 4-0, 4.57 ERA, 63.0 IP, 50 K, 31 BB, 1.46 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 1–0, 1.93 ERA, 9.1 IP, 8 K, 4 BB, 1.07 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 1–0, 0.00 ERA, 5.2 IP, 3 K, 3 BB, 1.06 WHIP
Jon Lester was the winning pitcher in Game 4 of the World Series as the Red Sox swept the Rockies; a year before he was out of baseball, going through chemotherapy.
The Red Sox considered him a higher prospect in the minors than Jonathan Papelbon, which is pretty impressive. We haven’t seen that level of performance yet, but he is still a kid and he has had to deal with serious off-field problems.
And now he is going to be able to concentrate on getting himself strong. I don’t think we’ve seen the best of him yet.
2007 Regular season: W–L 0–0, 1 save, 2.05 ERA, 44.0 IP, 41 K, 17 BB, 1.02 WHIP
2007 Postseason: W–L 0–0, 0 saves, 8.31 ERA, 4.1 IP, 5 K, 3 BB, 2.31 WHIP
2007 World Series: W–L 0–0, 0 saves, 6.75 ERA, 1.1 IP, 1 K, 1 BB, 3.00 WHIP
Manny Delcarmen had a breakout year in 2007. All of a sudden he was throwing strikes, something he hadn’t been able to do when he first came up, and he was bringing it at 97 or 98 miles per hour. He also had a very good change and good breaking ball.
He has a great arm and you could see his confidence grow in the second half of the season.
2007 Regular season: W–L 3–1, 1.59 ERA, 22.2 IP, 22 K, 10 BB, 1.06 WHIP
2007 Postseason: Not on roster
2007 World Series: Not on roster
Another great story in 2007 was Clay Buchholz, a kid who threw a no-hitter in his second start.
You can tell he has good stuff, but as with any young player we’ll need to see more. But what I’ve seen so far I like a lot. He has an over-the-top fastball and curveball and a very good change up. He looks like he can win.
A no-hitter is kind of a freak thing in baseball. It is not something everybody expects every time you pitch. If you do it once in your career, that’s great. It’s not the same as coming up in your first year and winning 18 games and now you are expected to be an 18-game winner next year.
There was real concern in the front office about having Buchholz throw too many innings, or too many pitches in one game. But I think there would have been a riot at Fenway Park if Francona had taken Buchholz out of the game while he still had a no-hitter going.
The Red Sox are very conscious of protecting their young pitchers. I understand that. But when someone is pitching a no-hitter you don’t pull him. I don’t care if it is another forty pitches. You got to leave him out there.
What we need to see now is consistency. It was a good no-hitter, and I think he is going to be a good pitcher.
2007 Regular season: W–L 7–11, 5.15 ERA, 134.2 IP, 77 K, 51 BB, 1.50 WHIP
2007 Postseason: Not on roster
2007 World Series: Not on roster
Julian Tavárez did a decent job in the roles they gave him.
Yo-Yo was a lot of fun to watch on the field; you never quite knew what he was going to do. I remember when he rolled a couple of balls at Youkilis instead of throwing them to make an out.
He is one of those rare guys who can sit around for a week and not do anything and then go out and pitch on a moment’s notice. He loves baseball and I was a little sad for him when he wasn’t on the postseason roster because he made some contributions during the season.
2007 Regular season: 520 AB, .317 average, 39 doubles, 1 triple, 8 HR, 50 RBI, .380 OBP
2007 Postseason: 60 AB, .283 average, 6 doubles, 0 triples, 2 HR, 10 RBI, .348 OBP
2007 World Series: 18 AB, .278 average, 1 double, 0 triples, 0 HR, 4 RBI, .350 OBP
When Pedroia came up for a look-see at the end of 2006 and then was in the lineup at the start of the 2007 season, I didn’t think he was ready for prime time; I wasn’t even sure he was a big league player.
But the front office felt very strongly that if they stayed with the kid, he would survive the way he has his whole life. And all of a sudden things started to click for him. And it became one of the nice stories of the year. On May 1, he was batting .182, and by the end of the season, he was chosen as AL Rookie of the Year.
He is a classic overachiever. He has been that way his whole life. He is not big in stature and he has to work harder than everybody else. He is very confident in himself, almost to the point of being cocky.
He was well received by his teammates because of his attitude and he got a lot of support from veteran players on the team, which is unusual in baseball. He surprised a lot of people except probably himself.
I guess that almost everything that I’ve just said about Pedroia could probably have been fairly said about me when I first came up from the minors. I know what he is going through because I had to do the same thing. It took a while to figure what my game was. It probably took me until I got to Boston really to figure out what kind of player I was going to be. And I think Pedroia is still figuring it out for himself.
It was a great rookie year for him, but I don’t get too excited until I see it over and over and over again. I don’t mean to take anything away from him; it’s just that you want to see consistency and that takes a while to build up.
He does have tremendous hand-eye coordination. It is pretty unique to see a guy that small swinging as hard as he does. He uses a pretty light bat, gets good bat speed, doesn’t strike out, and gets the bat on the ball.
He is a dead fastball hitter. Sometimes I wonder why a pitcher would ever throw him a fastball.
2007 Regular season: 116 AB, .353 average, 7 doubles, 1 triple, 3 HR, 18 RBI, .394 OBP
2007 Postseason: 25 AB, .360 average, 4 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 3 RBI, .429 OBP
2007 World Series: 16 AB, .438 average, 4 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 3 RBI, .500 OBP
Here’s another great story; there’s no question about the level of excitement Jacoby Ellsbury brought to the team with his tremendous speed. He is one of the fastest Red Sox in memory, up there with Otis Nixon and Tommy Harper. I think before my knees went bad, I could have been there with him.
He reminds me a bit of Johnny Damon when he was younger. We’ll have to see how he performs over time, after he gets 500 at bats; I think the results are going to be pretty good.
His speed makes him an impact player immediately. Now we will have to see how he hits. Other teams are going to try and figure a way to get him out, and I think I know how they are going to do that. And then he will have to adjust to that.
When it comes to defense in the outfield, he is still learning. He was good, but not at the level of Coco Crisp.
And it’s also interesting to learn that he may be the first Navajo to play major league baseball. He was born and grew up in Oregon, but he is a member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes in Arizona.
It is going to be fun to watch him grow. I do see things that could make him very special.
2007 Regular season: 528 AB, .288 average, 35 doubles, 2 triples, 16 HR, 83 RBI, .390 OBP
2007 Postseason: 49 AB, .388 average, 4 doubles, 1 triple, 4 HR, 10 RBI, .475 OBP
2007 World Series: 9 AB, .222 average, 2 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 1 RBI, .417 OBP
Kevin Youkilis played his first full season at first base in 2007 and he was perfect for the year; he won the Gold Glove. This is a guy who started as a catcher in the minor leagues and came up to the majors as a third baseman.
It was like he was made for first base. He was really good over there. He saved a lot of errors for his infielders taking balls out of the dirt. He was excellent on bunt plays. And to go a whole year without making an error at first base is remarkable with all the balls you have to handle. Good plays save runs and he was so very solid.
At the plate he is such a patient hitter, almost never swinging at bad pitches. He tries to work counts; he was that way all through the minor leagues. That’s why the Red Sox loved him; he fit right in to what they were trying to do as an offensive team, and that is to wear pitchers down.
I don’t know if you can teach that. Some guys are aggressive and some guys can be very patient.
2007 Regular season: 549 AB, .332 average, 52 doubles, 1 triple, 35 HR, 117 RBI, .445 OBP
2007 Postseason: 46 AB, .370 average, 6 doubles, 0 triples, 3 HR, 10 RBI, .508 OBP
2007 World Series: 15 AB, .333 average, 3 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 4 RBI, .412 OBP
This may have been David Ortiz’s best all-around year. His home run numbers were down to a mere 35, but his batting average was way up, and he led the major leagues with a .445 on-base percentage.
When you hit 54 home runs the year before, you think you’ve got to do it again, and that doesn’t always happen. All through the season, other teams pitched him very carefully and I think that hurt some of his pop.
For the first half of the year, his knees were bothering him, which affected his legs; most of a hitter’s power comes from his legs. In the second half he was a little healthier and you could see his swing was better. He went in for knee surgery a few days after the World Series parade.
Through it all, he ended up batting .332 for the season and got 52 doubles and even a triple, although he couldn’t run a lick and he had to hit through defensive shifts. That’s pretty impressive.
Manny Ramírez, who batted behind him most of the year, put up lesser numbers than he has in recent years. But that didn’t mean that there were many teams that pitched around Ortiz to get to Manny.
There are still not that many managers who want to see Manny come to the plate, choosing to take their chances with Ortiz. It is “pick your poison” when Ortiz and Ramírez are swinging the bat well.
2007 Regular season: 483 AB, .295 average, 33 doubles, 1 triple, 20 HR, 88 RBI, .388 OBP
2007 Postseason: 46 AB, .348 average, 2 doubles, 0 triples, 4 HR, 16 RBI, .508 OBP
2007 World Series: 16 AB, .250 average, 1 double, 0 triples, 0 HR, 2 RBI, .333 OBP
There were a couple of games early in the season when Manny Ramírez hit balls that I thought were gone. But each time the wind was blowing in, and he was robbed of a home run. He could have had at least five in the first month or two taken away from him by weather conditions or good plays. That’s huge when you think of the final total.
Sometimes a player gets on a roll hitting home runs and it keeps going and going. And then when you are not hitting them, you start pressing and that usually doesn’t work.
Manny didn’t speak with reporters for the entire season, but in the playoffs all of a sudden he became the most quotable guy in town. Of course, Manny being Manny, he made those comments just after he beat the Angels in the bottom of the ninth inning of the second game of the ALDS, hitting the first walkoff home run of his fabulous Red Sox career, a moon shot off Francisco Rodríguez that cleared the Coke bottles and was last seen headed for the Mass Pike.
The suddenly talkative Ramírez told reporters that Rodriguez was one of the greatest closers in the game and that he was one of the best hitters.
It wasn’t a typical Manny Ramírez year, but I didn’t see any decline in his bat speed or ability. And he seemed to benefit from the time he took off to recover from a strained left oblique muscle late in the season.
Manny can turn it on any time.
2007 Regular season: 589 AB, .324 average, 37 doubles, 2 triples, 21 HR, 120 RBI, .378 OBP
2007 Postseason: 51 AB, .353 average, 7 doubles, 0 triples, 2 HR, 15 RBI, .410 OBP
2007 World Series: 15 AB, .400 average, 3 doubles, 0 triples, 1 HR, 4 RBI, .500 OBP
Lowell was my MVP for the whole season. He was in the perfect position behind Ortiz and Ramírez. It doesn’t get any better than that. He had men on base all the time for him.
Lowell was a model of consistency all year, hitting for average, driving in runs, getting two-out hits to the opposite field to drive in runs. He put up the best numbers of his career in batting average, hits, RBIs, and on-base percentage.
Day in and day out, he was a true professional. He never gets too high or too low and he was great with the guys in the clubhouse.
2007 Regular season: 466 AB, .270 average, 30 doubles, 4 triples, 11 HR, 64 RBI, .373 OBP
2007 Postseason: 51 AB, .314 average, 3 doubles, 0 triples, 1 HR, 11 RBI, .352 OBP
2007 World Series: 15 AB, .333 average, 2 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 2 RBI, .412 OBP
I didn’t know very much about J. D. Drew because he had spent his entire career in the National League. But when I got to spring training and I saw him play I said, “This is a talented guy.”
He had a difficult year, and I think part of it had to do with family issues off the field; some guys handle that better than others. I think he also had some difficulty because he did not know the American League; some of the better games he had were against National League teams.
I think he finally realized that if you are a left-handed hitter at Fenway Park and have some power, left field is a nice place to go. Toward the end of the year, he started to use the opposite field and that helped him.
In the end I think he got a mulligan from the fans because he hit well in the playoffs.
2007 Regular season: 435 AB, .255 average, 15 doubles, 3 triples, 17 HR, 68 RBI, .367 OBP
2007 Postseason: 52 AB, .269 average, 5 doubles, 0 triples, 1 HR, 10 RBI, .310 OBP
2007 World Series: 15 AB, .333 average, 1 double, 0 triples, 0 HR, 5 RBI, .333 OBP
Jason Varitek is the general. The confidence he brings to the pitchers is tremendous. They know when he is catching, they are going to have a pretty good plan of attack against the guys they are facing.
He has tremendous knowledge of the league. He deals with his pitching staff every day; he knows what is good for them, what is bad for them, and makes adjustments through the season and each game.
He is getting up there a little bit in age, and you have to start to be concerned about that, especially for a catcher. But players today work hard so they can get those extra four or five years they didn’t get years ago.
2007 Regular season: 570 AB, .237 average, 36 doubles, 2 triples, 8 HR, 73 RBI, .294 OBP
2007 Postseason: 48 AB, .271 average, 3 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 3 RBI, .340 OBP
2007 World Series: 13 AB, .385 average, 1 double, 0 triples, 0 HR, 1 RBI, .500 OBP
Julio Lugo was a pretty good offensive player at Tampa Bay, but when he came to Boston in 2007, he started off the season in a terrible slump. He wasn’t a disaster, though. He had some big hits and even when he was not hitting well, he was still driving in runs; he ended up with 73 RBIs, fifth highest on the team.
Defensively he was better than I thought he was going to be. When he played for Tampa, many of his errors were on throws; he always had decent hands and range. Luis Alicea, Boston’s first-base coach who was a former infielder, worked hard with him on footwork and getting into good position to make throws and it paid off.
2007 Regular season: 526 AB, .268 average, 28 doubles, 7 triples, 6 HR, 60 RBI, .330 OBP
2007 Postseason: 33 AB, .182 average, 1 double, 0 triples, 0 HR, 2 RBI, .206 OBP
2007 World Series: 2 AB, .500 average, 0 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 0 RBI, .500 OBP
Coco Crisp didn’t win the Gold Glove in 2007, coming in behind Grady Sizemore of Cleveland, but as far as I am concerned I don’t think anybody played a better defensive center field. He doesn’t throw very well, but he gets a great jump on the ball and he is fearless. He will dive for everything.
As we’ve already talked about in this book, center fielders get the best look at the pitches so they get the best jumps. In addition Crisp learned how to play the wall, how to play the triangle, and how to play the bull pen area—all of these are essentials in the tricky Boston outfield.
2007 Regular season: 207 AB, .246 average, 10 doubles, 5 triples, 3 HR, 18 RBI, .298 OBP
2007 Postseason: 0 AB, .000 average, 0 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 0 RBI, .000 OBP
2007 World Series: No plate appearances
Alex Cora was perfect for his role with the team. Everybody wants to play every day, but the Red Sox had the luxury of veteran guys like him on the bench.
It’s not an easy job to be a backup player. You don’t get to keep your timing sharp like you can when you play every day; you have to make the most of pregame practice and stay in condition.
The Red Sox also had veterans like Eric Hinske, who was an everyday player before he came over, and Bobby Kielty, who arrived late in the year. I guess when you are on a team like the Red Sox, you figure you have a chance to win a World Series and that makes it easier to accept those roles.
Powerhouse Pitching in 2007
Among the great pitching accomplishments of 2007 was Clay Buchholz throwing a no-hitter on his second start in the major leagues, forty-year-old veteran Curt Schilling coming within one out of doing the same, and Josh Beckett’s lights-out pitching down the stretch and into the postseason.
To me Beckett’s season would absolutely come in first. Even if he didn’t get the award, he had a Cy Young year.
Schilling will remember for the rest of his life that he shook off Varitek’s pitch call; you don’t get many chances for no-hitters. Clay Buchholz’s game was even better, but in the long haul they don’t compare with what Beckett did all year.
But I love veterans like Cora because nothing fazed him. He could sit out a week, come in and do a decent job defensively, and stick a hit every once in a while.
I was so used to being an everyday player I couldn’t have done it. Not that I was a great player, but I don’t think I could have accepted it.
2007 Regular season: 87 AB, .218 average, 3 doubles, 0 triples, 1 HR, 12 RBI, .287 OBP
2007 Postseason: 6 AB, .500 average, 0 doubles, 0 triple, 1 HR, 2 RBI, .667 OBP
2007 World Series: 1 AB, 1.000 average, 0 doubles, 0 triples, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 1.000 OBP
Another great story from the 2007 season: Bobby Kielty gets one at bat in the World Series in the eighth inning of the final game. He sees one pitch, swings, and hits a home run that turns out to be the deciding run.
You can’t predict that stuff. The first thing I thought was, suppose Wily Mo Peña had been in that spot; he probably would have struck out.
Kielty had been released by the Oakland Athletics on July 31, and the Red Sox signed him to a minor league deal a week later. On August 18, he was called up from Pawtucket after Wily Mo Peña was traded to the Washington Nationals.
It turned out that the move the front office made to get Kielty was a good one. It worked out perfectly for that one hit. They knew he was a pretty decent outfielder and as a batter he was better from the right side than the left.
He had to walk away from the World Series with a great feeling. He went from being released to joining a team that was going to the postseason, and then hitting a home run in the World Series. It’s like heaven.