The Names Remain The Same

The Red Sox did not make any deals by yesterday's deadline, and by listening to some of those so-called "experts," you'd think the Red Sox were giving up and handing the division title to the Yankees. As many of you may know, I find many sportswriters, especially here in New York, to be lower on the "respect scale" than politicians and lawyers. Any of them who think the Yankees have wrapped up anything by acquiring an underachieving Bobby Abreu, or a mediocre pitcher in Cory Lidle, have another thing coming.

Pitching will tell the story in September. Period.

Every GM in baseball knew they had the Red Sox over a barrel when it came time to make a deal. Some of the offers were rather silly, like the one the Phillies offered in a deal for Jon Lieber. They wanted either Craig Hansen or Jon Lester for an overpaid, mediocre pitcher who can't get lefthanded batters out.

Two paragraphs in the Boston Globe may have summed up what happened perfectly.

``That was pretty much everything," said Theo Epstein of not wanting to give up prospects. ``We have a long-term plan, and as much as we desperately wanted to do something to help our big-league team, it would have been shortsighted to sacrifice that long-term plan in order to incrementally increase our chances this year.
``We were asked over and over again for a lot of our good young players -- good young players at the major league level who are part of our long-term plan -- and it just wasn't worth it."

I applaud Theo for keeping to his vision and not sacrificing some talented young arms to keep up with the Yankees and make some bonehead deal. I love these knuckleheads who call the Red Sox "losers" for not doing anything yesterday. Sure, I was hoping that the Red Sox could pick up a veteran starter or reliever, but the asking price was just too high. And the rumored deals for both Andruw Jones and Roy Oswalt both also carried too high a price for the Red Sox to pay.

I like this Red Sox team, and I think they can go a long way.

"Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make," the old cliche goes.

When the season ends, we'll see if that is indeed true.