Whether or not you choose to believe it, the latest trendy baseball truism that every psuedo-intellectual baseball fan loves to trumpet is that "pitching and defense win championships." They say it in every sport these days, in fact — "the best offense is a good defense," and if you want to win the big one, you've got to keep the opposing team off the scoreboard.
Never mind the fact that counterexamples keep popping up every year. What's been winning championships these days? Sluggers. And lots of them.
The last three World Series winners, Boston included, have won by packing their lineups with heavy hitters from one to nine. Pitching and defense haven't been forgotten altogether, but by and large, they're afterthoughts. Having the big boppers at the plate has been the focus.
That's why it's so perplexing that the 2010 Red Sox, with all the pressure in the world riding on their hopes of returning to the World Series, have begun moving in the opposite direction.
The Red Sox won it all in 2007. That year, they were fourth in the major leagues with 867 runs scored — they also led the majors in doubles and walks, and were second only to the Yankees in on-base percentage. It's no surprise that they took the Fall Classic that October. With an offense like that, they could do no wrong.
The Phillies in '08 were more of the same. Charlie Manuel's ballclub was a modern-day Murderer's Row, leading the National League with 214 home runs. Ryan Howard, Pat Burrell, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins were as formidable a foursome as any in baseball. The Phils fought off the competition with the long ball, and it didn't let them down in October.
And then we had the Yankees.
The Bronx Bombers won 103 games and the World Series this past season. They did it with a lineup that led all of baseball in runs (915), home runs (244), walks (663), on-base percentage (.362), slugging percentage (.478) and OPS (.839). Their offense was the scariest we've seen in baseball in a long, long time. From top to bottom, there were no easy outs — it was the most complete lineup you may ever see.
The Red Sox, for their part, were Yankee Lite. The Yanks had Mark Teixeira; the Red Sox had Kevin Youkilis. The Yanks had Alex Rodriguez; the Red Sox had Mike Lowell. Both teams were slugging, but the Bronx Bombers were doing it better. The Red Sox knew they'd need to over-perform to sneak into the World Series, and it didn't happen.
The big bats weren't big enough. The Red Sox got to October and fell flat on their faces — they scored a total of seven runs in three games. No wonder they were sent home early.
David Ortiz went 1-for-12. Youkilis and Jason Bay combined for zero RBIs in 20 at-bats. The Red Sox may have hit 212 home runs in the regular season, but they got just one in the playoffs, a two-run shot by J.D. Drew in the series' third and final game.
If at first the big-bat strategy doesn't succeed, you try again, right? If you can't slug your way to victory, you try slugging harder, perhaps?
That's been the path to World Series glory lately. But the Red Sox appear to be trying a different tactic this time around.
If the Sox had spent all their available cash on retaining Bay, and parceled off their farm system to acquire Adrian Gonzalez and/or Miguel Cabrera, they'd be looking like new-school World Series winners. But by going after John Lackey, Mike Cameron and Marco Scutaro instead, they're trying another approach.
The Red Sox' defense was the third-worst in all of baseball last season. By converting just 67.7 percent of batted balls into outs, the team showed a lack of defensive range that no world champion can get away with. Theo Epstein saw a weakness in his ballclub, and he did what was necessary to fix it.
Lackey, Cameron, Scutaro. It's more than a personnel change — it's a shift in baseball philosophy.
The Sox have given up on keeping up with the Yankees' bats. They're very much in the hunt for World Series glory in 2010, but they're going about it a different way.
Maybe the generalization is true after all. Defense does win championships sometimes, right?
Right. These Red Sox can prove it.