The Echo Chamber Blog

Beckett will be without Lowell to his right for the first time in his career.

I thought I had come to gripes with the whole pink hat fan base (I use this term in the least sexist way possible). The casual female fan who proudly sports pink Red Sox garb around town or at Fenway Park is not who I’m gunning for. I’m gunning for the open-toed shoe wearing, unstructured hat sporting, frat party attending know-it-all that I’ve been coming across either on the blogosphere or on the popular social networking website, BookFace (hat tip to Jim Halpart). There’s two types, both are equally frustrating. One is the “In Theo We Trust” and the other is the “In Theo we Distrust.”

Let’s go back in time for a bit. Last year at this time, Clay Buchholz rumors were running rampant. A lot of people were begging that he be flipped for one of the 3 young catching studs from Arlington; Taylor Teagarden, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, or Max Ramirez. At the time, Texas still had Gerald Laird on the roster and they were fielding offers for him as well. They wound up keeping all the young guys and traded Laird to the Tigers for a pair of minor league pitchers. They then elected to start the season with the youngest of the trio, Salty, as their every day backstop, and gave Teagarden the back up job, all the while letting Ramirez stay on the farm to get some seasoning. I even mentioned here on TECB around that same time that Teagarden or Ramirez should be had, as the Rangers seemed Hell-bent on anointing Salty as their catcher of the future.

The 2009 season comes to an end. Salty got hurt and finished the year with only 283 ABs. Meanwhile, Teagarden wound up with 198 and Max Ramirez found himself with a similar amount in the minors, battling wrist injuries for most of the season. The lack of production from their catching core caused the Rangers to re-acquire the immortal Pudge Rodriguez, who led the three in hitting with a robust .245 (yes, batting average is far from the end-all, be-all of batting statistics, but the point still remains).

A little bit of history on the three backstops: Salty came to the Rangers via Atlanta in a trade packaged around Mark Teixeira. They also received, Matt Harrison, Beau Jones, Elvis Andrus, and Neftali Feliz. Feliz and Andrus have shown more success at the Big League level than Salty has. Teagarden is a  kid, born in Dallas, attended Texas University and then finally drafted by the Rangers.  To me, he should have been the odds-on favorite from the get-go. Max Ramirez is also a product of Atlanta. He was an undrafted free agent who was flipped to Cleveland a few years back for Bob “Everybodies’ Plummer Look-a-like” Wickman at the deadline. The following year, Cleveland traded him to Texas for Kenny Lofton. All along, Ramirez has had doubts that he would stick behind the plate for the duration of his career. But he’s had the most minor league success of the three and is still considered a prospect by many. I’m not sure you can still say that about Teagarden, since he’ll entering his age-26 season for 2010. Teagarden, however, is injury free at the moment. Ramirez has wrist concerns and Saltly had to leave a winter league game recently due to soreness in his surgically repaired shoulder.

I digressed a little there. My issue is that this trade makes more sense to the Red Sox than it does for the Rangers. Yet I’ve heard and seen plenty of backlash since the rumors were first reported. I think the money exchanging hands is largely responsible. Whenever the Red Sox are paying large chunks of players’ salaries while said player is wearing another uniform, fans seem to take personal exception since tickets to Fenway are outrageous. For these folks, they should probably Google “supply and demand” before they make any more wild accusations.

Youk moving to 3rd will help defensively and a 1st base/catcher/DH rotation between Victor Martinez, Jason Varitek, David Ortiz and Kasey Kotchman has the potential to be pretty productive. Ramirez could spend the first few months down in Pawtucket and be brought to be Victor Martinez lite. Not to mention the fact that Ramirez will be Boston property for a few seasons where as Lowell was as good as gone at the end of 2010 regardless. He’s an awesome guy and a club house leader whose veteran presence will be missed. But let’s not over value someone in their later 30′s with a surgically repaired arthritic hip who can’t run out ground balls. When Man-Ram didn’t run out grounders, it was off with his head. When Lowell did it, people felt bad. If you can’t run, whether it is from injury or being apathetic, then being flipped for a young power hitting catcher/1st baseman shouldn’t be ostracized. This trade looks good, even in Pink Hat colored glasses.