Is Papelbon to Blame for Red Sox Finish?
On Wednesday's "The Baseball Reporters," Mazz focused in on why the Sox are almost out of the race: Jonathan Papelbon. "One game doesn't mean a hell of a lot. Those head-to-head meetings do. They mean a ton. And here is why: The Red Sox are five games behind the New York Yankees now, in the loss column, with six to play on the Boston schedule, and five for the Yankees, so it's actually five and a half. But that margin would be one game, one game, if Jonathan Papelbon had not blown a pair of saves against the Yankees this year. And I'm not trying to put this all on Papelbon."
But just a few minutes later, Mazz did put all the blame on Papelbon. "So despite everything they have gone through this year, all of the injuries: Beckett, Youkilis, Pedroia, Victor Martinez. Despite all the inactivity on the part of the front office, nobody of consequence picked up during the course of the season. Despite all of that, had Jonathan Papelbon just closed those two games, both of them at Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox would still be one out."
The truth of the matter is that while those games were obviously important, in the grand scheme of things, they don't mean as much as Mazz would like them to. Papelbon is not the scapegoat here. Like Mazz mentioned, there were plenty of things that brought down Boston this year: injuries, underperformance, and inactivity, to name a few. The most important thing to note here is that all of these things plagued the team; baseball is a team effort, and can only be won—and lost—as a team.
Anyone can look back and find a blown save here, a dropped fly ball there, or another missed opportunity somewhere else, but you can't define an entire season by two moments when a season consists of millions of them. When the Red Sox season ends, don't blame Papelbon and his blown saves—blame the entire organization.
The Baseball Reporters Recap
by Chelsea Frajerman
