Jason Varitek Takes to the Airwaves to Defend His Teammates

This morning on WAAF 107.3 FM's "The Hillman Morning Show," host Greg Hill welcomed Jason Varitek into the studio. This wasn't an impromptu interview as John Henry conducted last Friday. This was planned and scheduled.

While last week seemed to be the week that the owner of the Red Sox had his opportunity to address recent Red Sox rumors, this week has been dominated by the players who are finally speaking out to both confirm and deny various "anonymous sources" who have painted the Sox clubhouse as a bit disorganized to say the least during their recent September collapse. 

The Varitek interview wasn't too earth shattering. Of course Varitek was ready to defend his teammates in the face of the numerous disparaging rumors floated throughout the media over the past three weeks. 

Towards the end of the interview Varitek made a fairly insightful observation, and it's worthy of Red Sox fans and naysayers to noticing and think about.

Jacoby Ellsbury.

Vartek mentioned Jacoby Ellsbury and how many Red Sox fans and media members wanted to run him out of town just last summer. Ellsbury who is coming off an MVP-caliber season in which he hit over 30 home runs and stole over 30 bases while playing outstanding center field was once the main target for Boston sports vitriol. That was only 14 months ago too.

Ellsbury had been injured very early in the 2010 season. He had cracked ribs and the initial diagnosis which called for a return in about six weeks proved woefully inaccurate. Ellsbury would end up missing the entire season with those cracked ribs and by July of 2010 the media had already started to issue its "expert" medical opinion on his injury.

"Here we are three months later and Ellsbury is Boston's nowhere man as the injury-riddled Sox sit in third place in the AL East at the All Star break," Dan Shaughnessy.

Those three months became four and then five and the Red Sox never made the playoffs and plenty of Red Sox fans were ready to trade Ellsbury. 

He wasn't tough enough, he didn't care about the team, he was a soft player, the Red Sox should trade him. Those are the types of things that one would have heard had they switched on any of the numerous Boston talk radio sports shows in the summer and into the fall of 2010. 

It's a little different now isn't it? 

Now Ellsbury is one of the only guys on the entire Red Sox team—no the entire Red Sox organization who seems somewhat immune to the barbs of fans, media and "anonymous sources." It's been barely a year since he was deemed a very trade-able commodity. 

Now as one who has been guilty of player criticism myself, I can't sit here and say that no player is worthy of criticism, but I can say that it's gotten out of hand. The Boston Herald wants to trade Josh Beckett.

An interesting solution for a team plagued with pitching problems would be to trade either the team's best or second best starting pitcher. We all know how easy it is to find starting pitching so trade Beckett and replace him with??? ( insert cricket sounds here).

I can clearly remember asking people who wanted Ellsbury to be dealt in the summer of 2010 where they planned on finding another player approaching his prime years who hit close to .300 and had stolen 70 bases in a season. They're actually not as common as people seem to think they are. 

Last season there were 17 starting pitchers in all of baseball with earned run averages of 3.00 or lower, one of them was Josh Beckett so that means there are 16 others out there. That's just a touch less than one for every two major league teams. Two of those 16, C.J. Wilson and C.C. Sabathia will be free agents. It's a safe bet that the Red Sox will be trying to sign one of those pitchers because those types of players just aren't out there for the taking. 

Those that are clamoring for Beckett's departure should probably try and figure out how the Red Sox can replace his production before they show him the door. See if the Tigers are in a rush to deal Justin Verlander, ask the Giants about Tim Lincecum's availability. Call up Frank McCourt and see which prospects he'd like in exchange for Clayton Kershaw and then dial up Ruben Amaro in Philadelphia and see how urgent he is about getting rid of Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee. 

I'll save you the time. They're not headed to Boston, none of them are. The Red Sox could offer up nearly every top prospect in their organization and the odds of them acquiring any of those pitchers would still be astronomically slim. 

Players have bad seasons, even players as talented as Jacoby Ellsbury. Josh Beckett had a bad month. Carl Crawford had a bad year. It was a terrible September for the Red Sox and it resulted in a terrible outcome, but the reaction by Red Sox Nation may end up doing far more harm than good. This terrible team that everyone is urgently trying to dismantle won 90 games last season. 

Jason Varitek is the second player ( Jon Lester had a revealing interview yesterday) to both admit to some of the things rumored to have been going on behind the scenes such as drinking beers and eating takeout fried chicken. It appears that those things were happening when they were winning games also. They're little things that make for good copy or colorful discussions but I completely agree with the players when they say that they weren't the reasons for the collapse. 

Drinking and its place in baseball are well documented. Babe Ruth was a well known drinker, Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic, as was former Yankee skipper Billy Martin. David Wells is on the record for being hung over on the day he threw his perfect game in 1998.

The lovable "idiots" that won the 2004 World Series used to drink a shot before a game according to sources. Not anonymous ones, this came from Kevin Millar.

So what's the difference here? Well that's simple. Results. In the end Red Sox fans are upset because the Red Sox lost. Win one or maybe two more games in September the Sox make the postseason and then who knows? Maybe they're on Fox tonight in Game 1 of the 2011 World Series?

Maybe the Red Sox would have been sipping beers on off-nights throughout the playoffs and maybe the Sox would be winning games too?  One thing is for sure, no one would care, not about the beers, not about the chicken, not about the perceived lack of control that Terry Francona had in the clubhouse, none of it. It's all no problem—if you win the games.

None of this seems to matter though. Anger is always good copy or good radio, anger sells and anger is simple. Being angry seems to be the emotion du jour but does it accomplish anything? Do people make rational decisions based on anger? In spite of the obvious facts that many of these issues are overblown, the anger continues in Boston today.

The Red Sox collapsed and if fans want to debate or discuss the Red Sox organizational philosophy when it comes to handling their pitching staff, or physical fitness or the ways in which they go about signing or not signing free-agents, those are all valid discussions. Beer, fried chicken and hearsay? Come on Sox Nation we're better than that.