I Told You So: Why I Picked the Red Sox

Oh
to be right.

When
you make preseason predictions and they come true, that doesn’t
necessarily make you a genius. If you pick two heavy favorites and
they clash in the Super Bowl, how prophetic is that? You deserve some
credibility, but not that much. But when you pick the team everyone
else said would be one of the worst in the league and they win it
all? Pure brilliance.

Sorry
to toot my own horn, but this was not me throwing you-know-what at
the wall and hoping it would stick. No, this was a calculated
prediction. Sure, I wasn’t perfect. I’m well-aware the Philadelphia
Phillies came nowhere near meeting the Boston Red Sox in the Fall
Classic (although aren’t the Phillies and Cardinals interchangeable,
two red teams with recent NL dominance?). But with the Sox, I saw
something that no one else did.

Let’s
start with karma. I’ll keep this brief. Very few people actually
believe that this stuff exists in sports. Does Yankee Stadium or
Lambeau Field have auras that intimate teams and make them collapse
under postseason pressure? Do certain teams just seem to get key
breaks that others don’t? No one can prove this, but it certainly
seems that way. Without a doubt, Boston qualifies as one of those
teams. So is it every really a surprise when one of their teams has a
season like this based on what we’ve seen in the 21^st
century?

Next,
let’s examine general manager Ben Cherington’s offseason moves. But
before even that, there was the reality that last year’s 69-93
debacle was a byproduct of a team that simply didn’t gel under its
manager, Bobby Valentine, and saw a number of its top players miss
time with injury, including David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby
Ellsbury and Clay Buchholz.

With
his core players back in tow, Cherington took to signing what
so-called “experts” referred to as a group of “grinders.” If
you say so, guys. Maybe that’s the most convenient way to describe
guys like Jonny Gomes, Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, David Ross, and
Shane Victorino. But Koji Uehara a grinder? No, that wasn’t even on
anyone’s radar… except mine. You see, anyone who has followed the
Orioles knows that Uehara has the makings of a lights-out reliever,
and the Sox sorely needed one.

Granted,
no one, even yours truly, could have predicted that Uehara would turn
in a season for the ages considering he began the season as a middle
reliever and was basically the team’s fourth option as closer after
injuries to Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey and a brief, ineffective
stint by Junichi Tazawa. But make no mistake, the Red Sox were
getting a dominant pitcher in Uehara regardless.

If
nothing else, Spring Training did at least provide a brief glimpse of
things to come, which helped make my decision to pick the Sox that
much easier. Uehara pitched 9.2 scoreless innings over 10
appearances, striking out 12 while walking just two. Meanwhile,
Buchholz was downright nasty, going 3-0 with an 0.79 ERA in six
starts. That’s why I picked him to win Cy Young, an award he would
have shocked the baseball world by winning were it not for a
midseason injury that cost him three months.

Jon
Lester was going to be Jon Lester, a top-of-the-rotation force. I
figured Buchholz would be the pitcher he was in Spring Training.
There’s an elite one-two punch right there. John Lackey was a wild
card, but it didn’t take long to see that he had reinvented himself
into the pitcher the Sox thought they were getting when they forked
over $82.5 million in 2010. He was a far cry from being one of the
primary scapegoats of the ill-fated, Terry Francona-led,
fried-chicken-eating, beer-drinking 2011 club that collapsed so
epically. Throw in Ryan Dempster as a No. 4 starter and a talented
Felix Doubront as a No. 5, and that’s one pretty solid rotation.

The
bullpen changed drastically throughout the year, but the pieces were
there. Even before the additions of Uehara and the unsung Craig
Breslow, flame-throwing lefty Andrew Miller and Tazawa were already
going to provide depth. Bailey was not healthy in 2012 and was likely
to rebound closer to his All-Star form he showed with Oakland.
Hanrahan didn’t pan out, but with depth comes the ability to plug
holes that develop throughout the year, and that’s where Uehara was
going to be a major asset when the Sox went above and beyond by
giving him $4.25 million to be a middle reliever, something only a
handful of other clubs could pull off.

And
then there was John. As in manager John Farrell. No, there would be
no bad karma for Farrell jumping ship from Toronto. The Blue Jays
were supposed to be the dominant team this season in the American
League East and Farrell was supposed to regret his decision. But
Boston was his dream job for a reason. His heart never left the Red
Sox, and apparently neither did his influence on the team’s pitchers.
I noticed a sharp decline in the performance of the pitching staff
after his departure, and I expected equal improvement upon his
return. I was not wrong.

Once
the season began, all I heard was, “It’s early,” and, “It’s a
long season,” and, “the Red Sox are prone to second half
collapses.” But opening day told me just about everything I needed
to know. The Sox were not expected to do much, and they had to travel
to Yankee Stadium to take on their archrivals for the first three
games of the season when the Yankees were vulnerable with injuries.
Maybe, just maybe, the Sox could squeak out a series win. Even just
an opening day victory would suffice.

Instead,
the Red Sox stomped on CC Sabathia and the Yankees, 8-2, and won the
next night, 7-4. They went to Toronto and thrashed the
supposedly-improved Blue Jays, 13-0, in the rubber match of their
second series. Then came the moment that may have formed the
unbreakable bond. On April 20, on one of the most emotional days in
recent memory in Boston, the Red Sox trailed the Royals 2-1 in the
bottom of the eighth inning when Daniel Nava smacked a game-winning,
three-run homer to lift the Sox and lift the spirits of a community
rocked by the bombing days earlier at the Boston Marathon. Boston
Strong would become not only a motto for the city, but the team as
well.

The
truth is, nothing in life is a guarantee. One of the things we love
about sports is its unpredictability. Do the best teams always win?
Of course not. So often, the pressure of having the league’s best
record or homefield advantage wears too heavily on teams, and the
postseason provides surprise plot twists and turns that pave the way
for a Cinderella team and allows legends to be born. But there are
also times that, if you watch sports for long enough, you become
familiar with trends and patterns that inevitably will develop over
the course of a season.

Does
it make complete sense to factor into my logic that after three years
of being left out in the cold in October, the Red Sox were simply
“due” for a return trip to the playoffs? Or that adding a few
guys that, while they may not be in the prime of their careers
anymore, always seem to end up on winning teams? Or that coming off
their most miserable season in nearly a half-century, the Sox were
much more dangerous having little or no expectations than as the
known commodity they usually are? Maybe not.

But
I’m looking pretty wise right now.