This entry was posted on 7/20/2008 1:12 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
There’s no denying it.
The Red Sox have bent over backwards, forward, sideways and upside down while enabling Manny Ramirez to craft his “Manny Being Manny” persona – a seemingly small ransom to be paid while the mercurial Hall of Fame-bound slugger smacked home runs and piled up Cooperstown-worthy totals.
Starting at the top with Sox Principal Owner John Henry and trickling all the way down to aggrieved traveling secretary Jack McCormick, everyone associated with the company housed on Yawkey Way has made special exceptions on some level for the once-in-a-generation talent.
It’s allowed the Sox to capture a pair of World Series Championships over the last two seasons, and it’s also built up the Dreadlocked One into a folk hero on the main streets and back roads of Red Sox Nation. There was even a memorable column at the start of this season that tossed out the notion that Ramirez should have a statue built in his honor at the Fens when Manny finally closed up the shutters.
That’s why Ramirez’s ill-timed bomb-tossing actions toward the Sox ownership group and front office over the last week smack of something stuck between completely misguided and “in need of medication” delusional.
In case you missed it, Ramirez cryptically told both Channel 7 reporter Larry Ridley and the Boston Herald’s Rob Bradford: “I want no more (expletive) where they tell you one thing and behind your back they do another thing.”
The message was sent in two different interviews, and wasn’t an “off the cuff” or “taken out of context” quote.
This was something that Ramirez clearly wanted out in the open for public consumption.
Was Manny talking about Boston’s half-hearted attempts to accommodate his past trade requests when he arbitrarily wanted out of Boston? Was the 36-year-old outfielder hinting at potential contract extension talks that he hoped the Sox would engage in, or maybe even some other kind of unfulfilled promises that the Sox haven’t lived up to?
Nobody seems to know.
The intrigue is solely due to Ramirez throwing the Sox organization under the bus, but inexplicably refusing to acknowledge what set the wick burning in the first place.
So we’re left to speculate, and it’s stunningly obvious that there is one difference between the Ramirez this season and past Manny Being Manny incarnations during his seven plus seasons in Red Stockings.
Ramirez doesn’t have the warm blanket of contractual security to comfort him with each organizational “brush fire” he accidentally sparks this season. Ramirez doesn’t know if the Sox will enact his $20 million team option for the 2009 season, and the Sox have until Nov. 9 to mull it over.
It would be sheer folly for the Sox to activate that option any sooner than they have to.
The ball…leverage…whatever you want to call it, is utterly in Boston’s favor because A) Ramirez isn’t guaranteed anything for next year at this point and B> the left fielder isn’t going to find any $20 million suitors this winter as he turns 37 years old and hurtles toward full-time DH-dom.
Manny Being Manny has transformed from charming to something much more malevolent this season, a change in behavior that preceded a dugout shoving match with Kevin Youkilis, the despicable incident involving 64-year-old McCormick and the trash talk targeted for Epstein, Henry and Co.
If the Sox did take on Ramirez’s option for next season and endure one more year of Manny at $20 million, then what’s to stop this very same erratic behavior from Ramirez when another 2010 $20 million option hangs in the balance?
There were reports that – during the three day All-Star event in New York City – Alex Rodriguez was taking Ramirez to task for agreeing to the two $20 million team options in his contract to begin with – a stark contrast to the opt-out language that allowed A-Rod to escape his pact and ink a $275 million megabucks contract with the Yanks.
There are only a handful of teams in the big leagues that could pay Ramirez the kind of money he expects, and he doesn’t mean nearly enough to those teams as he does to the Olde Towne Team.
Nobody is going to lock up a petulant 37-year-old DH-in-the-making who has seen his slugging percentage and OPS tumble over the last two seasons. Manny is still dangerous, but he’s also not the same hitter that he used to be.
His best chance to see truly big bucks over the next two years is to stop insulting the guy who signs his paychecks and start producing the numbers expected out of Boston’s clean-up hitter over the last two seasons.
Things seemed promising this winter when Ramirez was working out at API in Arizona and seemed motivated to have the kind of career year that would have forced the Sox to pick up his option. Prospects looked even better when Ramirez jumped out of the gate with a .344 month of April that saw his smash five homers and 15 RBIs along with a 1.011 OPS – a great beginning for the notoriously slow starter.
But the Manny milk has gone sour over the last two months, and it’s time to finally cut things off once and for all at the end of this season. As always, Manny’s numbers talk and he simply isn’t irreplaceable enough anymore to excuse the churlish behavior both on and off the field.
This isn't about erroneous reports concerning ridiculous "six figure fines" or dopey claims that Ramirez tanked an at bat against the Yankees in what amounts to a contract season. It's about the OPS, stupid.
Bring in Matt Holiday or Mark Teixeira, or somebody else that’s younger and capable of hitting the 30 home runs and 100 RBIs that have become Ramirez’s ceiling over the last two seasons.
The Simple Truth: the Manny Being Manny era in Boston is coming to a close, and his statistics are no longer gaudy enough to protect him.
