The Potential of Potential and the Rules of Winning

There are only two ways you can look at yesterday's trade of Johan Santana from the Minnesota Twins to the New York Mets if you're a Boston Red Sox: a. awesome we get to keep our kids and the Yankees don't get Santana or b. why didn't we try harder to get him? Ultimately the choice you make colors the way you look at winning.

Inspired by a thread on Sons of Sam Horn, “Are there rules to winning?”, this entry is about the aesthetics of winning. In other words, is there a correct way or an incorrect way of building a championship team? To the hard core, “winning is the only thing” type of fan; no, there isn't a right or wrong way. The bottom line is where you finish. If you finish as the World Series runner-up, you didn't have a good year and need to retool right away by any means necessary.

The other side of that coin, is that in order to win “right” a team can't be a collection of guys assembled from other teams. They have to come up and be nurtured through your farm system for a few years to be considered “real” members of your team. Trades and free agency can augment your team, but it can never be the sole mortar used for assembling a championship squad. For some reason, these people want a degree of difficulty added to an already difficult proposition.

Think of the 2003 Red Sox. They had a team that was a brain fart and five outs away from going to the World Series. Did General Manager Theo Epstein and his front office crew think that lightening would strike twice and they were destined to be in the same place the following year with the exact same team? No. They got rid of Grady Little and hired a manager that would heed their scouting reports. Traded some minor league chaff to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for their ace, Curt Schilling, and spent a boatload of cash to land the best reliever on the market, Keith Foulke. At mid-season, they traded their home grown shortstop for a better shortstop and some bench depth.

You know the rest, the 2004 team went on to win the World Series. Was there disappointment because the team only had two home grown players (Kevin Youkilis and Trot Nixon), four if you include Curt Schilling (originally drafted by the Sox, but never played for the team) and Ellis Burks (also drafted and starred for Boston early in his career)? I don't think so. That year, the Red Sox were essentially a team of well-paid baseball Hessians that won the Series after 86 years of failure. From David Ortiz to David McCarthy, none of those players will ever have to pay for a drink in Boston again.

In contrast, look at the 2007 Red Sox. Another World Champion, but this time there are six home grown players, nine if you count Schilling and Japanese imports Hideki Okajima and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Does this team resonate any more or less with you than the 2004 team (forget that the 2004 team erased 86 years of history—I know it's a big caveat, but stay with me on this) simply because Jonathan Papelbon was a Lowell Spinner or Jon Lester spent some time in Pawtucket? Of course not, both teams overcame great post season odds and established themselves champions by playing hard at the right times. Who cares where they played ball before Boston? In the long run, aside from Manny Delcarmen, none of these men are true Bostonians or Massachusetts residents before they put on the Red Sox jersey.

People may have been a bit more exuberant to celebrate the 2004 team than the 2007 team, but that was strictly because of decades of frustration being shrugged off in one magical three-week period. There is no asterisk next to the 2004 Championship.

What does this have to do with Johan Santana? It's simple, there is a faction of people in blogland and in print and on the radio, who feel that the Sox somehow bettered themselves by not landing the best lefthander of the last seven years. They will argue that when/if the Sox win the Series next they'll have done so with their own players and thus not end up like the Yankees. That's the favorite target of these people, pointing to the bloated payroll of a collection of travelling All-Stars who routinely buy their way into postseason year after year.

In addition to supporting a team with the second highest payroll and not understanding that the rest of Baseball America lumps the Sox in with the Yanks, in terms of grossly overspending for talent, many of these same people are smitten with the idea that the the potential for greatness is better than greatness itself.

It's not.

Sure, Jon Lester or Jacoby Ellsbury or Jed Lowrie or Justin Masterson (all names rumored to go to Minnesota in exchange for Santana) could be either good or great players down the road for the Red Sox. The key word in that last sentence is “could” and Santana is great now. Barring injuries, having him anchor a rotation of Beckett, Matsuzaka, and Buccholz for the next five years would've been terrific.

Chances are good that some of those prospects either aren't going to get a chance to prove their mettle in Boston (for example, Julio Lugo is signed for three more years and Dustin Pedroia isn't getting traded—what does that mean for Lowrie?) or they're going to flame out (Phil Plantier, anyone?). If one of them will be even half as dominant as Santana, I'll be surprised. But that's the understood gamble with prospects, only some people don't seem to remember that when it comes time to let go of them.

For every Jeff Bagwell, there's a Frankie Rodriguez. For ever Hanley Ramirez, there's a Tony Armas Jr. or Brandon Lyon. In order to get value, you have to give up value. Trading your highly ranked prospects isn't “going the way of the Yankees” or some other inaccurate cliché. It's Baseball Economics 101. There are 25-30 guys drafted every year, all of them will not be making the big club. The trick in establishing a championship team is keeping the two or three draftees that will make you a better team and unloading the others on poor schmucks for their better players. That's not just the way baseball works, it's the way all sports works.

Whether Red Sox fans like it or not, if the Yankees are number 1 in terms of payroll, the Sox are seen as 1A. It's about time that the fandom embraces that, because the Little Engine that Could version of the Sox left the station the first year their payroll went over $100 million. And that's ok, it's alright to have a team make a lot of money and use that money to win. The owners of the Twins and the Royals are among the richest people in America, do you think that the citizens of Minnesota and Kansas City would rather have them use their money to better their teams or line their coffers? The answer is obvious.

There are no bonus points for winning a World Series through some arbitrary “correct way”. A winner is a winner is a winner, no matter how the team is constructed. When it comes to professional athletics, Vince Lombardi was correct, “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”

Play for me Johan Santana

You're the Boston Red Sox. You have won the American League East, the American League pennant and the World Series Championship (the second time in four years). You have a bonafide stud pitcher in Josh Beckett, a potential stud in Daisuke Matsuzaka (both under 28-years-old) and two veterans who probably have something left in the tank in Curt Schilling and Tim Wakefield. You also have a slew of prospects that have done well in their brief call-ups (Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz) plus a bunch of kids on the farm.

You want the best left handed pitcher of the last ten years but you don't need him as much as your chief rival to the south does. If you mortgage the farm and paid upwards of $20 million a year for the next five years, you can pretty much count on going to the playoffs every year for the next half a decade. Do you trade for him?

(The last two paragraphs employ a style that New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Cannon made famous. I didn't intentionally think about writing the first couple of sentences like this, but I guess I was influenced by Cannon's collection of columns bound into the book, “Nobody Asked Me, But ...” which I am currently reading. It's a decent read if you care about sports from the 50s and 60s and you should be able to get it at a used bookstore.)

Let's look at what we do know: despite a mediocre record last year (which doesn't really mean a hell of a lot) and the fact that he gave up way more home runs than he did during any point in his career, with the Red Sox, Johan Santana is a lock to win at least 18 games. You slot him as your number two guy after Beckett and the Sox staff gets longer. Daisuke, who I think is going to have a monster year this year, goes to three, Schilling goes to four and either Wakefield or Buchholz takes the fifth slot. Even with an injury, either Wakefield or Buchholz takes the injured pitcher's spot and the Sox don't miss a beat.

No one can match this rotation. Not the Yankees, who on their best days have three number two guys (Wang, Pettitte and Mussina) and a couple of kids (Kennedy, Hughes and maybe Chamberlain). But the wheels on Pettitte and Mussina could easily come off (as Schilling and Wakefield's could) and Wang proved during last year's post season that he's not an elite star. And how good are the rookies? They are pinning their hopes for two fifths of their rotation on kids. Is that a recipe for success? I don't know.

Now, let's look at what we don't know: is Santana coming down from his super star stratosphere? It would seem that the answer is no, as his peripherals were still solid last year. But what if he spits the bit in Boston? What if the number of players that the Sox give (and there are some reports that this could be a five-for-one swap) almost dry out the system making other in season trades impossible? Is the money that Santana will command worth it? Does the check he cashes eventually trickle down to Beckett, David Ortiz, etc.? Guys that were here, proved themselves in Boston and now want to be paid as much as the new guy?

Obviously, you can't worry about the latter question, but one thing you could concern yourself about is what I heard a few weeks ago on WEEI, a Twins beat writer from one of the Twin Cities (I can't remember who it was) expressed thoughts that Santana could be nicked up a bit, which is why he was hit harder last year than in previous years. He claims that Santana wasn't throwing the slider as much because his elbow was killing him. I have no doubts that the Sox will do their due diligence in checking over the medical records, but the injury concern will always be there for a guy who has thrown the amount of innings that Santana has.

I suppose that one has to look back at the last times that the Sox made a transaction such as this. In 2005 Boston sent Hanley Ramirez, Anibel Sanchez and two minor leaguers to the Florida Marlins for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell. The rap on Beckett was that he'd eventually cost big money (the Fish were selling him on the cheap because they were afraid of Beckett's up coming arbitration case and the Sox had to take Lowell because he was making too much cash). Ramirez has turned into one of, if not the best, shortstops in the National League. Sanchez threw a no-hitter his rookie year and had solid numbers, but was hurt for most of last year and the other two kids haven't made the bigs yet.

Despite concerns about arms injuries (there was actually a rumor floating around that Beckett's agent told the righthander to go on an extended Texas hunting trip so that he could not be reached if the Sox called to inquire about it) and blister questions, Beckett has been as good as advertised. It took him a season to get settled (which is why I think Matsuzaka is going to be great in 2008) but he won 20 games and destroyed the Angels, Indians and Rockies during the 2007 post season.

In 1997, the Red Sox were desperate for a starter since the Steve Avery experiment failed miserably and Boston GM Dan Duquette sent highly regarded prospects Carl Pavano and Tony Armas Jr. to the Montreal Expos for Pedro Martinez. This is a more apt comparison because people were questioning Pedro's body size (too small), acumen (“wild” headhunter who played before just family and friends at Olympic Stadium) and add in the fact that he wanted a big contract extension. How did it turn out for the Sox? Pedro was absolutely transcendent for most of his Boston career—the pitching numbers he threw up at the end of the century were among the best ever, perhaps all time if you take into account the era and home park he played in as well as the team behind him. He was a main cog in the 2004 championship. Pavano and Armas are both good pitchers, but they aren't Pedro.

What I'm saying is that the Red Sox were able to win two World Series Championships in direct result of trading youth for known greatness. In the long run, were these trades worth it? If you're the Sox, no matter how good Ramirez does or how well Pavano pitched, yes these trades were worth it because the bottom line for this franchise is winning. Were the Boston Red Sox a better team with Pedro Martinez and Josh Beckett? Yes. Would they have been able to win a World Series without either? It's hard to say, but probably not.

The beauty of having a lot young chips is cashing them in for a guy like Martinez or Beckett or Santana. You can't have everyone in your rotation or in your starting lineup. The trick is to keep the great ones and trade the good ones.

Do these history lessons make the trade a slam dunk? Of course not, but judging how this same scenario played out twice in the recent past plus the added caveat of keeping Santana away from the Yankees, one would have to think that the Red Sox should do whatever they can to import another star from Minnesota.