Mark Teixeira's True Colors: A Continuing Saga

Mark Teixeira on becoming a Yankee this off-season:

"In the back of my mind, the Yankees were always the top"

"My wife and I decided two weeks before Christmas the Yankees are where we want to be."

"I would wear a Yankees hat. Back in the '80s and early '90s, that wasn't a safe thing to do in Baltimore."

"Once it really hit me that I was going to be a Yankee, it was just pure joy. It hit me: the excitement of being a Yankee...I can be a Yankee? There's nothing better."

I could give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's just pandering to his new fan base, but even if he is, so what? Those actions would make him a mercenary at best, and if he really did want to go to New York all along, he's set himself up to be the perfect villain for 2009. Either way, I'm glad he's not playing in Boston.

Don't Look Now...

...but I think the Sox just got played. Hard. In fact, if Sean McAdam's article in the Herald is to be believed, Boras shopped Boston's final offer to New York just to see if he could get a little more value, playing for time by fudging details about Teixeira's need to think a little more before he made a decision. In the end, Boras' powers of persuasion and Cashman's recent desire to be a one-man economic prop made the difference, and now the Sox end up looking like the desparate dude at the bar running up a skyhigh tab buying the hottest woman in the bar drinks all night, only to find out she's been using him to keep her friends in booze before she leaves with the guy with the better lines.

So the front office ends up looking a little stupid, but frankly, I'm relieved (well, partially relieved. I would have preferred to see Teixeira go to the Nationals and play hell with the NL East next year, but that was probably just a Boras-manufactured pipe dream anyway). As I said before, having Teixeira's bat in the lineup would have been great, but seeing either Lowell or Youkilis replaced by the merc-of-the-month would kill just a little more of this team's soul. The 2009 Red Sox might not hit as hard without Teixeira, and they'll certainly face more of a challenge from New York, but I feel like they'll have just a little more soul.

Will He or Won't He: I Don't Really Care

I have been observing the Texeira dealings with what I can only call abstract interest, as if I were a scientist watching the battles of ants in a jar to confirm or deny a hypothesis. Maybe I'm under the same spell as Allan Wood, but the maneuverings of the Red Sox negotiation machine in their latest battle with Scott Boras no longer hold the drama that they did in the past. The fallout is a little more interesting though; it seems like once again, we're being used to score points.

Despite their necessity - business does seem to win baseball games and baseball championships, and Lord knows we do love the ends if not the means - I've grown a bit weary of the churn process of bringing stars to Boston. Mike Lowell has somehow gone from toast of the town to spare part in one year, rendered obselete because of a hip problem that may very well be old news come the spring? I like winning, but I like Mike Lowell, too - and in many ways, I'd rather have the cast of characters I've come to identify as my team come back next year than the possible latest and greatest.

In addition, while it's possible the tough economic climate and the looming threat of layoffs makes me a bit more sympathetic, I can't help but think of how bad I'd feel if my company were openly negotiating to replace me with someone else. I realize if the situation were reversed, Lowell wouldn't necessarily have any loyalty to the laundry, but I think that - particularly after the Manny fallout from this summer - seeing the front office do its best to once again crap all over a star player is really shortsighted.

Burning Burnett

Beckett, Lowell, possibly D-Train and now Burnett? Is Boston's strategy for 2009 to recreate the 2003 Marlins? Actually, I should be grateful I can make that joke; were we still living under the Yawkee Trust, reassembling another club's championship team six years later might have been an operating strategy. This Thanksgiving, as every Thanksgiving since 2003, I'm grateful for the ownership of New England Sports Ventures.

But really: what's with the interest in Burnett? His post-2003 payday netted him over $13 million in 2005, but the return on that princely sum hasn't been anything spectacular: ERA+ of no more than 119 (or 19% better than the average pitcher), a pedestrian set of career graphs, only two seasons with more than 30 starts, and years worth of troubles in his pitching shoulder and arm. 2008 was his most durable year, but he's 31 years old: what the Blue Jays got this year was probably the most anyone will see in the future. I really hope the Sox are only in this contest to drive the price of acquisition up for Toronto or New York.

Meanwhile, fun Mark Teixeira metaphor for you to chew on while you watch the rumors swirl: replacing Manny with Teixeira would be like if Brady got with Gisele first...and she turned out to be crazy. In other words: I'll get excited about Teixeira if he ends up in Boston, but thinking he'll replace Manny is the kind of self-delusion we all engage in so we can sleep at night.

Filling the Slugging Gap

David Ortiz misses Manny. Or Manny's bat, anyway. Sort of. He won't come right out and say it, because he's far too polite, but he's happy to hint about it obliquely. It's pretty clear that he - like Bill Lee - believes the only thing standing between Boston and another ring this year was Manny's ability to hit the long ball. They both might have a point: do a straight-up substitution of Manny for Bay in the ALCS and the difference is, quite frankly, embarrassing. We all deluded ourselves into thinking we wouldn't miss Manny because we had Bay, but those numbers give that delusion the lie: Bay, while good, is no replacement for Manny's greatness.

In an effort to lessen that gap, Ortiz wants the Sox to sign Teixeira. Pursuing the ex-Angels first baseman comes with a few logistical problems - does Boston have the desire to spend the money, what would happen to Mike Lowell - but first, is Teixeira (or any other big bat) an acquisition the Sox need to make? Teixeira has certainly been a more consistently successful hitter than Lowell, with an OPS+ that hasn't fallen below 126 since his first year. He's also much more of a power hitter, fitting Ortiz's desire for protective, Manny-style bat, while Lowell's isolated power numbers, even with all of those doubles, have never returned to their Marlins-era peak. But Teixeira isn't Manny: as an example, until this year, Teixeira never had really stellar plate discipline, and his K/BB ratio only climbed after coming to the Angels. Bringing him to Boston, particularly at the expense of another player, seems like Theo's attempt to replace Pedro with the gaggle of cheaper, less effective pitchers that plagued Boston in 2005. Besides, a order heart of Youkilis, Ortiz, Drew, Bay, and Lowell (although not necessarily in that order) sounds pretty deadly already...