Arroyo:

3.29 ERA. That's better, by 68 points,than any Red Sox pitcher on the entire staff who pitched 40 or more innings, except for Papelbon. Add a full run onto his ERA, if you want to account for the NL/AL difference, and he still beats everybody, except for Schilling.

His 240.2 innings pitched were the most in the majors. This was one of my big arguments when the trade was made. He's a guy that can give you a lot of innings. That's exactly what we needed with an aging, injury-prone staff. The fact that he could do this, while being happy to do it in any role and wanting to play in Boston more than anywhere, would've been a huge bonus. This, I feel, is way more valuable than what Wily Mo gave us in right field.

His WHIP was better than any of our starters. As many complete games and shutouts as our entire staff (that includes Hansack's 5-inning, complete game shutout).

I still say this guy can be a star. This season, he was considered a Cy Young candidate, until the last few weeks. But he'll still finish high in the voting. We will see what happens in the next few years with the guy.

Even I didn't think he'd have a better year than Beckett. But not only did he do that, he had a better year than Josh did in his last two seasons in the NL.

Wily Mo:

Okay, he got injured. And he was there to fill in, admirably, for the most part, while other players were injured. I never felt he was comfortable in right field. Center field looked more like his position. But we didn't get him for defense.

We were told of his mega-home runs, and we saw a few. When he gets a hold of a ball, it's amazing. Has to be one of the hardest hitters ever. But he only had 11 HR, and his HR rate dropped for the second year in a row. His slugging also went down for the second straight season, though it was third highest on the team. (But still nowhere near Papi/Manny levels.)

We were told the now fired Papa Jack would teach him patience and discipline and whatnot. His average did go way up. His OBP went up, too. Both were his highest ever. But still, .349 OBP, that's 24 points lower than Trot Nixon's. And, by comparison to a really awesome dude that he's supposed to become, 90 points lower than Manny's. He was third on the team in SLG and fourth in OPS.

Two years ago, the year he had the most ABs of his career, Pena struck out at a lower rate than he did this season. He had the twelfth most at bats on the team, and the fourth most strikeouts.

He improved a little in the walk department, but 1 every 13.8 AB isn't so good.

I thought he was inconsistent at the plate. Streaky, I guess. Extended slumps came at bad times, like against the Yanks, who he didn't fare well against. I divided his season into four parts. Look at how he batted in each part:

4/4-4/28: .256 (39 AB)
4/29-7/31: .368 (87 AB)
8/1-9/8: .250 (96 AB)
9/9-9/30: .320 (50 AB)

It all averaged out to about .300, which is good. But it's like he falls asleep for big chunks of time. Hopefully he starts evening everything out and he improves overall instead of going downhill.


People think we gave up on 2006 when we got rid of Wells. I think we gave up when we traded Arroyo. Which doesn't mean I don't know why they did it. I am glad to belooking toward the future. I just thought keeping Bronson would've kept us in it, to the point where we would've had to keep trying, in this particular season.

This is the downside to our team being in a "win now" city. Had we gone all out, and admittedly given up on this year from the start, we'd be in much better shape right now. Maybe we'd still have Marte, Mota, Sanchez, Ramirez, Meredith, etc, etc.

The key, though, with this debate, is next year and beyond. I am hoping that you Wily Mo people win the championship in every year from '07 on.