Ramirez is off to the Dodgers in a trade that involved Pittsburgh sending outfielder Jason Bay to Boston and the Pirates receiving a group of young players that included Los Angeles third baseman Andy LaRoche, Red Sox outfielder Brandon Moss and reliever Craig Hansen. Boston finally granted Manny his wish to move on after weeks of systematic attacks on the Red Sox organization which couldn't continue to be ignored, and it took three players and all $7 million left on Manny's salary this season to get him to go away.
Manny got what he really wanted out of this deal. He left Boston, a place where he was never comfortable, and will be a free agent at the end of the year. One of the terms of the deal was that his two club options for 2009 and 2010, both worth $20 million, were voided. Ramirez and his agent, scumbag Scott Boras, insist that Manny can get more than that on the open market. Based on some of the contracts that Boras clients have signed recently, they might be right -- that 2-year, $36.2 million stinker that went to Andruw Jones springs to mind. Yes, the same Andruw Jones who is hitting .167 and both striking out and changing pant sizes at a record rate. Boras' negotiating platform will focus on the same things that most Boston fans can't erase from their memories -- how great a player Ramirez WAS, how great a hitter Manny USED TO BE. They'll lean heavily on his career numbers and average seasons in an attempt to secure even more money, and some general manager will fall for it. Let the buyer beware in this case, because Manny's list of misdeeds was growing by the day during his last month in Boston.
Manny's final two weeks with the Red Sox were a series of public disgraces, starting on July 15 when he blasted ownership (namely principal owner John Henry) over the status of his club options. Ramirez contended that he was being jerked around by the club and being left in limbo because Boston would not pick up at least one of his $20 million bargaining chips. Henry and the rest of the front office had said all along that they would address the situation after the season, but that wasn't good enough for Ramirez. He proceeded to embark on a very public campaign against the team, insisting that "enough is enough" during one rant and claiming that the Red Sox "don't deserve a player like me" in another. Add in his usual on-field issues, like his floundering on Maicer Izturis' cue shot to left field in a July 18 loss against the Angels or the constant dogging it down the first base line on ground balls, and Boston was officially pissed off. The fact that the Red Sox had to seriously worry about Ramirez tanking if he didn't get his way is a horribly unprofessional way to conduct business, but Manny's decision to skip games against Seattle (and Felix Hernandez) and New York (and Joba Chamberlain) with a sore knee (later proven to be healthy through a pair of MRIs) was the final straw. Manny Being Manny had suddenly turned into Manny Not Playing, which assured Manny Was Not Producing. That being the lone reason he was still in Boston, Ramirez had nothing left to cling to.
This pattern of behavior has been allowed to fester since Manny's first year of this 8-year, $160-million albatross of a contract. He's asked to be traded every single year. He's never played as hard as someone like Dustin Pedroia or Kevin Youkilis, and his petulance had been tolerated to the point where he couldn't be controlled. Manny's decision to quit on his teammates at the end of the 2006 season was the end of Ramirez being treated like the cuddly puppy that pees on the clubhouse carpet, someone so harmless and cute that he could be forgiven over and over. Men like Jason Varitek, Mike Lowell and Curt Schilling couldn't have been happy that Manny was sitting with a sore knee during the heat of a pennant race, and they must have been enraged when medical tests showed no serious injury. The organization, and mostly by This Manager, continued to insist that Manny was working hard and that there were no day-to-day problems. We'll find out over the next year or so how much covering up was done, and Pink Hat Nation will get a real taste of what it was like dealing with Manny's frustrating inconsistencies.
Hansen's inclusion in this deal is the most disappointing thing to come out of all of this controversy. He's the latest reminder that prospects sometimes remain exactly that, never realizing their potential and losing their value over time. Hansen was a throw-in in this trade, a small return for Boston's top pick in the 2005 draft. He'd been mentioned in previous trade talks that would have included Colorado's Todd Helton (with Manny Delcarmen), Anaheim's Mark Teixeira (with Youkilis), two packages for New York's Johan Santana (with combinations of Jacoby Ellsbury, Michael Bowden, Jed Lowrie, Jon Lester, Coco Crisp and Justin Masterson) and Houston's Roy Oswalt (a three-way trade with Atlanta that would have included Crisp and another prospect). Friends of mine in the media compare Hansen to Nuke LaLoosh from Bull Durham, a guy with a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head. Maybe a change of scenery is just what he needs, because it didn't look like it was ever going to work for him with the Red Sox.
For those of you who weep today at the thought of Manny leaving, I counter with this -- he doesn't give a damn about you. He's spent just about all of the last two weeks, and parts of the last eight seasons, dropping his pants and urinating on the team that you claim to love. Allow yourselves to consider the future without Manny just for one second without crying and screaming that David Ortiz is going to forget how to hit and the Red Sox offense will go permanently cold. The same foolishness came out of the same mouths when Nomar Garciaparra was traded and Pedro Martinez was allowed to sign with the New York Mets. Take a quick look at the disabled list and you're likely to find both of those names somewhere in the immediate vicinity. Glance out to left field tonight at Fenway and you'll see a player who actually wants to be here, a righthanded power hitter who will run out ground balls and who won't fake injuries to duck power righthanded pitchers. Manny wasn't that guy anymore. Believe it and move on like the Red Sox have.
