Baseball!

Baseball is still just the best. Good night.

Third-Base: I mean, do teams even really use that position still? Oh, they do? The Sox just seem like they don't? That's cool.



Oh, Mike Lowell, you were only in your early 30's, but you'll always look 55 to me.
 

The tale of his season has now been told and rehashed in barrooms and barbershops throughout New England, but in 2014, the Red Sox employed a third baseman who hit .571/.625/1.286, with a 422 OPS+. In putting together Roy Hobbs-like numbers, his legend grew and grew, leading to him winning the batting title, MVP, Nobel Prize for Physics, and the Fred Biletnikoff Award, given annually to the best wide receiver in college football.

His name was Carlos Rivero and he played in eight meaningless September games. He went 4-7, with two doubles and a RBI. And he just might have been the position’s brightest star in a long time now. I mean other than the .105/.227/.105 line produced by Ryan Roberts in eight games this season, of course.

For much of the past 30 years, the Sox have excelled at putting players at the Hot Corner. The list includes a decade of a first ballot Hall-of-Famer (Wade Boggs), a capable stop-gap (2 time All-Star Scott Cooper), an unheralded batting champion (Bill Mueller, who posted a .326/.398/.540/140 OPS+ in 2003, and followed that up with a still great .283/.365/.466/106 OPS+ in 2004), a World Series MVP (Mike Lowell, whose average season from 2006-2009 was 19 home runs, 35 doubles, and a line of .295/.350/.479/110 OPS+), and a top-10 all-time at the position whose time here was criminally short (Adrian Beltre, who in 2010 led the league with 49 doubles, added 28 home runs and 102 RBI’s, and posted a line of .321/.365/.553/141 OPS+)

Since the start of the 2011 season, however, the position has been a dumpster fire so slow-building and depressing that it has earned both the pity and hurtful insults of other dumpster fires.  

The match was ignited and tossed in December 2010 when the Sox allowed Beltre to walk, signed Adrian Gonzalez for 7 years at $164.3 million, and moved Kevin Youkilis from first base to third base.

Beltre, meanwhile, signed with the Rangers for 5 years/$80 million. You probably know the rest. In the past four years his production has been monstrous (see graph below), and he has earned two Gold-Gloves, three trips to the All-Star Game, and two Top 7 finishes in the AL MVP vote. Plus, this:

Gonzalez, to be fair, has produced, just not at what the Sox expected for the investment. Since 2011, he’s averaged 158 games played, 41 doubles, 24 home runs, 110 RBI’s, and compiled a line of .302/.359/.489/133 OPS+.

2+ seasons of that production, however, has taken place in Los Angeles’s beautiful Chavez Ravine neighborhood. And even when looking at all four seasons, Beltre has consistently out-produced Gonzalez at 48% the cost.

This is all a meandering, convoluted way of saying third base has been a steady disaster for nearly a half-decade. Forget words, though, and just look at the numbers.

Below are the seasons put together by the player who played the most games at the position in every season, starting with 2011. At the top is Adrian Beltre’s average season since leaving Boston:

Player	Games	At-Bats	Hits	Walks	Doubles	Home Runs	RBI	AVG	OBP	SLP	OPS	OPS+
Beltre	147	568	179	42	33	29	94	.315	.364	.530	.893	139
Youkilis	120	431	111	68	32	17	80	.258	.373	.459	.833	123
Middlebrooks	75	286	77	13	14	15	54	.288	.325	.509	.835	121
Middlebrooks	94	348	79	20	18	17	49	.227	.271	.425	.696	88
Middlebrooks	63	215	41	15	10	2	19	.191	.256	.265	.522	48

 It has been a slow decline to into well below league average production at the position, with Beltre’s average season outpacing any individual campaign from a Sox third baseman.

What happened?

Youkilis simply continued on a natural, expected decline on the wrong-side of 30. Middlebrooks cannot stay healthy or lay-off breaking pitches. The former is out of the majors, and the latter could be on the way out. The other players to log time at the position– Brock Holt, Brandon Snyder, Jonathan Herrera, Jose Iglesias – produced too little to be everyday starters on a contending team.  Beltre, meanwhile, is closing in on 3,000 hits and 400 home runs, and putting together a pretty damn strong HOF resume. He is an endlessly entertaining, all-time great at the position who left Boston in the prime of his career. That is not replaced easily. Damnit.

Third base’s one bright spot was in the 2013 postseason, when Xander Bogaerts appeared in 12 of 16 games, started eight contests, and produced at a clip of .296/.412/.481, with six walks and six RBI’s.

So, the plan from 2010 has not worked. Is 2015 and beyond looking any better? Honestly, who knows? There are too many questions that need to be answered.

Will the Sox give Middlebrooks yet another chance to win the job? His refusing assignment to the Arizona Fall League is certainly not starting the offseason on the best foot.

Is the answer super-prospect Garren Cecchini? At just 23, he posted a .831 OPS in 11 games for the Sox in 2014. In a full season at AAA, though, his OPS barely topped .700.

Is it a high-priced free agent like the Giants’Pablo Sandoval? He is sure to command six figures and will turn 30 in the second year of the deal.

What about the Brewers’ Aramis Ramirez? The 36 year old is due to make $14 million in 2014, and is likely to be bought out at $4 million by the Brewers. He is coming off his fifth All-Star selection in a year in which he produced 23 doubles, 15 home runs, and a 110 OPS+. For his career, he has 366 home runs and 2,200 hits. Would he fit at 2 years/$10-15 million?

Personally, I vote for platoon of a 56 year-old Boggs starting versus right-handers and 57 year-old Carney Lansford, winner of the 1981 AL batting title for the Sox, in the lineup versus left-handers.

I mean, good god, could that really make things any worse?