By Terry Benish
Special to The Sports Paper
The Red Sox closed out their World Series win against St. Louis Wednesday night in Game six, the first time since 1918 the Red Sox won a World Series at Fenway Park.
Some impressions: Boston got its four wins in games started by Jon Lester (2), Clay Buchholz and John Lackey. Felix Doubront got the win in Buchholz’s start and earned it.
The Cardinals’ remarkable young pitcher Michael Wacha had a great run. His run, fueled by his fantastic stuff, came to an end with Shane Victorino’s double off the Green Monster, which was set up by Victorino taking the at-bat to where Wacha was going to throw a fastball.
Boston was by far the best offensive team in baseball, with a relentless approach, and a game-long effort to work pitchers.
Dustin Pedroia always seems obnoxious in his approach to playing, but that said, he plays so very hard and never seems to let up.
Similarly, David Ortiz, whose game and physicality seems so different than Pedroia’s, is also relentless.
Other Boston players rise to that same level, and are seemingly not fazed by their previous failures. Good examples being Johnny Gomes and Stephen Drew.
This morning the Seattle Times former beat reporter and baseball blogger, Geoff Baker, once more riffed on whether the Mariners spent enough, and if the Red Sox win means the Mariners should spent some more. Follow this link to his piece: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/mariners/2013/10/31/what-can-mariners-learn-from-red-sox-cant-win-if-you-dont-play/
Yesterday the Tacoma News Tribune’s resident baseball sage Ryan Divish talked about the candidates to be the new Mariner manager with some clarity.
Then this morning Divish pushed out an exhausting review of the Mariners minor league system which is exhaustive and informative and worthy of a good read.
In Baker’s piece he returns to a metanome-like point that he has made for two years. If you want to check through their archives you can see he’s riffed up and down on a theme.
The glaring fact about his suggestion is the Mariners do not seem to be able to entice good or great free agent players to come to Seattle. We can guess or speculate from an informed perspective, but they’re not here yet.
In a way Divish’s pieces feed from that. In the first case, the talent on hand, no matter who the manager might be, will generate 80 wins or so. And the talent coming from the system is still pretty far away to promise any real interface with the team here now.