Oooof!
Yes, oooof. As in, a solid punch to the gut. Which is how Theo Epstein, Terry Francona, and all the Sox fans and media prognosticators who lauded the Eric Gagne trade are feeling, or ought to be feeling, right now.
After last night’s game, Eric Gagne’s ERA with the Boston Red Sox now stands at 9.00.
And that’s not the kind of 9.00 ERA you get when you first join a team and give up 1 run in your first inning of work or something. Nay, it’s the kind of 9.00 ERA you get when you give up 14 runs in 14 innings of work.
When the trade first when down, I wrote a post in this space wherein I denegrated the deal, arguing that at most, the Sox could expect to get about 20 innings out of Gagne the rest of the season. Well, a month and a half down the road, Gagne is right on pace for 20 IP, but even I didn’t imagine he would be right on pace for 20 runs allowed.
My argument at the time was that I thought Kason Gabbard had too much upside to give up for only 20 innings of relief work plus a few innings in the playoffs, but lets face it: in hindsight even trading a bucket of used baseballs for Gagne would have been too high a price, given Gagne’s performance, let alone a major-league-ready starting pitcher and two other prospects.
I mean seriously, how high does a pitcher’s ERA have to go before a manager says “This man is no longer my set-up man. At best, he is my mop-up man/long reliever”? Apparently, that point is somewhere beyond one earned run per inning pitched for Terry Francona.
Oddly, the AP article on last nights game began with the sentence “Once the best closer in baseball, Red Sox reliever Eric Gange as suddenly become shaky.” As if this shakiness were some crazy new development. But Gagne has been either shaky or injured for going on 3 years now, so apparently the AP and I have different definitions of the word “suddenly.”
Although I do feel compelled to make one tiny point in defense of Gagne’s otherwise atrocious performance thus far with the Sox. To wit: the route J.D. Drew took to Russ Adams’ back breaking double which wound up just clearing his glove was one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. It was like he’d never played right field before. These ex-Dodgers are really killing the Red Sox, at least insofar as a team with the best record in baseball can be said to be getting “killed.”
September 19th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Kason went 4-0 3.73 with Boston, not Texas.
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September 19th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Indeed, Kason’s stats with Texas are rather humdrum: 2-1 in 8 starts, 5.58 ERA.
One other small correction: in addition to Gabbard, the Sox sent two prospects (not one) to the Rangers—the extremely young but extremely good Engel Beltre, and the middle-of-the-road, good-enough-for-the-Rangers David Murphy.
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September 19th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Gagne’s Texas Stats:
33.1 IP 2.22 ERA 16/17Sv 2-0W 29K 12BB
Gagne’s Boston Stats
14 IP 9.00 ERA 0/2SV 1-1W 15K 7BB
I’d post some of the things I yelled last night, but I’m not sure how family friendly Umpbump is.
I still say the trade made sense at the time, given Gagne’s Texas stats, but didn’t foresee this kind of meltdown. Watching him throw 17 balls in 29 pitches was gutwrenching.
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September 19th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Rich, I must disagree. Nick and I were of one mind on the Gagne deal. If you look at Gagne’s game log and his month-by-month stats, his ERA through the first three months of the season was pretty good—0 in April, 1.17 in May, 1.50 in June. But in July, even with the Rangers, he’d already started to blow up, fronting a 4.35 ERA with Texas even before coming up to Boston. Then it reached 9.00 in August, with the Sox. Basically, his ERA just seems to increase exponentially with each passing month! It’s on a J-curve! If he’s allowed to keep pitching this month, I have no doubt his ERA will be near 20.00 by month’s end. It’s horrifying and hideous.
But the Red Sox surely knew what anyone can read for themselves on ESPN.com. He’d been on and off the DL this season. His ERA in July was okay for the fifth starter on an out-of-contention team, but nowhere near good enough to be a topflight reliever on a playoff-bound club. And he hasn’t had a good year since 2004. Yet somehow Theo Epstein decided to make this move. It’s not like “oh, we all looked at the intel and we were all wrong.” It’s like, “the intel was there, but Theo Epstein ignored it because it’s ERIC GAGNE and we all know he’s good because he’s ERIC GAGNE.” Bah. Humbug.
If we choke this postseason away because of Gagne and because of Drew and Lugo, Theo Epstein should be fired. Plus, where the hell is Manny Ramirez?!
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September 19th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Sarah, I think you’re overreacting a little bit.
Compare his stats through July to this pitcher with a 3.60 ERA in May and and a 4.70 ERA in July:
37.2 IP 2.15ERA 22/23SV 0-2W 54K 11BB
Clearly this pitcher got a few more save chances, and has a far superior K/BB ratio. However, the ERA and Win performance is pretty equivalent. He even posted a higher (!!!) ERA than Gagne for two months.
This would be our own beloved Jonathan Papelbon, who went on to post a shutout August, and then choke against the Yankees.
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September 19th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Okaaay, except that Papelbon is 26 and Gagne is 31. And that Paps is raking in $425,500, while Eric the Dread is pulling down $6,000,000. And Papelbon was kickass all last year. Last year, Gagne only pitched in 2 games because of an injured back. Add that to the DL stints this year, and it looks like Theo and Company were trying an old Dan Duquette move: signing a pitcher off the scrap heap and hoping to rehabilitate him.
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
It feels stupid to argue this point now, but how were you not excited about Gagne. Huge upside. I don’t know why he’s still being used in leverage situations now but it’s pretty much always been the case that when he’s healthy he’s on.
As for your J-curve. His Sept/Oct career stats: 112 78 28 27 6 51 5 118 with a 2.17ERA
As a Yankee fan, I ask you to please follow through with your plan to get Epstein fired.
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Also, the Red Sox have infinite money.
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Fine, if you like him so much Brian, I, as a Red Sox fan, I ask you—do you wish the Yankees had gotten him?
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
But, but…Eric Gagne was the Canadian Mariano! How could this have happened?! ;-)
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Oh, and also, despite my description of David Murphy as middling, he’s hitting .364 in 77 at-bats in Texas. His OPS is 1.001.
Why.
God.
Why.
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Well, no, he’s terrible.
But it looked good on paper before he Felix Heredia’d.
And, Sarah, I clearly said “It feels stupid to argue this point now” which excuses me from all criticism, now and forever.
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
And this is what Varitek had to say about Gagne:
“He has to know, from all of us, that we need him. You know what? People can get down, but everybody makes mistakes. People don’t get hits in the right situations, make an error, do those things. But you know what? He’s got good stuff, he can pitch, and he’s going to help us.”
I just sort of love that even though Gagne has been unspeakably bad—by my count, without his blown saves, the Sox would be 5.5 up from New York today—there’s Varitek, sounding like my old, worn-out recording of Big Bird’s “everybody makes mistakes.”
My parents *will* still love me even if I spill my milk! Varitek will still comfort you even if you almost singlehandedly torch the team’s division lead!
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Way to not publicly trash one of your own teammates. King among men.
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September 19th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Brian: meh. I will speak for Nick, who is on Japanese time these days. We both agree. The Gagne deal looked good on paper in a casual sense, but if you really gave that paper the once-over with the magnifying glass, it looked “meh.”
Here are the links to our posts about it, for historical purposes:
http://umpbump.com/press/a-lone-ranger/
http://umpbump.com/press/?p=1150
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September 19th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Sarah, I can at least respect you’re pulling an Obama, rather than a Hillary. You were against it from the start, even before it went south. Fair enough. Hopefully this won’t look like the wrong end of the Heathcliff Slocum trade.
(First one to continue the political talk gets tasered!)
But ease up on Tek. He’s the Captain and the catcher. Is he really going to hang a teammate, let alone a pitcher, out to dry?
@Coley: Bring back more Japanese pitchers! These Candians stink!
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
It was the “everyone makes mistakes” line that really captured my imagination.
Just imagine the Captain wearing a huge, feathery yellow suit with a C over his heart, signing the following to a snuffling Gagne:
If you make a mistake, you shouldn’t start to cry.
Mistakes are not so bad, and here is why:
Oh everyone makes mistakes.
Oh, yes they do
Your sister and your brother and your dad and mother too;
Big people, small people, matter of fact, all people!
Everyone makes mistakes, so why can’t you?
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
He even showed his love of making mistakes by putting up this line: .254 .358 .398
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Wamp wamp waaaaamp.
If you go 0-for-18, Jason, don’t cry!
Captain Intangibles, all you can do is try!
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September 19th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Ack. Sorry about the glaring errors, guys. Stupid Japanese Time. Stupid no internet access!
I’m sad that I’m missing out on all these rollicking discussions…
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