On the one hand, I will be sad when this World Series is over, for it will mean that summer is over, winter is here, and months upon months of suffering an arid, baseball-less television landscape.

But on the other hand, I will be unspeakably happy. For once this World Series is over, it will mean the end of this nonsensical debate over what Terry Francona should do to his lineup in Coors Field. Some of the alternatives being bandied about are positively Byzantine in scope. The two most popular:
Option A: Put Ortiz at first! Move Youkilis to third base! Put Lowell in at shortstop! Bench Lugo!

Option B: Put Ortiz at first! Move Youkilis to right field! Bench J.D. Drew!

This just goes to show that Red Sox Nation in October is incapable of keeping its collective head. People have gone temporarily insane. The only remedy for this madness? Remind ourselves of certain facts:

Fact: Mike Lowell has never played shortstop. Mike Lowell only has 9 games played at a position other than third base, compared with 1,253 games played at third base. Mike Lowell holds the all-time National League record for the fewest errors committed by a third baseman. You do not want to move Mike Lowell from third base.

Fact: Kevin Youkilis has never played right field. Though the receptionist in my ophthamologist’s office tried to contradict me on this fact this morning, I have now double-checked ESPN.com and confirmed this indisputable fact. It is true that he has a whopping 18 games in left field, but I am sure none of those games involved left fields as expansive as the left field at Coors. Kevin Youkilis sweats hard enough in the batter’s box. The very notion of seeing him huffing and puffing his way to and fro across the vast Coors outfield should come with a warning label: CAUTION: MAY CAUSE DEHYDRATION.

Fact: J.D. Drew’s bat, for reasons known only to itself, has chosen this moment to awake, throw some clothes on, and join the party. J.D. Drew is hitting .349 in October and .500 over the past seven days. You do not want to bench J.D. Drew.

Then there’s the simple truth that Terry Francona is not a “tinkering” manager. Terry Francona is a manager whose motto is, “First, do no harm.” Terry Francona is not going to choose Game 3 of the World Series to suddenly start cooking up wild experiments like converting his third baseman to a shortstop or his first baseman to a right fielder.

So what will we see in Coors? There are two options, neither of them as attention-grabbing as the two options above, but both far more likely to occur:

Scenario 1: Ortiz starts at first base. Youkilis is ready to come off the bench either as a defensive replacement, or if David’s knee starts bothering him, or, in a close game, the half-inning after David draws a walk and comes out for a pinch runner.

Scenario 2: Youkilis starts at first base. Until, with runners in scoring position, the Red Sox in need of a run, and Lugo up to bat, David Ortiz suddenly becomes the world’s most insanely overqualified pinch-hitter.

Of these, I think Scenario 1 is more likely. As hot as Kevin Youkilis has been in the postseason, David Ortiz is still David Ortiz. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of offense with Youkilis starting: this postseason, he’s actually been slightly more productive than Ortiz with 4 homers, 1o RBI, 9 walks, 19 hits, and 16 runs scored; Ortiz is actually lagging just thismuch behind his teammate with 3 homers, 8 RBI, 13 walks, 15 hits and 15 runs scored. But Scenario 1 gives Terry Francona more options, which a manager can never have too much of in October.

Unless, of course, you’re talking about inane, pie-in-the-sky options like rewiring the entire roster with only two wins to go.

UPDATE: It is as I predicted.

At this point, this week’s Boston Metro column seems a bit like piling on–after all, what else is there to do on the off-day after three consecutive losses but rip the manager? But I promise you, gentle UmpBump readers, that when I wrote it at the crack of dawn Tuesday morning, I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

Now, however, there’s a new mini-scandal in the Boston papers this morning concerning (who else?) Manny Ramirez. Yes, he actually talked to reporters! And though he said he would trade his individual records for another World Series in a heartbeat, this is the phrase that raised eyebrows today:

“It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

Asked about that comment this morning on WEEI, Boston’s sports talk station, Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino said the only thing that made sense: that such “calmness” is what makes Manny Ramirez such a great hitter (and, I might add, such a dangerous hitter with two strikes against him).

I’d like to go one step further with that comment, however. In 2003, Red Sox Nation turned an offhand comment by Kevin Millar into the postseason slogan, “Cowboy up.” In 2004, it was Curt Schilling’s rhetorical question, “Why not us?” Clearly, what was lacking from the 2005 playoffs was a catchphrase. Let’s not make that mistake again, Sox fans. I submit for your approval, the 2007 postseason mantra, courtesy Manny Ramirez:

“Who cares?”

It’s bold. It’s shocking. It’s completely counterintuitive. I like it.

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.”

This is the lede sentence from Philadelphia Daily News writer Bill Conlin’s Monday column:

GOOD MORNING, Philadelphia. And how does it feel being Terry Francona’s bitch?

Now, it’s true that the word “bitch” has lost some of its shock value in recent years. From when Barbara Bush said Hillary Clinton was something that “rhymed with witch” to the near-constant use of “bitch” in rap songs, it just doesn’t pack the punch that it used to.

And the Daily News isn’t the New York Times. It isn’t even the Philadelphia Inquirer. But that is still pretty strong language for the sports section. And daily papers are usually the last places you’d expect to see anything offensive. They usually go out of their way to be politically correct and family friendly. And Conlin — you’ve probably seen his fat slovenly ass on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” — is old school. I’m really shocked that he used the “b-word”.

As for the accuracy of the statement, well, there’s no debating that. The Phils got handled by the Sox this weekend and probably would have been swept had not Francona chosen to rest Curt Schilling on Sunday, opting to save him for tonight’s game against the Yankees.