Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Victor Martinez: What A Tiger

I knew I probably wouldn't be writing much over the course of October and November, but man, I feel like it has been a long time. Now that my well-deserved month and a half of doing absolutely nothing of relevance in life is over, I can get back to baseball.

Unfortunately for me, baseball's been over for three weeks. Hey, had I known my timing would have been so poor, I wouldn't have gone to grad school. I know I missed a lot of basebally fun-type things, and it makes me sad that I am not invested enough in any of those things to go back and write about them. Here are the few notable exceptions:

-Roy Halladay threw a no-hitter in his first major league start and came one walk away from a perfect game. I am a big Roy Halladay fan, and I was very excited to have the opportunity to see that.

-The San Francisco Giants won the World Series when they beat the Texas Rangers. Not only is it a great travesty that any team hosting Edgar Rentaria could win a WS, but to give him the honor of MVP makes me want to rip my own eyebrows off.

-In other "hearing this makes me want to maim myself" news... everyone who votes for the gold gloves should be forced to take a class on how to judge worthiness of potential gold glove winners. Anyone who gave Jeter a vote automatically fails and should never be allowed to vote again. 2006 wasn't bad enough... you gave him ANOTHER one? Tragic. Beyond tragic. Also, embarassing.

-Victor Martinez has agreed to a contract with the Tigers....

And that's where this blog begins. Do I think that not re-signing Victor was a good idea? No, I absolutely do not think that, but this is where my irrationality kicks in. Of course it always comes back to the issue of Varitek. It will ALWAYS come back to Varitek. I've said it a million times already. I lost Mikey this season. I'm not mentally prepared to lose Tek, too. The problem is if Victor comes back, Tek has no job. He's never going to be a starter again, but with Victor on the roster, Salty becomes the backup, and Tek becomes pitching coach (probably on another team). Losing Victor's bat is going to be painful. I readily acknowledge that. I will also miss his antics. Granted, Beltre will probably not be back, so it's not as if he'd have anyone to assault anyway, but I did grow to like VMart. If the Sox were smart, we would have kept him, but alas, it was not meant to be.

Now we are in a position where Salty could potentially have his dream of working with Jason Varitek come true. He's why the Salty had been on record as saying he would welcome a trade to the Sox. We got a very tiny sample size of what Salty could do this past season. Anyone would be a fool to think that he wouldn't benefit tremendously from working with Jason Varitek as his backup. We are facing a scenario that I am ok with. The only step left to achieve that scenario is for the Sox to offer Varitek arbitration and for Varitek to put his ego aside and accept it. No one will ever love him, or pay him, the way we have. He'd be a fool to think that he could get a better deal anywhere else.

I will quietly suffer through as many bridge years as I have to in order to see Tek retire a Red Sox. Mikey got to do it, and he didn't put nearly as much into his career in Boston as Tek has. If there was one person I'd want to see the Sox do right by, it's Tek. If there were two, it's Tek and Wake. This is undoubtedly Wake's last season. He's already said it's a strong possibility. Tek and Wake ARE the Red Sox. Either of them finishing their career in another uniform just isn't right.

I doubt I'll ever be as sentimental over a player as I am with Tek. I will admit, I have NO idea what tricks Theo is planning for this offseason, and I don't know what the team will look like come spring. That's why I can't get upset about Victor's departure (well, not VERY upset). We might end up with something just as good, and if not, there's always Tek....

...as long as he's offered arbitration.