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Red Sox Have Decision To Make With Lowell
Compared to Yankees?
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Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein had this to say about the parallels that have been drawn between his franchise and that of the New York Yankees:
[an error occurred while processing this directive]"Anytime someone compares you to the Yankees, based on winning, it's a huge compliment, because they've been the model for winning championships throughout the history of baseball. And we have great resources like the Yankees do, so people obviously are going to make that parallel. [But] we feel we're positioned a little differently, because we don't quite have the resources they do.
"It's a fair comparison, but I don't buy into it, because I know that we have our own way of going about things and they have their own way. We can probably learn a lot from them, and maybe vice versa in some small areas. But we have a philosophy . . . and a lot of great people worked hard to execute it. It's the Red Sox way of doing things."
A Good Direction
Had the Rockies not won 13 of their last 14 regular season games, they would not have even qualified for a one-game playoff to get into the postseason, much less ended up with a National League pennant. But the postseason run has not altered the club's feeling about itself or the direction it's headed.
"You can certainly under-evaluate or over-evaluate what happens in one series," Rockies General Manager Dan O'Dowd said. "But I don't think you can discredit what a player's done the whole year."
The postseason appearance, the second in franchise history, has brought more revenue to the franchise, which had a $54 million payroll this season. O'Dowd said it was too early to predict what it might be next year. Though the only regulars who are free agents are second baseman Kazuo Matsui and catcher Yorvit Torrealba, they could negotiate a long-term deal with arbitration-eligible Matt Holliday, who made $4.4 million this year but could be the NL MVP.
O'Dowd said he expects to keep the core together -- next year. But "the core of the club is going to continue to get expensive," he said, and it's again too early to speculate as to whether the best hitters -- Holliday, third baseman Garrett Atkins and right fielder Brad Hawpe -- will all be affordable in the future.
Still, the Rockies got here by developing their farm system, and O'Dowd said that even if the postseason experience seasons his team, he doesn't believe it fundamentally changes its course.
"We'll have to see how they react coming into spring training next year," O'Dowd said. "We had an organizational meeting in September where we had a real good feeling on our club. I don't think we're going to change what we're doing."
Final Word
O'Dowd, on the difference in the series: "They've made the plays, we haven't. They've gotten the hits that we haven't. They've gotten pitchers deep in the game, we haven't. They've got shut-down innings out of the bullpen, we haven't."
