The Boston Red Sox this weekend put their own spin on the old adage that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence – and maybe that’s inevitable given how brown the front office apparently thinks its lawn truly is.
As has been well documented, Clay Buchholz is on the shelf with a suspected stress fracture in his back, Andrew Miller is walking a Matsuzaka-like tightrope every five days, and John Lackey is struggling to return to his California form.
All of this has been true for a good number of weeks now, but you might not know it given that the club owns the best record in the American League and is playing at a pace worthy of 101 wins over the course of the season.
The Sox brass, however, must be worried indeed, for their trading-deadline forays into the neighbors’ yards netted first Rich Harden and then Erik Bedard as possible sources of reinforcement. To say that both of these guys are injury-prone is to liken The Perfect Storm to a passing shower: Harden’s medicals were so bad that the Red Sox backed out of a deal they originally approved, and Bedard hasn’t made a post-July start in four years.
And that, apparently, is as green as the grass ever affordably got on the other side.
Was acquiring Bedard worth the cost of a handful of possibly promising prospects? Perhaps, considering that Bedard is a lefty and the deal also brought a second arm to the organization in the form of former Cape League (Yarmouth-Dennis) hurler Josh Fields.
But mostly it seemed to be an exercise in lawn repair, steeped in the notion that if yours is deemed the color of mud, then any hint of chlorophyll can be considered an upgrade.
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