Haha if you knew anything about baseball you would know Derek Jeter is considered to be a average DEFENSIVE shortstop by most all in baseball. He is not even the best shortstop on the Yankees. Arod (before his struggles was much better) Jeter has very limited range and makes alot of errors. Since you think this statement is crazy you are obv a crazy new york fan. Not only that you think the only injuries the red sox had was "veritek" you obviously do not watch much of the red sox....
The injuries the Yankees had cant hold a candle to the Red Sox. So what those guys where out? You got Arod,jeter,Giambi,Posada,Damon and the rest of the 15 million plus "superstars" out there lol. You do not watch much baseball if you think the only injuries the sox had during the "massacere" was veritek. Tim Wakefield , Trot Nixon , John Lester, Kieth Folk, and Del carmen to name a FEW. The Red Sox where in first place most all the year until the injuries. Byt the time the end of the season was here they had pretty much there entire starting lineup out. Lets see how the chokees would have done with there entire starting lineup out. They cannot even get out of te first round with the so called "best lineup ever" and 200 million bucks on the pay role hahahaha what a joke.
lol, you can't even spell Varitek and Foulke correctly.
Sox revisionist historians will like to point to injuries as the reason that the Sox collapsed, but that's far from the truth. Their run differential and pyth calcualations showed them to be about 8 games worse than their record suggested. It was bound to catch up with them. They had flukey numbers against the Orioles and the NL, but played poorly against good teams.
The Sox slide began right after the all star break. Why? Start with Beckett. He was dubbed an "Ace" despite never having pitched over 176 innings, and was coming from the weaker NL AND from pitching in a pitcher's ballpark. He had been marred by inconsistency his whole career, and been living off his 2003 WS performance. Before the Vagitek injury, he had the second lowest OPS among AL qualified catchers, been the second lowest in CS % among qualified AL catchers, and his team ERA was in the bottom half of the AL. It could be argued that he was the worst catcher in the AL. Lowell, Gonzalez and Youklis all had good starts above their averages that were bound to catch up with them. Coco Crisp turned out to be a shadow of Johnny Damno. Nixon hasn't been shit since he got off the juice. Also, take into consideration that Wonder Boy Epstein traded away incredible prospects like Marte, Sanchez, Sanchez, and Ramirez which would have produced a lethal combination of youth and veterans that would've given them the payroll flexibility to add a superstar like Abreu.
The fact is that the Yankees ended the Sox season with the Boston Massacre in August, but Sox fans will look to injuries for excuses. Yes, they were devastated after that, but it was already over at that point. They're going to suck next year too, since they're saddled with 100 million right from the get go.
Body, it's evident that YOU know nothing about baseball, and just decided to spout out the popular media generated traditional bullshit drivel that you read on ESPN.com. If you ever want really learn, visit
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/ or other similar sites, but they'll probably be over your head.
