One of the beautiful things about our world is that it gives opportunity to view an event from different angles and develop contrasting perspectives.  Last Winter Scott Boras convinced the world that Carl Crawford was much more valuable than he appears to be right now.

Depending on your vantage point and with five months of hind sight observation in the rear view mirror, Scott Boras was either brilliant or the general manager of the Boston Red Sox demonstrated a stupidity that should render him unemployed.

At the end of last season Carl Crawford was a lifetime .296 hitter, and his eight seasons in the big leagues produced a yearly average of 11 homeruns and 74 RBI.  These are not eye popping numbers by any stretch of the imagination, but Boras convinced the Sox GM Theo Epstein to offer Crawford a contract whose value was $142,000,000. (Insert laughter here.)

Yes, a man who averaged 11 dingers a year, who never hit higher than .307, who never had more than 194 hits in a season, who had the luxury of playing half his games indoors and on artificial turf, signed a contract worth more than 1/8 of a billion dollars!  (Insert rolling on the floor laughter here.)

What the hell where the Red Sox and their management thinking?

Players whose lifetime averages are under .300 and who average fewer than 15 dingers a year are players who cannot, and do not, carry teams on their backs.  And that is exactly the kind of money the Red Sox paid Carl Crawford.

Crawford is a decent major league player with a good arm, good legs, and can be an integral part of a line up.  He cannot, and is not, a player who can be the cornerstone of a lineup, a number three or four hole hitter.

Clearly Theo Epstein had to know this.  He also had to know that the turf and playing in Tropicana Field were partially responsible for Crawford's batting statistics.  Two pedestrian facts about playing indoors are that some ground balls normally caught on natural grass become singles and doubles on turf, and stealing bases is easier since players are running on an unnaturally even surface.

Theo Epstein wasted a quarter of a billion dollars on a left fielder who cricket players would call a "tail ender".  If you want some proof, as I blog this, with 24 games under his belt, Crawford is hitting .155!  With 1 homerun and 6 RBI!  He has 15 hits in 97 at-bats with 4 doubles, 0 triples, and 4 stolen bases!

Crawford has been so bad that Manager Terry Francona has sat him two games and dropped him to eighth in the batting order.  (Again more laughter.)

Imagine that?   An eight hole hitter making 20.2 million dollars a year.

Cheer up Theo; you are not the only one wasting money.  Here are some stats of some other well known players.

Player                   Agent        Salary       Ave    H   HR   RBI   

Jorge Posada        ACES       13.1 Mil    .125    9    6    12

Carl Crawford       Boras       20.2 Mil    .156   15    1     6

Raul Ibanez           ACES       11.5 Mil   .161   14    1    10

Dan Uggla             Borris        13 Mil     .194   21    5     9

Hanley Ramirez     Katz          11 Mil     .202   17    0     9

Torii Hunter          RSM          18 Mil     .221   23    4    12

Jayson Werth        Boras         10 Mil     .226   21    4     7

David Wright        ACES         14 Mil    .238   24    5    16

We'll revisit these guys in a month to see how and if they have recovered from these anti stellar starts to this year.

Peace out.

The next post will be on the Phillies opening month and how they have taken the spot as the best team in baseball.

Oh yeah, as for my opinion, Scott Boras is deviantly brilliant.  And Theo Epstein got taken to the cleaners.