Red Sox: Boston’s all time washed up player All-Star team
By Drew Athans
Tom Seaver
One of the greatest and most famous pitchers in baseball history, Tom Seaver will forever be identified with the New York Mets and his role as the star of the Miracle Mets of 1969. After breaking into the majors in 1967 and leading the Amazin’s, as they were called, to one of the most improbable World Series victories of all time in 1969, Seaver spent until 1977 as the ace of the Mets staff.
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Traded at the 1977 deadline in what became known as “The Midnight Massacre,” Seaver spent the next six seasons in Cincinnati in the dying days of the Big Red Machine. In 1983 he went back to the Mets for a season before spending the next two seasons with the Chicago White Sox. Midway through 1986, his third in Chicago, the Red Sox traded Steve Lyons to the Pale Hose in order to acquire Seaver.
Seaver brought 306 career wins to Boston but only went 5-7 with the Red Sox in 1986, along with a 3.80 ERA and 72 strikeouts in 16 starts. He won his 311th and final career game in August of that year and injured his knee toward the end of the season, missing the entire postseason and the chance to face off against his former team (the Mets) one last time in the World Series.
Seaver retired after the season although there are many Sox fans who wonder if the team would’ve won the World Series if he had been able to pitch. The Red Sox rotation in October 1986 was very thin after their top three and certainly having Seaver as the fourth starter in the same rotation as Roger Clemens, Bruce Hurst, and Oil Can Boyd would have shored things up.
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Roger Clemens has credited the time he spent with Seaver in the 1986 season as helping him develop into less of a thrower and more of a true pitcher, but unfortunately, it was another example of the Red Sox getting a great player at the very end of their career and not getting as much out of them as they expected to based on their previous accomplishments.