Red Sox all-time washed up player All-Star team (part two)
Juan Marichal
A Hall of Fame pitcher who spent the first fourteen seasons of his career with the San Francisco Giants between 1960 and 1973, Juan Marichal won 243 games and had over 2,300 strikeouts upon his retirement in 1975. He is remembered for two of iconic moments in baseball history, one of his highest points and one of his lowest.
For the high point, Marichal was the winning pitcher in what is called “The Greatest Game Ever Pitched” which occurred on July 2, 1963. In that contest, he pitched a sixteen-inning complete game shutout and defeated the Milwaukee Braves and Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn (who himself threw 15.1 innings before giving up the winning solo home run to Willie Mays).
His lowest point came in August 22, 1965 when he was at bat against Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers and hit catcher John Roseboro over the head with his bat twice after taking umbrage at how he thought the Dodgers were bunting for hits off of him earlier in the game. In any event, Marichal was a very good pitcher for a long time but was in decline when he was sold by the Giants to Boston in 1974.
He’d gone 11-15 in his final Giants season of 1973 and was decent but nothing like he had been during his lone season in Boston. Now thirty-six years old, he only made eleven starts and while he went 5-1, his ERA was 4.87 and he only struck out 21 batters while walking 14.
The Red Sox released him after the season and he spent the last season of career with the Dodgers, making two starts and going 0-1 before retiring in 1975.
Orlando Cepeda
Another former Giant who made his way to Boston for a single season toward the end of his career, Orlando Cepeda was fifteen seasons into his Hall of Fame career when he got to the Red Sox in 1973. He had spent nine seasons in San Francisco, a few in St. Louis, three in Atlanta, and one in Oakland before the Red Sox signed him as a free agent in 1973.
Cepeda’s contract with the Red Sox was groundbreaking in that he was signed to exclusively be their DH. The designated hitter was making its debut in 1973 and the Red Sox decided the former first baseman would be better suited to being a full-time hitter than trying to play in the field every day at the age of thirty-five.
It actually worked out really well as Cepeda played in 142 games and hit .289 with 20 home runs and 86 RBI. After the season he signed with the Kansas City Royals but only played in 33 games before retiring. This was one of the rare case where a long in the tooth player had a little something left in the tank when he got to the Red Sox.
Rickey Henderson
Rickey Henderson was the one player who I really should have included in the first part of this article. I had randomly thought about his one season with the Red Sox a couple of weeks ago and he was on my mental list of players who inspired my original idea for the article. However, it was getting kind of long and I inexplicably left him off the list.
In any event, he’s included here because he’s the poster boy for what these articles are all about. We all know about his Hall of Fame career, spent mostly with the Oakland Athletics, and his place as the greatest base stealer in baseball history.
Rickey spent twenty-five seasons in the majors, fourteen of them with Oakland over four separate stints. He also player for the Yankees, Blue Jays, Padres, Angels, Mets, and Mariners before he made his way to Boston in 2002.
Henderson was forty-three in 2002 and was well past his sell-by date, serving mainly as the team’s back-up center fielder. He only played in 72 games and hit .223 with 5 home runs, 16 RBI, and 8 stolen bases. He was the oldest player in the American League during his season in Boston and also had the distinction of having stolen more bases in his career (which began in 1979) than the Sox had in their entire history (which began in 1901).
The Red Sox finally passed Rickey a month into his lone season with the team, on April 30, 2002
John Smoltz
Another Hall of Famer who spent his final season in a Red Sox uniform, John Smoltz was one of the best pitchers of the 1990s and early 2000s. He was one-third of one of the greatest rotations in baseball history, teaming up with Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine on the Atlanta Braves to win seven division titles, five National League pennants, and a World Series in the 1990s.
Smoltz pulled the trick of being not only a great starting pitcher but, for a short spell of time due to injuries in the middle of his career, a great closer as well. He finished his career with 213 wins, 154 saves, and over 3,000 strikeouts. Those numbers all made him a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but they were all racked up well before he got to Boston.
He spent the first twenty seasons of his twenty-one year career with the Braves before singing a one-year free agent contract with the Red Sox for the 2009 season. He was coming off of shoulder surgery but had impressed the Red Sox enough during an offseason workout that they decided to take a chance. It didn’t end up working out.
Smoltz made eight starts in the 2009 season, going 2-5 with an 8.33 ERA and only 33 strikeouts. After getting shelled in his final start for the Red Sox in August, the team designated him for assignment. He refused a minor league deal or a switch to the bullpen, so they released him. He spent the last month and a half of the season with the St. Louis Cardinals before retiring at the age of forty-two.
Willie McGee
Willie McGee spent the majority of his eighteen years in the big leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals, with whom he won the 1982 World Series, the National League MVP (in 1985), three Gold Gloves, and two batting titles over thirteen seasons split between two stints with the team.
In a story that’s all too predictable, McGee was coming off of a serious knee injury at the age of thirty-six after being released by the San Francisco Giants when the Red Sox signed him as a free agent in June of the 1995 season. Robbed of the speed which contributed greatly to his successes earlier in his career, he only played in 67 games for the Red Sox.
McGee wasn’t terrible, batting .285, but he only hit 2 home runs, drove in 15 runs (he was never known for his power even in his prime), and stole 5 bases. He played in two games of the ALDS that year when the Red Sox were swept by the Cleveland Indians.
After the season, McGee signed with St. Louis for the final four years of his career and appeared in 120 or more games in each season.
David Cone
In a career that spanned from 1986 to 2003, David Cone was one of the premier pitchers in baseball. He won 194 games, was a five-time All Star, won five World Series, an AL Cy Young, and threw a perfect game. He’s not a Hall of Famer (nor should he be), but in his prime he was very, very good.
By the time he got to the Red Sox in 2001, though, he was not the great pitcher who’d won all of those awards or the World Series rings with the Blue Jays and Yankees. He was thirty-eight and hadn’t been the same pitcher since throwing his perfect game in 1999. His velocity diminished and his stuff wasn’t as good, but that didn’t stop Boston from singing him.
He made 25 starts for the Red Sox in 2001, going 9-7 with a 4.31 ERA and 115 strikeouts. He wasn’t awful, but he wasn’t great and clearly at the end of the line. He didn’t even pitch at all in 2002, simply because no one was interested in signing him.
He came back to make five starts with the New York Mets in 2003 before he hung it up for good.
Eric Gagne
I still remember how excited everyone was when then-Red Sox GM Theo Epstein traded for Eric Gagne at the deadline in July 2007. He was coming off of some injury-plagued seasons, but earlier in the decade had been one of the greatest closers the game had ever seen. The idea was to use Gagne as the ultimate set-up man for closer Jonathan Papelbon, but it didn’t work out that way.
Gagne spent from 1999 to 2006 with the Dodgers and had a stretch between 2002 and 2004 when he was one of the greatest closers in the history of the game. During those three seasons he saved 52, 55, and 45 games, respectively, while sporting ERAs of 1.97, 1.20, and 2.19 (again, respectively). He was an All-Star all three of those years and won the NL Cy Young award in 2003.
By the time he got to Boston, he was in decline while battling injuries and it got even worse once he put on a Red Sox uniform. He only made 20 appearances in the regular season, going 2-2 with no saves and an ERA of 6.75. At one point he gave up 14 runs in 14 innings for a “perfect” ERA of 9.00 to go along with three blown saves.
Gagne was active for the 2007 postseason and even though he got a World Series ring for being on the Red Sox that year, he was only used in October when the team was comfortably ahead. In the one high-leverage situation he pitched in, Game Two of the 2007 ALCS, he came in to a tie game, gave up the lead, and took the loss.
As a final kick in the teeth, after the season he signed with the Milwaukee Brewers where he was promptly implicated in using HGH and other banned substances. Combined with his shoulder problems and poor performance, he was released and out of baseball after the 2008 season.
David Wells
The 2005 Red Sox were the defending World Series champions but suffered a fair amount of roster turnover in the wake of the magical October of 2004. Chief among those issues was the starting rotation which lost both Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe to free agency. Looking to fill the void, one of the pitchers the team brought in was the “Hefty Lefty,” David Wells.
Wells had been a productive pitcher over the first seventeen years of his career, winning over 200 games while playing for seven different teams (including two separate stints each with the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees). He had won two World Series (one each with the Jays and Yankees) and thrown a perfect game. He was also known for his rubber arm and ability to eat innings (among other things).
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However, by the time the Red Sox signed him to a two-year contract in the winter of 2004, he was forty-two years old and seriously overweight and out of shape. Still, he was actually pretty good in 2005, posting a 15-7 record (in 30 starts) although his ERA was high at 4.45 and he only struck out 107 batters. He also pitched pretty well in a loss to the Chicago White Sox in the 2005 ALDS.
Even so, having your rotation anchored by an overweight forty-two year old (remember, Curt Schilling was still feeling the effects of his ankle injury during the 2005 season) is never a recipe for success. Wells came back late in 2006 after having knee surgery in the offseason and made only 8 starts, going 2-3 with a 4.98 ERA and only 24 strikeouts.
At the tail end of August 2006, he was traded to the Padres, ending his short stint with the Red Sox.
(Dis)Honorable Mentions
These last few players weren’t guys who had careers that were even borderline Hall of Fame worthy, but they had been very good, productive players in their younger days and had all been at some point among the best in the league at their positions. First up is Kevin Mitchell, who won the National League MVP in 1989 and who was instrumental in helping the New York Mets defeat the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series.
Mitchell’s best years had been with the Mets and San Francisco Giants, so when he got to the Red Sox in 1996 at the age of thirty-four, he was already ten seasons and multiple offseason incidents into his career (Mitchell was not a good guy). He spent only half a season with the Red Sox, appearing in 27 games and hitting .304 with 2 home runs and 13 RBI before being traded to the Cincinnati Reds.
Next is Gary Gaetti who manned third base for the Minnesota Twins for ten seasons between 1981 and 1990, helping them to win the 1987 World Series (he was also the ALCS MVP that year). After nineteen seasons in the league spent with five different teams, Gaetti brought his 360 career home runs to Boston in 2000 at the age of 41. He only appeared in five games and went 0-10 at the plate (for an average of .000) with no home runs and one RBI before retiring.
Finally, the last one is a player who looked to be washed up when he got to Boston at the end of a long career but who actually had a couple of productive seasons with the team. Bret Saberhagen spent the first eight seasons of his career with the Kansas City Royals and helped them win the 1985 World Series. He was also the MVP of that series and won two Cy Young Awards and a Gold Glove with the team as well as throwing a no-hitter for them.
After short stints with the New York Mets and Colorado Rockies, Saberhagen missed all of 1996 due to injury before being signed by the Red Sox. In 1997, at the age of thirty-three, he went 0-1 in six starts, but in 1998 and 1999 he was very good. In 1998 he posted a 15-8 record (31 starts) with an ERA of 3.96 and 100 strikeouts, while in 1999 he went 10-6 with a 2.95 ERA and 81 strikeouts in 22 starts.
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He missed the 2000 season due to injury and tried to come back in 2001 but only made three starts, going 1-2 for the Red Sox before retiring at the age of thirty-seven.