Thank You Mr. Bellhorn
Mark Bellhorn will officially clear waivers this afternoon. According to the Globe, his agent says that he will not accept an assignment to Pawtucket, which will force the Sox to let him go. He will then hope to catch on with another team.
Even if he did accept the assignment, he wouldn’t be called up until September 1st at the earliest, which would mean that he would not qualify for the post-season roster and would make nothing more than a cameo appearance at best for the rest of the regular season.
For all intents and purposes, Mark Bellhorn has played his last game in a Red Sox uniform, and The Nation is saying goodbye to yet another World Champion.
From everything that I’ve seen and read about him, he was a quiet guy who was well liked by his teammates and manager, and just went about his business of going out there every day and trying to do his job the best that he could. Unfortunately, his best this year wasn’t good enough for this team, and for that matter, for any Major League team.
It’s difficult to tell what happened to him. He was never a great player to begin with, and really only had 2 good seasons in his 8 year Major League career. In 2002 he hit .258 with 27 home runs while playing all 4 infield positions in 146 games for the Cubs in his first full Major League season, after playing sporadically for the A’s as a utility guy for his first 5 years where he also lost a lot of time to injuries.
The Cubs gave up on him halfway through the “03” season after he batted just .209 and sent him to Colorado where he really didn’t do much better. I seem to remember him losing time to injuries that year as well.
Theo traded for him in December of “03” to continue playing the utility role that he had been stuck in his entire career, as well as to provide insurance for Pokey Reese at second. Although he always had high strikeout totals, he fit the mold Theo likes with a high (.350) career on base percentage, plus he was cheap, which they needed after all the money they were shelling out. I would say we got our moneys worth from him in 2004.
With the injury to Nomar and the move of Reese back to his natural position of shortstop, Bellhorn was finally given a chance to play everyday at one position, second base. He turned in a solid regular season, batting in the 2-hole for most of it while putting up career numbers in BA (.264), RBI (82), runs (93), hits (138), doubles (37), and walks (88). He was also one point short of his career best OBP at .373 and hit 17 home runs. Unfortunately, he also struck out a maddening 177 times. He drove us insane watching him take pitch after pitch, and all of those swings and misses, but overall he did his job as the number 2 hitter and got on base a lot. Driving in 82 runs from the 2-hole is an impressive feat as well, of course a lot of that has to do with the good on base guys we had at the bottom of the lineup, but you still have to get the job done when they’re on, and he did.
He played solid defense at second base, even filling in for Mueller at 3rd for a few weeks when he was forced on the DL to get the knee fixed. He went down himself for a few weeks in August/September with a thumb injury.
Despite the solid regular season he will always be best remembered for his contributions in the playoffs. After starting off very slowly in the ALCS and really hearing it from the fans, he ended up hitting 2 game-winning home runs, one in game 6 of the ALCS and one in game 1 of the World Series. I originally wrote more about them here
http://bostonnine.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_bostonnine_archive.html
so I won’t go into details again, but I think it’s safe to say that without his ALCS contribution there is a very good chance we never make it to the World Series, and things could have turned out very differently once we got there, without his home run in game one.
It’s tough to see it end like this. He just never got going this year, and the writing was on the wall for him long before the injury finally forced him out of the lineup. With the way Graffanino is playing and the ability that Cora has, it makes sense to do what we did.
We will now go on to try to repeat without him, all the while knowing that without him, we would never be in the position to repeat in the first place.
So, goodbye to a true World Champion, and thank you for helping to give us something that no other Red Sox second baseman has been able to give us since Dave Shean in 1918.
Even if he did accept the assignment, he wouldn’t be called up until September 1st at the earliest, which would mean that he would not qualify for the post-season roster and would make nothing more than a cameo appearance at best for the rest of the regular season.
For all intents and purposes, Mark Bellhorn has played his last game in a Red Sox uniform, and The Nation is saying goodbye to yet another World Champion.
From everything that I’ve seen and read about him, he was a quiet guy who was well liked by his teammates and manager, and just went about his business of going out there every day and trying to do his job the best that he could. Unfortunately, his best this year wasn’t good enough for this team, and for that matter, for any Major League team.
It’s difficult to tell what happened to him. He was never a great player to begin with, and really only had 2 good seasons in his 8 year Major League career. In 2002 he hit .258 with 27 home runs while playing all 4 infield positions in 146 games for the Cubs in his first full Major League season, after playing sporadically for the A’s as a utility guy for his first 5 years where he also lost a lot of time to injuries.
The Cubs gave up on him halfway through the “03” season after he batted just .209 and sent him to Colorado where he really didn’t do much better. I seem to remember him losing time to injuries that year as well.
Theo traded for him in December of “03” to continue playing the utility role that he had been stuck in his entire career, as well as to provide insurance for Pokey Reese at second. Although he always had high strikeout totals, he fit the mold Theo likes with a high (.350) career on base percentage, plus he was cheap, which they needed after all the money they were shelling out. I would say we got our moneys worth from him in 2004.
With the injury to Nomar and the move of Reese back to his natural position of shortstop, Bellhorn was finally given a chance to play everyday at one position, second base. He turned in a solid regular season, batting in the 2-hole for most of it while putting up career numbers in BA (.264), RBI (82), runs (93), hits (138), doubles (37), and walks (88). He was also one point short of his career best OBP at .373 and hit 17 home runs. Unfortunately, he also struck out a maddening 177 times. He drove us insane watching him take pitch after pitch, and all of those swings and misses, but overall he did his job as the number 2 hitter and got on base a lot. Driving in 82 runs from the 2-hole is an impressive feat as well, of course a lot of that has to do with the good on base guys we had at the bottom of the lineup, but you still have to get the job done when they’re on, and he did.
He played solid defense at second base, even filling in for Mueller at 3rd for a few weeks when he was forced on the DL to get the knee fixed. He went down himself for a few weeks in August/September with a thumb injury.
Despite the solid regular season he will always be best remembered for his contributions in the playoffs. After starting off very slowly in the ALCS and really hearing it from the fans, he ended up hitting 2 game-winning home runs, one in game 6 of the ALCS and one in game 1 of the World Series. I originally wrote more about them here
http://bostonnine.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_bostonnine_archive.html
so I won’t go into details again, but I think it’s safe to say that without his ALCS contribution there is a very good chance we never make it to the World Series, and things could have turned out very differently once we got there, without his home run in game one.
It’s tough to see it end like this. He just never got going this year, and the writing was on the wall for him long before the injury finally forced him out of the lineup. With the way Graffanino is playing and the ability that Cora has, it makes sense to do what we did.
We will now go on to try to repeat without him, all the while knowing that without him, we would never be in the position to repeat in the first place.
So, goodbye to a true World Champion, and thank you for helping to give us something that no other Red Sox second baseman has been able to give us since Dave Shean in 1918.
posted by Bob at 8/26/2005 10:02:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home