By their own admission, the Boston Red Sox were a confused and distracted team four months into the regular season.
Then on the final day of July they dealt their main distraction, outfielder Manny Ramirez, to the Dodgers, getting Jason Bay from the Pittsburgh Pirates in return in a three-team trade.
Everybody knows what that trade meant to the Dodgers, who rallied behind Ramirez to win the National League West. But the deal may have saved Boston's season as well since the Red Sox won nearly 65% of their games after the trade to earn the American League's wild-card playoff berth.
"When the trade went down, there was a lot of confusion. You didn't know what was going to happen," said first baseman Kevin Youkilis. "But once that was all over, it was all gone. It didn't affect players during the game. Nobody was wondering, when you're up at the plate, whether Manny was going to get traded."
Ramirez helped forced the deal by refusing to play hard as the trade deadline neared, leading former teammate Curt Schilling to say Ramirez's "level of disrespect to teammates and people was unfathomable."
Youkilis tried to distance himself from that thinking Tuesday when he said the timing of the Red Sox's surge and Ramirez's trade weren't necessarily linked.
"That's what I'm getting right now. Everyone wants to know is there an answer why after Manny changed [teams], that we [won]," he said. "There's no answer there. We're a good team. We were a good team with Manny. We're a good team without Manny. That's the bottom line. One player does not make a team."
Added captain Jason Varitek: "People need to understand, Manny wasn't hurtful in our clubhouse as much as it was a situation that needed to come to an end, and I think it was going to, either way, at the trade deadline."
But, Varitek and others added, the addition of Bay has been a positive.
"We've added a few [players] that are good baseball players and good teammates," he said.
"Now we've got 25 guys," added second baseman Dustin Pedroia, "heading in the right direction."
More Manny
There's no doubt the loss of Ramirez, who was hitting .299 with 20 homers and 68 RBI when he was traded, has changed the Red Sox's lineup. Just don't assume the change was for the worse.
"We played as a team," Pedroia, a solid MVP candidate, said when asked how things changed over the season's final two months. "We weren't relying on one or two guys. We weren't relying on a three-run homer in the seventh or eighth inning.
