Having lost Gonzalez, the perennial problem of the Red Sox shortstop position continues into another season. Since 2004, they have put out 19 different people at short. It hasn’t turned into anything much yet, and there will continue to be problems at that place for the next little while. The commentator that I’m reading says that the team should simply focus on getting the position filled respectably rather that worrying so much about trying to get some of the big players from elsewhere into town at other positions. Hopefully the team will be able to find someone at that position, now that they accidentally let the other one leave town by waiting around on him too long.

What happened to the Red Sox? They were supposed to re-sign Alex Gonzalez to a new contract for several million dollars. Why didn’t they just do it right away? Instead, now he’s going to be playing for Toronto, who aren’t just another team, but they’re division rivals! Luckily, Toronto hasn’t been as good as some other teams, but it’s still a big challenge. But why didn’t we keep him. He has been a valuable member of the team for many years. It’s hard to imagine that the GM could have been that far out of the loop that Gonzo just ended up somewhere else, but there we are. It’s pretty clear now, so we’ll have to wait and see who our new shortstop is going to be. It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of offseason. We don’t need to start unloading assets, just bring in a few new guns!

DeMarlo Hale has been promoted. After several years of ably serving the team as the 3rd base coach, Hale will now be the bench coach for the Red Sox. He has been so good at the 3rd base position that it’s hard to move him away, according to the coaches. And it was hard to notice him, because he was able to do the job so flawlessly. Few mistakes and usually right on target. That’s exactly what this team needs right in the dugout right now, because the team seems like it’s somewhat in flux. They need to have someone to buck them up or dress them down, depending on the situation. Nice choice, Red Sox, because you couldn’t have picked a better coach for that job!

There are some big questions about the signings that the Red Sox might have to do during the offseason. Will they re-sign Jason Bay? Most experts expect that they will be bringing him back as it is very necessary for this team to have him back. Meanwhile the shortstop position needs some real work. The Alex Gonzalez possibility is at the top of their list right now. When the team comes back next spring, hopefully we will be able to see some stronger position players who will stop their opponents from getting real hits. Have you seen some of the players that are available this year? There are only a few of them out there, but there’s some good talent. Keep looking for the best, Red Sox!

Next year, Red Sox tickets will be rising by some amount. Every MLB team will be doing this, but the Sox have just announced it. It’s going to be slightly more expensive to see a game than it was last year, but only between 2 and 5 dollars more per ticket. It depends on where you’re going to sit. Green Monster seats and field level seats are among those that will be rising by $5 dollars over last season. The more common areas seem to be rising two or three dollars. This isn’t bad, and they say that this is the smallest increase in decades, and that reflects the economy at the moment. They still want to sell tickets while still keeping up with their own costs. Hopefully this will let the finances work out just right.

With the Red Sox so far gone for a large part of the 2009 season, people started to look for interesting storylines to supplement those that had developed throughout the year. We had hoped that we could say “we won even without Teixeira” but that didn’t work out. Varitek and Martinez aren’t going to make such a big difference for each other’s future prospects as we had previously thought. The fact that one of them just exercised his option for this year actually has little to no influence on whether the other one can come back. So what to make of this year? It means that we need to think a little bit more about position players. We need to get some more of the big bats going. It’s a tough year, but we will be back in it next year with some better players and some of the heavy hitting that we’ve been looking for.

When we first reported about the Mark Teixeira deal last winter, it looked like we might be able to get past it. The Red Sox had done well without him in the past, so why not now. During the course of the season, it started to look like we were really missing out on something important. His fielding and his bat were so loud that we became upset about it. But now that we see him in the postseason, we can take a deep breath again. Teixeira hasn’t been able to make a real contribution to the Yankees, especially in the World Series. He was supposed to set up A-Rod last night in Game 5 of the Series. But he struck out on a bad pitch, ending the game. He has been batting at around .105 this year. His fielding has been very solid, as one might expect. But otherwise, we haven’t been able to see him at the top of his game yet. That’s how that works and we’ll see if he can do anything big in the last game or two before we pass our final judgements.