After Babe Ruth ... who?
- Thread starter E5 Yaz
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He’s working on a strongly worded post. And you know sending Ruth to NYY was disastrous for future generations of fans all over the country, but why did they have to also send Mays, Hoyt, and Schang to complete the pennant-winning roster? Tigers had no interest? So annoying.
Let’s say the Sox had given Clemens the contract Toronto did (4/40). Does the Curse end sooner? The ‘97 team was bad, but then the team averaged 90 wins from 98-00. They finished 4 back of NY in 99 and 2 back in 00. A rotation of Pedro and Clemens would have been other-worldly, especially in a 7 game series where they could start 4-5 of the games.
Way, way, WAY better than Ichiro at the plate. I understand the comparison, but just because now you got me intrigued. And keep in mind that Boggs' MLB career started at age 24. Ichiro's was at age 27. Ichiro played 19 MLB seasons, Boggs 18.
- Ichiro had 4 seasons of .325+ avg. Boggs had 10.
- Ichiro had 1 season of .400+ obp. Boggs had 11.
- Ichiro had 5 seasons of .800+ ops. Boggs had 12.
- Ichiro had 5 seasons of 120+ ops+. Boggs had 11.
- Ichiro had 0 seasons of greater than 130 ops+. Boggs had 8.
Ichiro was a super exciting player and a great hitter. But Boggs was in another universe.
The thing I love about this is that it is so easily checked. People were dumb.
BAA by innings:
Innings 1-3: .326
Innings 4-6: .346
Innings 7-9: .312
He pretty much hit in all innings. He hit higher in innings 5 and 6 (.340) than he did in the first 4 innings (.332). He hit .327 vs. starting pitchers, .326 vs. relievers.
People were dumb.
It's weird that none of this has ever bothered me. Beni to the Evil Empire is a nothing burger for me. Don't care. Will never forget that catch or the Bs outfield. Good enough for me.
I guess Boggs is my answer, just because of the horse. But even with that I just smirked.
I guess Boggs is my answer, just because of the horse. But even with that I just smirked.
Regarding Boggs, he was the purest hitter in a Sox uniform that I’ve ever seen, and I started watching in the late '70s. He had a beautiful inside-out Fenway swing built to pepper endless doubles off the Wall, but he could also hit on the road. Could hit anywhere, anytime, really. Could fall out of bed and hit. For almost the entire decade of the ‘80s, whenever he came to up to bat and I said to myself, “He’s gonna get a hit here,” not because I was some predictive genius, but because it had simply happened so often it was normal to expect it again.
He could hit in between willing himself invisible while being robbed with a gun. Could hit despite tumbling out of the passenger front door of a car when it took a sharp turn, him somersaulting onto the road and springing some ribs. Could hit even when his mistress aired his dirty laundry for all to see, could hit while atoning before Barbara Walters as part of the messy public cleanup, his wife by his side as he openly discussed his transgressions on national TV. Could hit in between coast-to-coast flights where he crushed entire cases of Miller Lite on his own; twenty-four cans of beer in five hours while sitting in a metal tube hurtling across the country at 30,000 feet in the air. If someone was going to throw a ball towards him, he was going to hit it, and hit it where nobody could get him out.
And when he didn’t hit it, he walked. Because he let bad pitches go. Because he could wait. He always waited. He’d either wait for you to make a mistake in the strike zone and then hit it, or he’d wait for you to make a mistake out of the strike zone and let it go by. And if you made four of those mistakes, he’d take his base, presuming you hadn’t made a mistake he could hit in the meantime.
He was so incredibly underrated for his time. He was drafted out of high school in 1976, and all he ever did the minors was hit and get on base, hit over .300 and get on base more than 40 percent of time every year, every goddamn year. Yet he spent two full seasons at Double-A Bristol, and two full seasons at Triple-A Pawtucket. His Sox debut should’ve been in 1980, not 1982. True, he displayed no power in the minors, and his fielding was always a work in progress, but he never had an iron glove, and he was hard worker. And he had a wondrous hit tool, one that was obvious from the jump. Wade Boggs’s bat didn’t mature and shakily unfold itself like a delicate butterfly over time, it showed up fully formed. Dude could rake, and he could always rake. And he always did rake.
And then he got to the majors and did nothing but win batting titles and lead the league in hits and OBP year after year, scoring over a hundred runs for seven years straight despite not being the fleetest fellow out there, scoring runs because HE WAS ALWAYS ON BASE TO BE DRIVEN IN. How do you win baseball games? By scoring more runs than the other team. Wade Boggs was an absolutely devastating baseball weapon, one of the purest the sport has ever seen, but he was dismissed in his time as a stats-obsessed table-setter. Because he was weird. Because he had superstitions. Because he ate chicken all the time, he didn’t always swing away with men on base, he wasn’t necessarily endearing or quick with a locker-room quip, trouble seemed to follow him around like the dirt cloud around Pig Pen, you got the sense his life was like a Dear Penthouse Forum Letter personified. And therefore he was easy to dismiss as a one-trick player.
As if that one trick wasn’t the most important thing a hitter can do: not make an out.
He could hit in between willing himself invisible while being robbed with a gun. Could hit despite tumbling out of the passenger front door of a car when it took a sharp turn, him somersaulting onto the road and springing some ribs. Could hit even when his mistress aired his dirty laundry for all to see, could hit while atoning before Barbara Walters as part of the messy public cleanup, his wife by his side as he openly discussed his transgressions on national TV. Could hit in between coast-to-coast flights where he crushed entire cases of Miller Lite on his own; twenty-four cans of beer in five hours while sitting in a metal tube hurtling across the country at 30,000 feet in the air. If someone was going to throw a ball towards him, he was going to hit it, and hit it where nobody could get him out.
And when he didn’t hit it, he walked. Because he let bad pitches go. Because he could wait. He always waited. He’d either wait for you to make a mistake in the strike zone and then hit it, or he’d wait for you to make a mistake out of the strike zone and let it go by. And if you made four of those mistakes, he’d take his base, presuming you hadn’t made a mistake he could hit in the meantime.
He was so incredibly underrated for his time. He was drafted out of high school in 1976, and all he ever did the minors was hit and get on base, hit over .300 and get on base more than 40 percent of time every year, every goddamn year. Yet he spent two full seasons at Double-A Bristol, and two full seasons at Triple-A Pawtucket. His Sox debut should’ve been in 1980, not 1982. True, he displayed no power in the minors, and his fielding was always a work in progress, but he never had an iron glove, and he was hard worker. And he had a wondrous hit tool, one that was obvious from the jump. Wade Boggs’s bat didn’t mature and shakily unfold itself like a delicate butterfly over time, it showed up fully formed. Dude could rake, and he could always rake. And he always did rake.
And then he got to the majors and did nothing but win batting titles and lead the league in hits and OBP year after year, scoring over a hundred runs for seven years straight despite not being the fleetest fellow out there, scoring runs because HE WAS ALWAYS ON BASE TO BE DRIVEN IN. How do you win baseball games? By scoring more runs than the other team. Wade Boggs was an absolutely devastating baseball weapon, one of the purest the sport has ever seen, but he was dismissed in his time as a stats-obsessed table-setter. Because he was weird. Because he had superstitions. Because he ate chicken all the time, he didn’t always swing away with men on base, he wasn’t necessarily endearing or quick with a locker-room quip, trouble seemed to follow him around like the dirt cloud around Pig Pen, you got the sense his life was like a Dear Penthouse Forum Letter personified. And therefore he was easy to dismiss as a one-trick player.
As if that one trick wasn’t the most important thing a hitter can do: not make an out.
From 1983 to 1990, Wade Boggs lead the league every single season in total times on base. 8 years in a row. Pretty sure both are records, total times and consecutive (obviously).
He finished 4th in 1991. Never finished in the top 10 again.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/TOB_leagues.shtml
edit: Rose did it 9 times not in a row. I think that's the record but very quick look.
I wish that you were around in the 80s, because this is so spot on.
I didn't appreciate Wade Boggs when I was a kid because he "only hit singles and doubles" and I liked dingers. So I liked Rice and Dewey and Baylor and Greenwell and Burks better. I couldn't hit a home run to save my life when I played, but I could hit singles (and the occasional double), so comparatively if I could do it (once in awhile), it must not have been that hard. But as I understood baseball better, I appreciated Boggs a lot more because of what you said: he was a hard worker with an uncanny eye and amazing hand-eye coordination. I didn't understand that his job was to hit home runs, his job was to be on base so that the guys behind him could hit the homers and get the glory of 12-year-old knownothings.
I still don't get the warm fuzzies from Boggs, but man, do I respect how he came up and how his career unfolded. I'd have to say that by-and-large, he's pretty underrated by a lot of the Boston fandom.
Boggs retired just a couple of years before the As Moneyball team but I sort of think he would be way more valued by teams now that they understand what wins baseball games.
People also forget that he played pretty good defense.
I was looking just now at OBP numbers. I was a little surprised to see that only 2 active players make the all time top 100 in OBP. I guess it's not so surprising, given the modern game. Boggs is 27th all time. The two active guys are Trout (of course) and Votto.
People also forget that he played pretty good defense.
I was looking just now at OBP numbers. I was a little surprised to see that only 2 active players make the all time top 100 in OBP. I guess it's not so surprising, given the modern game. Boggs is 27th all time. The two active guys are Trout (of course) and Votto.
As others have mentioned, for all of Boggs' on-field prowess, he was a disaster off the field and got involved in tons of scandals. IIRC he was also involved in that Delta Force nonsense with Bob Stanley and a couple of others. There was a lot of embarassment around Boggs towards the end of his time here.
Ortiz career OPS+ during his time in Boston: 148
Boggs: 142.
WAR in his 11 seasons (in order)
3.9
7.8
6.3
9.1
8.1
8.3
8.3
8.4
3.2
6.4
2.2.
71.9 WAR in 11 years. 5 seasons of 8 WAR or more, 8 of 6 or more. In the 5 year stretch of 1985-1989, he put up 42.2 WAR.
I guess that is good for 3rd all time, behind Ted and Yaz...
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/leaders_bat.shtml
It depends on what Clemens we'd have gotten in those 4 years. I'm not convinced he would have had the edge that developed when the Sox shunned him. I think, had he been healthy, he could have had more strong seasons for the Sox. But I'm not sure he would have been as other-wordly as he became in Toronto.
Yes, getting dissed by Duquette certainly motivated Clemens a lot.
If we were a better team because we had resigned Clemens, would we have been in a position to trade Mike Stanley in 1997 to get a vital piece in the Pedro trade?
Yeah, I immediately thought of him afterward. Do you have a link for bbref that combines hitting and pitching together for WAR totals? I can't find it.
Boggs finished 9th in the MVP voting in 1987, behind George Bell, Alan Trammell, Kirby Puckett, Dwight Evans, Paul Molitor, Mark McGwire, Don Mattingly, and Tony Fernandez.
That year, Boggs finished 1st in baseball in:
AVG: .363
OBP: .461
OPS: 1.049
OPS+: 174
bWAR: 8.3 (for position players....Clemens had a bWAR of 9.4 but finished 19th in the MVP race!)
Here's the bWAR numbers of the top 10 guys in the MVP race:
Bell: 5.0
Trammell: 8.2
Puckett: 4.2
Evans: 4.8
Molitor: 6.0
McGwire: 5.1
Mattingly: 5.1
Fernandez: 5.1
Boggs: 8.3
Gaetti: 2.4
I mean...Boggs was RIDICULOUS that year, in a year of lots of ridiculous offensive numbers. To finish 9th was a baseball crime.
That year, Boggs finished 1st in baseball in:
AVG: .363
OBP: .461
OPS: 1.049
OPS+: 174
bWAR: 8.3 (for position players....Clemens had a bWAR of 9.4 but finished 19th in the MVP race!)
Here's the bWAR numbers of the top 10 guys in the MVP race:
Bell: 5.0
Trammell: 8.2
Puckett: 4.2
Evans: 4.8
Molitor: 6.0
McGwire: 5.1
Mattingly: 5.1
Fernandez: 5.1
Boggs: 8.3
Gaetti: 2.4
I mean...Boggs was RIDICULOUS that year, in a year of lots of ridiculous offensive numbers. To finish 9th was a baseball crime.
But the RBIs!
Bill James might have been the only one who had any idea of the true value of players back in '87. Fans and writers? No way.
Bill James might have been the only one who had any idea of the true value of players back in '87. Fans and writers? No way.
Yeah, but the Red Sox were a losing team. We will ignore that 1987 was the year Andre Dawson won the MVP on a 76-85 team. Tony Gwynn got jobbed that year too.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1987.shtml#all_AL_MVP_voting
Boggs is probably one of the most underrated players of all time, never mind in Boston.
I agree with this. There's a reason why the Sox were looking to a future without Clemens and it's because his production had leveled off a bit. He had a legit good year in 1994, but his baseball card stats were pedestrian. 1993 he wasn't great, 95 he was good (he only pitched 140 innings that year) and 96 he was good too (he lead the league in strikeouts). I think that Duquette was looking at Roger as a normal human being baseball player and assumed that he'd end up getting worse as he aged into his 30s.
Of course that didn't happen, he found a magical Player Elixir Drink somewhere between Katy, TX and Toronto and dominated for the next ten seasons. It sucked when he left, but I didn't fault Duquette at the time because how did we know that his spite knew no bounds?
But to answer the question, I think Clemens doesn't go that route if he signs a fat contract to stay in Boston. I think he has some reasonably good seasons and maybe limps to 300 wins with a Yazian finish, but I don't think he comes close to 354 or his late career dominance. He had nothing to push him.
FWIW, Clemens put up a 7.7 WAR his final season in Boston. Then 11.9 and 8.1 seasons in Toronto.
I know that doesn't tell the whole story but he was probably a bit better than good in 1996. 7.7 was good for 3rd place among pitchers. 2nd in the AL. Only Pat Hengten (8.6) and Kevin Brown (7.9) were better. Smoltz finished at 7.4.
Hentgen and Smoltz won Cy Youngs. I forgot Pat Hentgen was really good for a 4 year stretch.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1996-pitching-leaders.shtml
I know that doesn't tell the whole story but he was probably a bit better than good in 1996. 7.7 was good for 3rd place among pitchers. 2nd in the AL. Only Pat Hengten (8.6) and Kevin Brown (7.9) were better. Smoltz finished at 7.4.
Hentgen and Smoltz won Cy Youngs. I forgot Pat Hentgen was really good for a 4 year stretch.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1996-pitching-leaders.shtml
It's amazing how well he pitched up there given the needle sticking out of his butt cheek.
My very clear memory of his last season in Boston is of his arm slot dropping dramatically as the season went on. He took 10 days off at the beginning of August, came back and his arm slot was back where it began and he was throwing MUCH harder, and more effectively.
Are we sure he started using after his time here and not some time in 1996? I never really paid attention to the timeline. I know sometimes players use steroids to speed up the recovery process too, though that would have been more like in 94/95.
My belief, based on nothing more than observation and guesswork, is that he started using in 1996 here, specifically in that 10 day window I mentioned in August. IIRC I have read that a typical PED regimen at the time lasted about 10 days, and my memory is VERY clear that he came back throwing much better and much harder than he had been up until that point in the season, and his arm angle was back where it belonged.
From the beginning of the season through Aug. 1, 1996, he was 4-11 with a 4.36 ERA and a .723 OPS against.
From Aug.11 (his return after his break) through the rest of that season he was 6-2 with a 2.09 ERA, a .566 OPS against and a 20K game in Detroit.
He was an impending UFA and his season had gone lousy until Aug. 1.
Just my guess.
That was my guess too. I remember that game in Detroit and his fastball was exploding like it was 1986. Obviously this is just from my memory of games from almost 30 years ago, so my recollection might be a little faded.
maybe it was his authentic self, but they met his price. For $9M / year, I'd do some moderately humiliating things, too.
Anyway, I'm another vote for "Wade Boggs on that stupid horse", because I'm too young to remember the 70s, but Clemens is a close 2nd because of how core he was to our procession of talent in the franchise. Arguably a top-5 pitcher of all time*, and he deserved to be here his whole career. I don't think Duquette drove him to a second half of his career, I think he just misread how much an all-timer had left in the tank, but given how much he did in fact have left in the tank, seeing it happen at the Yankees - to the extent he wanted to have his HOF plaque feature the Yankees on it - was stomach-turning. Good thing we won't have to sweat about that for a while!
* (I believe when we did a deep-dive vote on SoSH, years ago, Clemens made the top 5, I only remember it going 1. Walter Johnson 2. Pedro, pretty sure Big Unit was in there too, and either Grove or Mathewson. But Clemens is up there.)
Boggs was a total hero of mine in the 80s. I went to get his autograph one time before a game, and he looked at my dad, nodded, went into the dugout, and came back out and gave me his bat. I was completely stunned, as were all the kids waiting to get his autograph. My dad and I have no idea why he did it, it’s almost as if he thought he knew my dad. It’s still sitting in my parents closet.
I would add to the chorus that Boggs was a much better fielder than he’s remembered for being. He wasn’t good when he came up but put a ton of work in to get to Gold Glove-caliber quality. In addition to, you know, being the best hitter of his era.
Clemens had that 20 strike out game and was completely dominant. I wouldn’t put it fast him that he did start using at the very end of his run in Boston.
i’ve also always wondered how 2004 would’ve played out if he hadn’t left New York for Houston. He was a complete beast that year.
IIRC another guy on this list—Youk—hit his first homer off of Hentgen who then promptly retired a couple of days later.
WOW. I had never seen those splits before. Holy crap.
Like JMOH, I wasn't necessarily mad when he left. But I became furious once he started dominating in Toronto. I kept wondering where that guy had been for the previous 4 years.
Of course he was far from dominant once he went to the Yanks. He had some solid seasons, and he won the Cy in '01 when he had pretty much the same season as the other 5 guys who got votes (20 wins + NYY = Cy Young). But he wasn't close to what he flashed up North. The PEDs really kicked in again when he went to Houston.
Trust me. Yaz, Lynn, Evans was the best defensive outfield in Red Sox history. You can debate maybe Lynn and JBJ in center. Yaz over Beni, easy. Mookie vs. Evans? Evans had the better arm.
But yes, That Mookie, JBJ, Beni outfield was great.
I was around for the Yaz, Lynn, Evans outfield. They were astounding. I’m just not sure they were better defensively.
Incredible. My foggy memory has some crazy stat concerning him never or rarely fouling out.
It's close. Still the best catch ever (damn I loved Yaz)
Yastrzemski makes amazing catch in left - YouTube
The Yaz catch in 67 at the old Yankee stadium to keep the no hitter alive, the Lynn catch in 1975 in the doubleheader sweep of the Yankees where Rice hurdled over him and the Evans catch in the 1975 world series are the three greatest catches I've ever seen, all from that outfield.
Luis going to the MFYs after 1978 would have been like Pedro going to them after 2003.
I don't get why Clemens is garnering so many votes. The guy rarely if ever delivered an ace effort in the playoffs. And I was completely done with him after he left for the Jays, in large part because he left for the Jays. I remember my dad, who was not a big sports fan, telling me on a phone call that Clemens had signed with "that bird team", and I figured he signed with the Orioles, and thought, "Okay, that makes sense. He talked about wanting to compete for a championship, and the Orioles are better than us right now and he wants to win." But then when I discovered that he signed with the Jays, a team that finished below the Sox that year, I thought, "So much for winning being important to him. He only cares about the money."
For as great as he was in his two years in Toronto, they still finished below the Sox each year. By the time he made it to the MFYs, I was resigned to it, because eventually all pigs wind up at the biggest trough.
Game 1 1990 ALCS he was off the plate but threw 6 scoreless against a great lineup, with 2 HOF and 2 Juice Famers
A game that Anderson blew
Game 6 1986 WS (too soon) he threw 7 IP with 1 ER
Probably Looey. He was my favorite SP on some very good 70s Sox teams that came so close. He was a blast to watch.
He pitched his arm off in the "75 WS and he pitched his heart out in a shut out win versus the BJs in game before the BFD '78 game.
it was his last game (played) as a Sox.
And he was magnificent.
Fenway rocked that day.
So yeah, Looey, and it seems it still hurts.
He pitched his arm off in the "75 WS and he pitched his heart out in a shut out win versus the BJs in game before the BFD '78 game.
it was his last game (played) as a Sox.
And he was magnificent.
Fenway rocked that day.
So yeah, Looey, and it seems it still hurts.
It's somewhat binary for me as I tend to see where some guys were simply done and went to NY for that last chance to stick to a ML roster (Tiant) or just otherwise sucked (Ellsbury). In any event, if they went to NY and didn't do anything but collect a paycheck, I'm generally happy that they left. Bennie going to NY doesn't bother me that much. He was pretty much terrible in 2020 so trading him to KC seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm happy that he bounced back. Him going to NY doesn't bother me since its not really his choice. If he starts spouting off about how he always wanted to be a Yankee or long that lines of pandering nonsense, I may reconsider.
Clemens, Boggs, Damon... all in the same category for me. Fully drank from the Bronx Kool Aid and were ok with dissing the Sox whenever they could. That Clemens and to some extent Boggs contributed to the dynasty years from last century still pisses me off. Damon's being one of the core-Idiots of 2004 and then bailing to NY didn't set well with me either. I didn't start lighting jerseys on fire in my backyard, but I was ok with booing him. A lot of it has to do with behavior and how they ended up with NY. If they leave on good terms and don't blaze a trail on their way out the door, I don't hold too much of a grudge as they do need to earn a living.
For the Boggs discussion... he and Don Mattingly were neck and neck in the mid to latter part of the 80's when it came to offensive MVPs. Boggs was an absolute hitting machine. He was the one guy that I thought was most likely to break .400. SI had an article where they Peter Gammons interviewed Boggs, Mattingly, and Ted Williams in some diner and just talked about hitting and their philosophies. Absolute must read for baseball fans IMHO.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1986/04/14/a-real-rap-session
One of the indelible images of the '86 WS was Boggs sobbing on the bench after Orosco struck out Marty Barrett in Game Seven to end the series. Then he ruined it all by getting on that police horse.
Clemens, Boggs, Damon... all in the same category for me. Fully drank from the Bronx Kool Aid and were ok with dissing the Sox whenever they could. That Clemens and to some extent Boggs contributed to the dynasty years from last century still pisses me off. Damon's being one of the core-Idiots of 2004 and then bailing to NY didn't set well with me either. I didn't start lighting jerseys on fire in my backyard, but I was ok with booing him. A lot of it has to do with behavior and how they ended up with NY. If they leave on good terms and don't blaze a trail on their way out the door, I don't hold too much of a grudge as they do need to earn a living.
For the Boggs discussion... he and Don Mattingly were neck and neck in the mid to latter part of the 80's when it came to offensive MVPs. Boggs was an absolute hitting machine. He was the one guy that I thought was most likely to break .400. SI had an article where they Peter Gammons interviewed Boggs, Mattingly, and Ted Williams in some diner and just talked about hitting and their philosophies. Absolute must read for baseball fans IMHO.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1986/04/14/a-real-rap-session
One of the indelible images of the '86 WS was Boggs sobbing on the bench after Orosco struck out Marty Barrett in Game Seven to end the series. Then he ruined it all by getting on that police horse.
Damon felt like a betrayal at the time. I was much younger then (as we all were) and I childishly ended a romantic relationship with a Yankees fan who had the gall to be happy that they had signed Damon.
Hence, "rarely, if ever". And 6 IP wasn't the measure of an ace back then. In that same game, Dave Stewart delivered an 8 inning, 4-hit, 1-run effort that didn't leave three innings for his pen to get through.
I'm not saying he wasn't a decent pitcher for the Sox in the playoffs, just that he wasn't a special one, which is what his talent promised. Derek Lowe produced more memorable moments in the playoffs for the Sox than Roger Clemens ever did.
Clemens kissing his finger then touching the Babe Ruth plaque in the Toilet before every game bothered me much more than Boggs on the horse.
I was 15 in '86 and absolutely adored Clemens, but fuck him.
I was 15 in '86 and absolutely adored Clemens, but fuck him.
I loved Clemens as a middle-schooler: those first few seasons, he was as close to a dominating sure thing as you could get, which was kind of important back in the day when one rubbed elbows with Yankees fans (Central CT.) It was almost a guarantee of relevance and competitiveness.
But the shine came off that apple long before he left.
His coming out in the '86 series is sort of an unknown, and I couldn't fully lay that at his feet. But after that? The whole luggage thing, various bone-headed comments, and his lackluster post-season showings in 88, 90, 95? Fairly or unfairly - to my younger self he just never won when it was absolutely needed. The contrast with Dave Stewart was there for all to see. And for a guy who kind of marketed himself as "the ace" and "the Rocket". . .he just didn't deliver when it counted.
I had slightly more nuanced view of him in the mid-90s, just before he left. I thought he was solid but declining at 33. His juiced explosion in Toronto (of all places) and then his openly courting the Yanks and more or less demanding a trade? He was long lost before he ever egomaniacally and publicly slobbered over Babe Ruth. Because no lesser slobbering would do.
Clemens was the anti-Ortiz. His first start in the '86 ALCS was a disaster because he tried to throw every ball through the backstop. After that, every post-season outing was doomed to be compared to his regular-season stats. Overall, if you look at his post-season performance with the Sox, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the dominant Rocket-type outing that we got used to during the regular season.
When it came time to shine in the post-season with the Sox, he did the worst thing you can do when you're an elite baseball player which was to amp it up, where Ortiz would slow it down.
I think it's easy to say that based on each of their respective peaks, they're the best outfield trio to play in the same lineup in Sox history. However, Yaz wasn't at his peak when he was sharing an outfield with the other two. He wasn't even a full time outfielder during those years. He was still good, of course, but not at his best. The Benintendi/Bradley/Betts trio may have been the best outfield featuring all three at their defensive peaks.
Boggs was my idol when I started really getting into the game. I wanted to play 3B in baseball from 7 years old onward because of him. It was bad enough seeing the Rays cap on his head but that damn horse in NY.... crushing.