When the Red Sox drafted Nomar Garciaparra in the first round of the 1994 draft, they knew they were getting a special player. Garciaparra had batted .427 in his final season at Georgia Tech, was an Atlantic Coast Conference All-Star and a first team All-American in 1993 and 1994. He had also helped the Yellow Jackets reach the College World Series title game in '94, though they lost to Oklahoma.
Garciaparra excelled in the minors and moved quickly through Boston's farm system, making his Major League debut on August 31, 1996.
The next season, Garciaparra launched himself onto the national scene, when he batted .306 and posted a 30-game hitting streak, setting an American League rookie record.
The 23-year-old also smashed 30 home runs (a rookie shortstop record), collected 209 base hits (a Red Sox rookie record) and drove in 98 runs, setting a major league record for a leadoff hitter. As if all of that wasn’t enough, Garciaparra also stole 22 bases and led the league with 11 triples.
That extraordinary performance earned him his first All Star selection, the Silver Slugger Award and the American League Rookie of the Year Award.
Garciappara looked like a budding superstar. His potential seemed boundless.
The next season, 1998, he found a way to improve on his stellar rookie campaign. After moving up in the batting order to third or cleanup, Garciaparra belted 35 homers and drove in 122 runs, while batting .323, which was sixth-best in the league. As a result of his stunning sophomore performance, he was the runner-up for the AL MVP Award.
Garciaparra finished off the year by having an outstanding postseason, in which he batted .333 with 3 homers and 11 RBI, though Boston lost to Cleveland in four games in the ALDS.
Nomar's rookie season was no fluke; this guy had the goods. He was the real deal.
Yet, somehow, Garciaparra still managed to take a step forward in 1999, winning the batting title by hitting .357. He was still a solid run producer too, hitting 27 homers and driving in 104 runs, despite appearing in just 135 games. Nomar also started his second straight All Star Game, which took place at Fenway Park.
He led the Red Sox back to the postseason, where they took revenge on the Indians in the ALDS, beating them in five games. Garciaparra hit .417 in the series and followed that by batting .400 with two homers against the Yankees in the ALCS, which Boston lost in five games.
In 2000, Garciaparra, who was batting .403 as late as July 20, won his second batting title by hitting .372. It was the highest batting average by a right-handed batter in the post-war era and Nomar became the first right-handed batter to win consecutive titles since Joe DiMaggio. Garciaparra also homered 21 times and drove in 96 runs, as well as drawing a career-best 61 walks.
Nomar finished in the top 10 in MVP voting for the third-consecutive year. There was now a legitimate argument across baseball as to who was the best shortstop in the game: Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter or Garciaparra.
Agent Scott Boras ran a statistical analysis of Garciaparra which predicted that, by age 40, Nomar would have totaled 513 home runs, 3,581 hits and a .336 career batting average. The shortstop’s career was clearly on a Hall of Fame trajectory.
If there was one weakness evident in Garciaparra’s game at that point, it was that from ’98-’00, he played in only 135-143 games per season. Nomar seemed prone to injury. Some said he was fragile. But he was fantastic, nonetheless.
In 2001, Garciaparra suffered a split tendon in his wrist, exacerbating an injury he'd sustained during the ’99 season. As a result, the 27-year-old had to start the season on the disabled list and did not play in his first game until July 29. The injury plagued him through August, at which point the Red Sox finally shut him down for the year. Nomar played in only 21 games that season, a significant derailment for such a brilliant, young superstar. His average fell to .289 and he hit just 4 homers with 8 RBI.
Nomar’s wrist injury, which required surgery and would trouble him for the rest of his career, was an omen of bad things to come.
In 2002, however, Garciaparra remained healthy enough to play in a career-best 156 games. He rebounded nicely, batting .310 (which was still low, by his standards) with 24 homers, a league-best 56 doubles and 120 RBI. Garciaparra made his fourth All Star team and in September he became the fastest Red Sox player to record 1,000 hits, reaching the milestone in his 745th career game.
The real Nomar was back.
Garciaparra made his fifth All Star team in seven seasons and finished the year with 28 home runs and 105 RBI. He had enough speed to steal 19 bases, hit a career-best 13 triples (second-most in the majors) and score 120 runs (second in the AL).
However, he batted “just” .301. That was a bit worrisome, given that his career average was .326 entering that season, which included the .289 average he posted in his injury-shortened 2001 season.
The good news, however, was that he tied his career high by playing in 156 games for the second-consecutive season.
Nomar batted .300 against Oakland in the ALDS, but didn’t drive in a run. He then hit .241, with an uncharacteristic 8 strikeouts, against the Yankees in the ALCS.
In an era of extraordinary offensive output, Nomar had not only solidified his position as one of the best shortstops in baseball, he was widely viewed as one of the premier players in the game.
Little did anyone know, 2003 would be the last elite season of Nomar’s career. The wheels were about to come off his wagon at age 29.
Due to a contract stalemate and, perhaps, concerns about Nomar's health, the Red Sox were ready to move on. The club attempted to send Manny Ramirez to Texas in exchange for A-Rod, who would have supplanted Garciaparra at short. Boston was working on a simultaneous deal that would have sent Nomar to the White Sox in exchange for outfielder Magglio Ordóñez. Of course, the MLB Player’s Association nixed the A-Rod trade, which scuttled the planned trade of Nomar to Chicago. Consequently, the bridge between Nomar and the Red Sox had been burned.
Entering the 2004 season, Garciaparra suffered an Achille’s injury that kept him out of the lineup until June. He returned to play in 38 games for Boston, batting .321 with 5 home runs and 21 RBI. However, the Achille’s problem limited his range at shortstop, thus hurting the team’s overall defense. Despite the Sox being in a pennant race, the injury forced Nomar to take regular days off to facilitate the healing process.
Boston grew weary and finally traded their star shortstop, the face of their franchise for the previous seven seasons, to the Cubs at the trade deadline. The "Nomar era" in Boston had come to an unfortunate and uneventful end.
Garciaparra wrapped up his Red Sox career at age 30, with a .323 average, 178 home runs, 690 RBI and a .535 slugging percentage over parts of nine seasons.
Nomar’s Hall of Fame trajectory was suddenly derailed. He was never again the same player. Though he was an All Star with the Dodgers in 2006, a season in which he slashed .303/.367/.505/.872, with 20 homers, 31 doubles and 93 RBI, it was the last, great hurrah of his career. The performance earned him NL Comeback Player fo the Year honors.
Nomar hadn't hit more than 9 homers in any of the previous four seasons and he would never again hit more than 8 in any of his final three. Furthermore, his batting averages after leaving Boston, a period spanning 2005-2009, ranged from .264-.303. Nomar slugged .500 just once in the five seasons of his post-Red Sox career. Additionally, he never played in more than 122 games in any of those years and averaged just 85 per season.
Garciaparra was haunted by his Achilles’ injury, as well as a torn left groin injury that occurred in 2005. Though he continued to play for the Cubs, Dodgers and Athletics, he was a shadow of his former self and never again the extraordinary player he had been in Boston.
In 2014, Nomar was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame, along with former pitchers Pedro Martínez and Roger Clemens. It was a well-deserved tribute, but it raised some lingering questions.
Just how great would Nomar’s baseball legacy have been had he remained healthy and in Boston for the duration of his 14-year-career? Nomar retired at 35, an age when he still should have had a couple productive seasons remaining.
These are question that we're all left to ponder, as we wonder what might have been. After all, for seven seasons, Nomar was one of the elite players in the game and on the path to the Hall of Fame.
Instead, he will only visit that hallowed hall like the rest of us: as a tourist.
No comments:
Post a Comment