Charge Boras with wild pitch, client with error in judgment

Varitek should be very grateful for his new contract, which, given his limited offensive capability, is extremely generous. He gets $5 million this year, with the opportunity to earn as much as $10 million in the next two years through option pickups and incentives. That's a very fair salary for a man who will bat ninth, a man the manager hopes won't deteriorate into an automatic out before he retires.

It's a proper resolution. This is where Varitek belongs. He has spent his entire major league career with the Red Sox and will go down in history as one of the franchise's most beloved players. He earned that "C." And that's why he was so ill-served by his agent, who, once again, put dollars ahead of sense. Instead of taking immediate steps to make sure the Red Sox captain stayed where his presence was most mutually beneficial, Boras dragged this thing out for nine long weeks and ensured that his client would be subject to criticism. The longer Boras dawdled, the more opportunities people had to examine Varitek's puny offensive numbers. Boras should have gotten the job done quickly, so people would have forgotten about the numbers, especially the lefthanded numbers.

That's the real problem. Jason isn't too bad righthanded. In 95 righthanded at-bats, he had a very acceptable OPS of .863. But in 328 lefthanded at-bats, he had a scary OPS of .616.

There were all sorts of negative numbers for people to ponder. For example, Varitek had nine multihit games in May and only 10 more in the remaining four months, plus postseason. He had one three-hit game all year, May 31 in Baltimore.

He was 1 for 16 with the bases loaded.

He was 4 for 34 (.118) in the postseason, with one home run, one RBI, and a microscopic OPS of .395.