Which was the best team that the Red Sox have eliminated in the postseason?

[Dan to Theo to Ben]

The 2003 A's had Hudson-Zito-Mulder and Foulke, which masked a pretty forgettable lineup (Tejada, Durazo, Chavez and Ramon Hernandez did most of the damage). I think there's an argument to be made about their overall quality, and as to the specifics of the series, if Jermaine Dye plays a decent RF in Fenway, we probably don't get out of that trap.
 
Was that the Moneyball team that won 20 straight? Or was that the 2002 team?

they were the antithesis to the 1999 Indians. That was a horrid pitching staff Robbie, Thome, Manny, Kenny, and Justice masked, and Omar had his best offensive season ever. Arguably the best DP combo in ages.

 

[cannonball 1729]

 
Maybe other teams would consider those 2002 Sox a formidable playoff opponent if they'd gotten that far.  They finished 7 games behind Pythag though I suspect 3rd order would only put them at about 97 wins or so based on the underlying stats - I don't have a BP sub to check though.
 
 

You don't need a BP subscription.  Look here:
 
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/index_2012.php?odate=2002-09-29
 
(You can check any season by putting in the last date of that season in lieu of 2002-09-29.)
 
The 2002 Sox had 102.8 third-order wins.

 

[BoSox Rule]

It's still amazing to me that 02 missed the playoffs. I still have nightmares about Terrance Long and Eric Chavez ending back to back games with outrageous defensive plays during that August Athletics series.

 

[MentalDisabldLst]

It's still amazing to me that 02 missed the playoffs. I still have nightmares about Terrance Long and Eric Chavez ending back to back games with outrageous defensive plays during that August Athletics series.

 
To SoSH's credit, we started the "Gump on the Hot Seat" thread about midway into May 2002.  Grady's Boner was merely the last event in a long line of painfully ignorant managerial malpractice, and the site had him pegged from the get-go.  That was my first year on the site, and I learned a lot about baseball from just reading the pleading, desperate rants-to-nobody after he made some idiotic bullpen move or inexplicable lineup.
 
There were posters here who were more enraged about the fouling-up of the 2002 regular season, frankly, than about the 2003 playoffs.  Heck, I'm probably one of them.  Final year of Pedro's prime, the last year Wakefield was well-above-average instead of league-average, Ugueth Urbina hadn't yet started trying to murder people with a machete... those were some good times.  I'm not sure the 2003 Sox beat the Marlins, but I'm willing to bet the 2002 Sox would've at least beaten the Angels and quite possibly the Giants too.  All this to say, if we were going to add a Red Sox team that "self-eliminated", it's probably 2002 (or 1978, or 1951, or, gulp, 2011), not 2003.

 

[m0ckduck]

2nd in the league in R/G, 3rd in OPS (4th OPS+).  3rd in RA/G and ERA (1st in ERA+).  They made the right deadline deals in picking up Embree and Floyd who were both great for them.  They called up the right guy and got great performance in Casey Fossum when they needed Wakefield in the pen.  Among qualifiers, they had the top 3 starters in the league by ERA+, they were 1st, 4th, and 7th in FIP.  

 
Along with all the statistical production and sheer good luck that they squandered this season (Derek Lowe going from shellshocked demoted closer to woulda-won-Cy-Young-in-many-seasons guy who threw a no-hitter-- really?), the memory that sticks with me with that team was a remarkable lack of resilience. This is a team that went more than half the season without rallying from behind to win a game after the sixth inning. I can vividly remember switching on the radio broadcasts from this season, hearing that they were behind by 1-2 runs in the 7th and immediately chalking it up as an L in my mind. I can't think of a Sox team that I had less confidence in to come up with a late tying run, and that includes the recent last-place editions. As ridiculously WEEI-ish as it sounds, it truly did feel like a team that... did. not. care.
 
What's hard for me to fathom is how bad managing could cause that. Was it the product of bad managing, the collective personality of the players, roster construction (i.e. pitching around the hot bats to get to Clark/Sanchez in the late moments), random distribution, or some combination of all four?
 
edit: can't count

 

[jose melendez]

Jsesus the 1912 Giants had frightening pitching.  Four starters with ERA+ better than133?  Jeez.
 
Thought when you look at FIP, the Sox stack up well.  Also Smokey Joe Wood was better than their best  one three games, lost one.

 

[Leather]

That 2002 team started 24-7.  
 
So frustrating.   Needed one more league average bat to compliment Brian Daubach in the utility role.  

 

[smastroyin]

Seriously, if Tony Clark's ball hadn't been a ground-rule double and had eliminated the Sox in 2004, or if he had managed to tie game 6 against Foulke, I may be in jail now for murder.
 
(this is a joke NSA, I don't think I'm actually capable of murder, but I probably would have defaced his baseball card or something.)

 

[Leather]

And if the Sox had made the playoffs, it's hard for me not to think that Pedro would have won Cy Young that year over Zito (and Lowe).  
 
Zito won, IMO, not because he had 3 more wins and 30 more innings than Pedro, but because he was the face of the 2002 A's miraculous run into the playoffs.  Meanwhile, Pedro skipped his last start of the season.  

 

[m0ckduck]

Zito won, IMO, not because he had 3 more wins and 30 more innings than Pedro, but because he was the face of the 2002 A's miraculous run into the playoffs.  Meanwhile, Pedro skipped his last start of the season.  

 
That, plus there was serious awards-fatigue with Pedro at that point.
 
This is a dumb trivia tidbit— and way off-topic, sorry— but: somehow Billy Koch (?????) finished ahead of Pedro in the MVP voting for that year. That's how much of a hooray-for-Oakland narrative there was that year. 

 

[cannonball 1729]

Jsesus the 1912 Giants had frightening pitching.  Four starters with ERA+ better than133?  Jeez.
 
Thought when you look at FIP, the Sox stack up well.  Also Smokey Joe Wood was better than their best  one three games, lost one.

 
Manager John McGraw famously decided to avoid pitching his ace against Smokey Joe Wood - he saved Christy Mathewson for game 2 and threw Jeff Tesreau as the opposing pitcher any time Wood was on the mound.  

 

[brandonchristensen]

I feel like it's the '13 tigers.

04 I thought we were better than every team. 07 same thing.

13, I just wanted to beat the Rays. I expected nothing more after that.

 

[MentalDisabldLst]

i like that the Giants won the NL pennant in '12... twice.

edit: of course, so did the Sox in '04...

 

[cannonball 1729]

i like that the Giants won the NL pennant in '12... twice.

edit: of course, so did the Sox in '04...

 
The Sox were world champions in both '04's.  Of course, the first one was by default....

 

[jacklamabe65]

Conversely, the best teams the Red Sox lost to in the World Series over the years been:
 
1975 Reds
 
1967 Cardinals

 

[chrisfont9]

 
The Sox were world champions in both '04's.  Of course, the first one was by default....

Hm, we have a chance to double up on '15s, '16s and '18s. All we need is to enter a golden era of Sox player development...