Dewey, Garret and Manny

Compare the career numbers of these two players:

Player A - .272 BA / 1470 R / 385 HR / 1384 RBI / 127 OPS+
Player B - .295 BA / 1000 R / 266 HR / 1259 RBI / 105 OPS+

It should be noted that Player A played 20 seasons while Player B is in the midst of his 15th season. I'm not treating this as a quiz because I'm guessing the title of the post was too big of a hint. Player A is 3-time All-Star and 8-time Gold Glove winner Dwight Evans. Player B is 3-time All-Star Garret Anderson.

Why am I making this player comparison?

It occurred to me that when Anderson is done playing the Angels will be retiring his number. That's fitting seeing that Anderson holds almost all the franchise batting records except triples, stolen bases and home runs. Also consider that the Angels only have a couple of player numbers retired and those players (Fregosi, Carew and Ryan) didn't even play 90% of their careers with the Angels.

It can be argued that Dwight Evans was the much better all-around player. Anderson can play for 4 more years and still not pass Evans in many offensive categories. Yet Dwight Evans won't have his number retired by the team he played 19 seasons for while Anderson will. Irony isn't quite the word that I'm looking for but the comparison struck me nonetheless.

Where does Manny Ramirez fit into the discussion?

Going into this season a perfect storm was brewing to get Dwight Evans' number 24 retired by the Boston Red Sox. It looks like Jim Rice may finally get elected to the Hall of Fame this year and that opens the way for his number 14 to be retired by the Red Sox. Rice has to be honored by the Sox before Evans is - that's just the way it is. Going into the season it looked like Manny wanted to retire as a member of the Red Sox and that would have made retiring his number 24 (the same 24 that was worn by Evans) a no-brainer. Now it looks like Manny may separate from the team at the end of the year on maybe not the best of terms. That could dash any future plans to retire the number 24.

My guess always was that the Red Sox would honor both Manny and Dewey during a retirement of the number 24. I could see a 24 on the right field porch with a DE (for Dwight Evans) above and a MR (for Manny Ramirez) below. Now my guess is that the number 24 may not be retired at all.

But Garret Anderson's number 16 will.