John Kruk

ESPN baseball analyst John Kruk, in a call-in interview with the Mut & Merloni show Thursday afternoon, questioned David Ortiz’s now-famous bat flip in Tuesday night’s 6-2 win over the Yankees. After the designated hitter slammed a two-run homer to right field off New York rookie Hector Noesi, Ortiz spun around quickly and flung his bat toward the Boston bench in celebration of the blast. Earlier in the game, Jon Lester had already plunked Mark Teixeira and Russell Martin in the first inning – the former left the game with a right knee contusion because of the hit – and it was those prior events that led to Kruk’s questioning.

“If you know you’re in a game where there’s some bad blood being brought up because they had a guy get hit and had to leave the game, why would you do that?” Kruk said. “I would love to ask him that. ‘Why would you do that at that time? Why would you take that opportunity in a game where there’s a chance of retaliation against your team, why would add fuel to that fire by flipping your bat toward your dugout and admiring a home run?’”

The common thinking was that Ortiz would be hit with a pitch of his own either later in the game Tuesday or in Wednesday night’s contest (an 11-6 Red Sox win) against the hard-throwing A.J. Burnett. Neither event transpired, however, and Kruk believed that was mostly because of the New York game plan.

“That’s just the way the Yankees are,” Kruk said. “Under Joe Torre, they would never retaliate. I always questioned that about them. Why wouldn’t they protect their hitters more? That’s the thing I don’t understand.”

With Boston taking the last two contests, it is now the owner of a 7-1 record against New York this season and has taken over complete control of first place in the American League East. The ESPN analyst and 10-year major-leaguer didn’t think that was by a coincidence.

“[The Red Sox] are a better team,” said Kruk. “They have better speed, more depth in their starting pitching. Now with [Joba Chamberlain] out … and [Raphael Soriano’s] out, they’re just all-around better. Maybe closer I’d give that to the Yankees. But overall, they’re just a better team.”

With the men in pinstripes in second place now, the immediate thinking is that they will use their deep pockets and depth in the minor leagues to grab someone off the trade market, particularly a Cy Young award winner from the Pacific Northwest. But Kruk argued that the Yankees may not be able to make such a move.

“We heard in spring training they were going to get Felix Hernandez,” he said. “They’ll get him. They’ll trade anyone. They’ve got two great catching prospects. They’ll trade one of them, [Brett Gardner], whoever, to get King Felix. The thing is Seattle’s still in it. If [Seattle GM] Jack Zduriencik’s going to save his job, they better stay close because if he starts trading Felix away, he might as well go with him. So I don’t know what would available to them. A guy that could compete against the Red Sox, who would be available?”

The biggest reasoning behind the lack of available trade chips is the parity of the majors this season. No team has a winning percentage higher than .600 and only two teams (Minnesota and Houston) have such a percentage lower than .400. Those kinds of numbers had Kruk perplexed to say the least.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I said a month ago – this was when Boston was struggling – I don’t think there’s a team you could look at and say, ‘God, they’re really good. I mean, this is a really good team.’ It’s just not there. Now, the Red Sox have the ability to be really good. The Phillies, because of their starting pitching and the way [Ryan Madson’s] been closing games, if they can figure out a way to score runs they could be really good. But there’s really no team besides those two that you could say, these teams are really good baseball teams. I don’t know what’s going on. Parity, maybe. It’s just a lot of bad baseball.”