Where were you on Dec. 18, 2012, when the 2013 major league baseball season was decided?
You know, the day the Red Sox signed Koji Uehara.
Doesn’t ring a bell? Maybe the Angels cleverly distracted you by signing Josh Hamilton three days before.
Maybe you were shopping at the outlet mall, right next to the Red Sox.
Along with Uehara, whom they swiped for one year, $4.2 million, the Red Sox signed Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, Ryan Dempster, David Ross, Shane Victorino and Jonny Gomes.
A noted Boston columnist observed, “Never has so much money been showered on so much mediocrity.”
But most of the above were main drivers in the Red Sox’s world championship.
Uehara, at 38, was the crown jewel. He gave up seven base runners in 13 postseason appearances and saved seven of Boston’s 11 victories.
In the regular season his numbers were unimaginable: 741/3innings, 33 hits, nine walks, 101 strikeouts, a WHIP of 0.565 and an ERA of 1.09.
This is not to dump on the noted Boston columnist.
Many of us typed that the Angels had bought a place at all foreseeable World Series when they signed Hamilton, and Albert Pujols the winter before that.
Meanwhile, the two constants of the spring were the starting rotations of Tampa Bay and San Francisco. Which went on to rank 23rd and 24th in quality-start percentage, among 30 MLB teams.
Eric Stults pitched more than 200 innings this season. David Price did not.
Bartolo Colon had 18 victories. Gio Gonzalez had 11.
Jeff Samardzija struck out 214 batters, 39 more than CC Sabathia and 97 more than Jered Weaver.
The Red Sox had a prominent rookie in October, but it was Xander Bogaerts, not spring training sensation Jackie Bradley Jr.
So, in a time when analytical data runs rampant like kudzu in the South, projections become as futile as Powerball. No matter how educated the guesswork, the game knows more than we do.
Some will implore the Angels to sign Matt Garza or another free agent pitcher with a Mercedes sticker price. That is what the winter does to you.
Sure, the Angels could use starting pitchers. They were 4-16 last year in games which Joe Blanton started. Had they gone 10-10 they would have been 84-78 and maybe hung around a wild-card race for a while.
But their starters ranked sixth in the A.L. in quality-start percentage. That figure was higher than those of Tampa Bay and Cleveland, both playoff teams.
That is astounding, considering how enthusiastically the Angels went into the pitching export business.
Had the Angels tied their hands together, let their phone batteries die and done nothing, their starting rotation in 2013 could have been Weaver, John Lackey, Ervin Santana, Patrick Corbin and Tyler Chatwood.
This does not include Tyler Skaggs, still bidding to enter Arizona’s rotation, or lefties Alex Torres and Will Smith, or Jordan Walden, all of whom were traded.
And the Angels were urged to make those win-now trades because of a fan and media base that has the patience of a gnat during mating season.
We applauded the trade that brought Dan Haren and sent Corbin and Skaggs to the Diamondbacks.
We said good riddance to Lackey and smirked when he missed 2012.
We shrugged over the Chatwood trade, for Chris Iannetta, and failed to get outraged when Santana was basically donated to Kansas City.
We totally understood when the Angels brought in Scott Kazmir and gave up Torres, who has borderline closer’s stuff.
And we also cheered when the Angels let go of Fernando Rodney, and didn’t think twice when they dealt Walden to Atlanta for Tommy Hanson.
The one legitimate question you can ask is, “Why do Angels pitchers perform better elsewhere?” The Angels replied to that question by firing Jim Eppard, who was the batting coach.
Perhaps the one constant left in baseball is the absolute necessity of hanging on to your starting pitchers. But even that is tricky.
Arizona sent Max Scherzer to Detroit in a four-team deal, but got back Ian Kennedy, who won 21 games in 2010.
Would Seattle be better with Doug Fister and Chris Tillman, both of whom topped 200 innings this year with Detroit and Baltimore?
What if Colorado still had Ubaldo Jimenez, or if Tampa Bay still had James Shields, or the Dodgers still had Hiroki Kuroda?
But then you have Anibal Sanchez, the league ERA champ for Detroit, and Justin Masterson, who ranked No. 15 for Cleveland. Both were Red Sox property and yet Boston still did just fine in 2013 with Lackey, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Jake Peavy and Felix Doubront.
Where will you be on Uehara’s first Red Sox anniversary, Boston’s day of destiny?
If you’re a major league decision-maker, you’ll be throwing darts at a moving baseball, downstairs, in your winter home.
Contact the writer: mwhicker@ocregister.com
