Renteria Rebounds In Atlanta
by Mike Berardino
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
May 14, 2006
No player benefited more from a change of work address last winter than Edgar Renteria.
After one miserable season in Boston, Renteria was traded to the Braves for third base prospect Andy Marte. Just like that, Renteria, the former Marlins World Series hero, was handed a clean slate after a 30-error nightmare with the Red Sox.
"I was the happiest player in the offseason," Renteria said. "Being back in the National League helps a lot."
Apparently so. Renteria opened the year with hits in his first 23 games before Josh Johnson and the Marlins stopped him last week. It was still the second-longest season-opening streak since 1957, trailing Ron LeFlore's 30-gamer in 1976.
"He's had better at-bats than anybody in the league, except maybe [Albert] Pujols," Braves manager Bobby Cox said of his new shortstop. "He never gives anything away."
Renteria was challenging for the league lead in batting average, but just as importantly he had made just four errors. The notorious Fenway Park infield got into his head last year, and he never could get comfortable.
"It's been a long time since anybody won the Gold Glove in Boston," Renteria said. "Maybe it's not the players. Maybe it's something else. I'm not making excuses because I made a lot of errors, but I can say that field is not right."
Indeed, studies show shortstop errors at Fenway are substantially higher than any other park during the past 15 years. And no shortstop has won a Gold Glove while playing for the Red Sox (see chart).
"It was rough over there for him," Cox said. "We played them over there last year. That's a tough place."
While Renteria is careful not to blame the Fenway groundskeepers, noting Joe Mooney and Co. work hard to make the field playable, he laughs when asked if he ever counted up the bad hops he faced at home.
"Oh, man," he said. "I didn't have time to count them. Every time I looked up, it was `Error. Error. Error.' I tried to forget everything about that."
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