The Ex-'Burgher: Skewering the Sports Guy: 11/4/05

This week, BS weighs in on the Theo Epstein saga. For those not keeping score at home – and hopefully I am the only one doing that – this article is the first thing that BS posted since the Sox were eliminated from the playoffs. In my opinion, it is just a little fishy when a writer with a national audience essentially takes off the two weeks that happen to coincide with his baseball team getting knocked out of the playoffs and his football team having a bye. I know that BS is naturally Boston-centric, but only contributing (I’m not counting mailbags or football picks here) when there is Boston news should not fly with his editors.

Before I get too involved in the Epstein article, I am going to live up to my word and give credit where it is due. This article is actually pretty good. The facts are all straight, it is well written, and insightful. The article did two things that I feel are hallmarks of good journalism: it made me give some thought to the topic, and it taught me something (in fact, a few things).

The big revelation for me was the absolute lunacy that surrounds the Red Sox ownership. It is a three-headed psychotic monster that is just waiting to explode. Don’t be surprised if tomorrow’s paper includes the headline ‘Lucchino murders partners Henry, Werner.’ Even in Dan Shaughnessy’s October 30 column in the Boston Globe, which is meant to praise Lucchino at Theo’s expense, Larry comes off as power-hungry and vicious. I would not want to work for the guy either, and I would absolutely smolder if he tried to take credit for my work, which is exactly what Lucchino attempted.

In my naïveté, I also failed to realize that the Sox were part of a larger media conglomerate. On one hand, it takes away a lot of the room that the Sox use to complain about the Yanks. George Steinbrenner can spend the GDP of Canada on his team because he owns the cable station that broadcasts them. The Sox go one further, and control all of the media – tv, radio, and print – related to the team. Not a bad way to make a buck.

On the other hand, it makes some of Lucchino’s moves that much worse. And BS hits the nail right on the head: “As for the Red Sox, they have shamed themselves beyond belief, with the Shaughnessy column being the final straw. The same guys who brought Boston a World Series also formed an Orwellian media conglomerate in which they control all the information in the city's most important newspaper, as well as the TV and radio stations that carry the games. Just about every Red Sox-related scoop is directed to one of those three outlets, with Boston Herald writers repeatedly complaining about the unfairness of it all. In particular, the Epstein coverage was appallingly one-sided from the Globe's side -- culminating in Shaughnessy's incredible column, to the point that Red Sox fans have to question the credibility of anything they read in what used to be a sports section that meant something.”

(A little aside here: All of my knowledge of journalism could fill a thimble, but I find it absolutely amazing and appalling that a well-respected columnist like Dan Shaughnessy can pretty much be bought and sold. I guess that the lesson of Dan Rather is that journalists are people and can make mistakes, but what Shaughnessy did was worse. He showed a complete lack of integrity and pandered to the highest bidder.)

Even though BS put up a damn fine article, I am not below passing judgment on his words. Here are my comments for this week.

“Many of the blockbuster moves he wanted to make over that time (Jose Contreras before 2003, Javy Vazquez and the Manny/A-Rod and Nomar/Magglio Ordonez trades before 2004, Carl Pavano and Adrian Beltre before 2005) would have worked out poorly in the end. In each case, his Plan B or C (keeping Manny, getting Curt Schilling and Orlando Cabrera) ended up being a better move than his original intention. Is that skill, is that luck, or is it a little of both? You tell me.”

Contreras looked pretty awesome this season for the White Sox. Maybe it was because some of his family situation was resolved, or because it took him a few years to grow accustomed to MLB. The common consensus, of course, is that NYC was ‘too tough’ for him. Maybe, but ‘too tough’ is totally based upon expectations. Yankee fans expect every free agent or rookie to be the next Babe Ruth or Roger Clemens, and the fans and media jump all over any player who fails to live up to that expectation. Once that happens, actual performance stops being a factor. Contreras could have posted the same stats this season (15-7, 3.61 ERA) as a Yankee instead of a Southsider, and he still would have sucked in the eyes of New Yorkers. Does that mean he would have worked out better for Boston? I don’t know, but there is no evidence to claim otherwise.

I also fail to see how it would have been bad for the Sox to pick up A-Rod. He and Manny are very close in terms of production, and the straight-up trade would have basically been a wash, with both the Rangers and Sox swapping big contracts and bats but exchanging weak links at certain positions. The Yankees are certainly better off with A-Rod than Soriano, so you could easily argue that failing to land A-Rod slightly hurt the Sox in the long run.

“Last winter, when the franchise had a free pass with fans to either A) bring back most of the championship team, or B) remake the franchise for the next 10 years, the Red Sox chose the curious direction of dumping certain key guys (Lowe, Pedro, Cabrera, Roberts) and spending too much money on iffy free agents (Edgar Renteria and Matt Clement)”

If there is one issue that BS and I will never see eye-to-eye on, it is the relative values of Edgar Renteria and Dave Roberts. Renteria was the best all-around shortstop in the NL in 2004 (and probably even before that), and he had the ‘playoff experience’ that every manager and GM loves to tout. He was 29 at the start of 2005, and was presumably entering the prime of his career. I would call him anything but ‘iffy’.

Roberts, on the other hand, is three years older and is little more than a who-dat. He has some speed (he stole 45 bases in 2002) but no power and a poor on-base percentage for a guy who wants to hit leadoff. His biggest claim to fame is his steal of second base (as a pinch-runner!) during the 2004 ALCS. I can appreciate that BS might have a personal liking for Roberts in the same way that I love Verron Haynes. He is a nice player, but you are in some trouble if he is playing a significant amount, which is exactly what BS advocated during the summer when he questioned whether the Sox could have afforded to give him 300-400 ABs. The Padres let him play that much, and look where they ended up.

The Pedro saga is well documented. Sure, he was great for the Mets this season (15-8, 2.82 ERA), but the Mets seriously overpaid. They also signed him for four years (the Sox only wanted three), and he will be 37 in the final year of his contract. In the short term, losing Pedro probably hurt, but I would not want to be the Mets’ GM in 2008 when Pedro can barely get the ball to the plate and is still pulling in a fat salary.

So maybe Theo got a little bit lucky, but so have a lot of other GMs. The Steelers got lucky with Bettis, and the Packers hit the mother lode when they traded a first-rounder for third-stringer Brett Favre. And if Kevin Young was worth more than a bag of baseballs, we might not think so poorly of Cam Bonifay (ok, we would still hate him).

Theo deserves some credit for refusing to stand pat heading into 2005. He learned a lesson from the 2003 Angels, who had virtually an identical roster to the 2002 championship team, and obviously failed to repeat. Teams that make it to the top and wish to stay on top have to make at least a few changes from year to year, even if it means losing a couple of fan favorites or big contributors.

“He did a subpar job with the 2005 roster, remaining loyal with some guys too long during the season (Foulke, Bellhorn, Embree, Millar) and not making any of those Shawn Chacon/Aaron Small-type moves to keep the team rolling (with the exception of the Tony Graffanino trade).”

He did not seriously advocate making moves along the lines of getting Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small to improve a title contender. The Yanks lucked out when these two became possessed by Tom Seaver and Jim Palmer in August and September. Chacon could barely hold on to his job with the Rockies, and trading for him was a complete desperation move by Brian Cashman.

“If Posada's throw to second base in Game 4 of last year's ALCS is 1/10th of a second quicker, Roberts doesn't steal second and young Theo suddenly isn't getting a free ride for the A-Rod saga, the Nomar trade, the Renteria signing and everything else.”

2. The Big Papi signing before the 2003 season. Like Dan Duquette before him, Theo smartly took fliers on bargain guys who had shown signs of life on other teams -- Ortiz, Williamson, Bellhorn, Mueller, Jeremy Giambi, Jay Payton -- and hoped that some of them would work out. Well, with the exception of Bob Cousy, no "flier" worked out better for a Boston sports team than Big Papi. Theo found him, Big Papi became a cross between Hendu, Gandhi and Paul Revere, and that was that.”

I am nit picking, but ‘taking flyers on bargain guys’ quickly becomes ‘spending too much money on iffy free agents’ when the move doesn’t pan out. If David Ortiz had continued his Minnesota trend in Boston – good in April and the first few weeks of May until he gets hurt for a month or two – a lot of people would consider him a waste of money too. That is the risk inherent on taking these ‘fliers’; the guy could manage to somehow put it together and become a star, or he could keep muddling along and be a financial drain. As a GM (or as a fan) you have to hope that the ‘wins’ outweigh the failures.

“And a year from now, maybe two, he'll come back to baseball refreshed and recharged, armed with enough savvy to avoid another front-office quagmire like the one in Boston. Maybe it won't be his dream job, but that's the thing about dreams -- sometimes they come true, and sometimes you have to deal with the consequences and figure out what's really important to you.

Something tells me that Theo hasn't figured this out yet. I hope he does. Overrated or not, he still goes down as the guy who brought the Red Sox their first World Series title in 86 years. And after something that monumental, maybe you need a couple of years to come up with the right encore. To be continued.”

I agree. When Theo comes

back teams will be lining up to interview him. I will also throw in my own thought on why he may have left the Sox: Theo is a brilliant capitalist. The minute he quit the Sox, he jumped right to the top of just about every team’s wish list. Trust me, when Theo gets his next GM post, he is going to make a mint.

“Manalyzer results: 75 -- A very solid showing and a new record. As I noted above, the article is well written and informative. I disagree with a couple of BS’s points about the Sox personnel, but I can’t give him too many deductions for that (except the Dave Roberts thing). My only complaint is that BS chickened out and left his prediction for Theo quitting out of last week’s football picks. Show some fortitude, man!