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By Sully, 11/8/2005 11:44 pm

So the Theo situation has you down a bit and the Sox seem to be in a bit of disarray. Don’t despair too much, there’s a silver lining.

We, my friends, are not Cub fans. Sure, to some extent we have lost our identity (am I really rooting for an organization that is going to interview Jim Beattie and Jim Bowden tommorow?) but folks, our Red Sox do not employ Neifi Perez, and they sure as hell will not by their own volition pay Neifi Perez $5 million over the next two seasons.

And you know as long as Dusty’s hangin’ around, Neifi’s getting at least 500 plate appearences. Take heart, people.

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By Sully,

The mock Steve Phillips press conference has nothing on this item from today’s Washington Post (Edes also has the story in the Globe). Check this shit out…

Washington Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden is scheduled to meet with the Boston Red Sox to discuss their vacant general manager’s position either tomorrow or Thursday, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald reported from the GM meetings in Indian Wells, Calif., for today’s editions.

The Red Sox told both papers that they would interview four candidates, and identified Bowden and Jim Beattie, the former co-general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, while declining to name the other two. Red Sox President Larry Lucchino will be on hand for the interviews.

If that doesn’t strike fear in you, it should. The Red Sox will interview one guy that signed Cristian Guzman and Vinny Castilla to lucrative deals last off-season, and another guy that has been the overseer of a team as downtrodden as any in baseball over the last five years or so. Can you say “Jason Grimsley”?

Please, just hire from within. There is a sound process in place right now that has netted three straight ninety win seasons and a World Series. You don’t mess with that by hiring someone with the chops of a Beattie or a Bowden.

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By Sully, 11/7/2005 10:17 am

Have you seen these mock press-conferences they now do on ESPN? The concept is so dumb, so ridiculously ill-conceived that when I entered my bedroom this morning and SportsCenter was on the TV, I panciked. There, in my television set, was Steve Phillips (of all people) sitting in front of a canvas clad with the Red Sox logo and behind a bunch of microphones answering questions from what appeared to be reporters. In other words, it looked very much like Steve Phillips had been named General Manager of the Red Sox. Just not funny, not funny at all. Fortunately, and unfortunately too I guess, I learned that ESPN plans to do this with Phillips for a number of teams. It’s a terrible idea, not only because it’s not the least bit entertaining, but also because you shouldn’t scare off your baseball-loving audience like that. Nobody deserves to go through even 10 seconds of their life thinking that Steve Phillips might be the General Manager of their favorite team.

There are a host of people out there making dimwitted allusions to 2003′s closer-by-committee in bemoaning what might come of Boston’s GM-by-committee at this week’s General Manager’s meetings in Palm Springs. Of course many of these folks would probably rather Steve Phillips take over than have (gasp!) four capable people looking after things. Not that there shouldn’t be one in charge when the time is right, but for now, Jed Hoyer, Peter Wodfork, Craig Shipley and Ben Cherington will do just fine.

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By Sully, 11/4/2005 9:53 am

WordPress ate my Castilla-Lawrence trade post…here’s a summary.

1) Thank God Kevin Towers isn’t coming here.

2) Brian Lawrence is good for 200 average innings.

3) Brian Lawrence’s 2005 looks worse than it was. DIPS has him ahead of some pitchers considered to be stars, his strikeout and walk totals were in line with previous seasons and his home runs were down.

4) Vinny Castilla was awful in 2005, and hasn’t been a good player in 7 years. He’s 38, and I would be surprised if he cracked a 700 OPS playing home games at Petco Park.

5) It must suck to get fleeced by Jim Bowden.

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By Sully, 11/2/2005 3:02 pm

On his way out of town, Theo took the high road.

“It’s sad for me to leave with a lot more work to be done…”

It’s sad for us too, Theo.

Best of luck.

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By Sully,

From the latest edition of The Pinstriped Bible…

At various other times the Red Sox couldn’t win because they were too busy being anti-black, anti-union, anti-bullpen, anti-sobriety, anti-Fenway Park, anti-progressive, anti-spending, and anti-having defensive replacements on the field so Bill Buckner could be at the bottom of the anticipated dogpile. John Henry’s ownership seemed to have changed all that, but the moment has vanished and the bad old days are back because of a paternity suit — Epstein became too popular as the progenitor of the 2004 championship and Larry Lucchino couldn’t let that ride — he had to get his own claim for father of the year in, not only for rearing up the champions but, if the column that instigated the final breach is to be believed, for rearing Epstein. Victory has many fathers. Lucchino, apparently, wanted to be Deus Uno, the only God and creator. For his sake, he’d better be up to it. The new general manager, whoever he is, had better buy a set of kneepads.

I got a good laugh out of that.

Any other Sox fans out there not really feeling like pulling like hell for these guys? I’m not renouncing, but I’m lukewarm at best right now.

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By Mullet, 11/1/2005 9:08 pm

By now, you’ve read one of the billion commentaries on the Theo Epstein/Larry Lucchino situation. Bill Simmons takes an interesting perspective, but really doesn’t have the analytical baseball skills to make a strong case. The Curly Haired Boyfriend tries to cover his ass and salvage what’s left of his already tattered credibility. Bob Ryan gets to play the hero for the Globe. Tony Mazz gets to be right for once in his life.

But none of these articles really address what I think is the most interesting angle on this entire debacle. Simmons addresses it tangentially, but really misses the point. The question at hand: which decisions in the 2005 season were driven solely by Theo Epstein and which decisions were driven by Larry Lucchino?

When you look at the decision making process, starting pretty much from the last out of the World Series to the last out against the White Sox, it wasn’t very “sabermetric.” It didn’t seem to be statistically-minded or exploiting marketing inefficiencies. It seemed … pedestrian. Run of the mill. Similar to what every other GM in baseball would do with a payroll of $160 million: identify the “best” player and sign them for as much as it takes, even if it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Stick with “proven veterans” over rookies to maintain chemistry and that veteran presence.

It certainly didn’t seem like the work of the boy genius of the Sox. Now we know that it might not have been. The reason it seemed pedestrian is that it might have been the work of a guy who, at least in his last few stops, seems to be a pretty pedestrian baseball mind.

Back in July, a little bit before the trade deadline, I looked at the Sox as a team weighing performance vs. chemistry. My conclusion?

In each of these situations, it seems to me that the Sox front office has weighed the clubhouse effect and likely usage patterns by their manager, and determined that the incremental improvement by the newer player would not be enough to make the move. It’s a seemingly odd stance for a sabermetrically-inclined organization, but I have to believe this is the case. The front office simply is too smart to not believe that Petagine+Youklis is a net improvement over Millar+Olerud, that Ambres > Kapler/Youkilis, that DiNardo > Halama+Embree. So, they must have assigned some value to the clubhouse contributions of certain players and to the value in not overturning a clubhouse for incremental gains.

It’s hard for a stathead like me to swallow, but I’d much rather believe that this is the case. The alternative is believing that the Sox have started to reduce their reliance on performance analysis or that they’re more worried about the PR effect of dumping a popular player than improving the team. Neither of those options are palatable to me.

Well, now it’s easier to believe that the Sox were more worried about the PR and chemistry effects than on making the tough decisions that a good baseball organization makes. Those types of PR moves seem to be the hallmark of Larry Lucchino’s career, and his fingerprints have been all over the exits of Pedro and Nomar. Now his fingerprints are all over the exit of Theo Epstein. Soon they’ll be all over the exit of Manny Ramirez.

Are things all doom and gloom? Certainly not. Maybe those decisions I mentioned in July really were Theo’s decisions. If that’s the case, he didn’t deserve control of the baseball operations group. I don’t think it’s very likely though. I think you simply had a case of a promising baseball mind attempting to do things a new way, and the power and prestige that came with that rubbed his boss the wrong way. It’s a sad way for a hometown savior to leave the organization, but, to me, it’s no worse than when Pedro left or when Manny will leave.

Some people won’t see the parallels in the Pedro, Manny, and Theo situations. Those amongst you who are keen enough to read between the lines certainly will. All 3 had their paths out of Boston slicked with the oil of leaked stories and blind items in Boston Globe articles. The same Boston Globe that owns part of the Boston Red Sox. The same Globe that employs Dan Shaugnessy, a long time friend of Larry Lucchino. The same Globe that is now under fire from all sides for its obvious improprieties.

It’s an all around depressing story. The loss of a bright, young GM. The cat finally coming out of the bag on the improper relations between the Globe and the Sox. The lack of a spine shown by John Henry, and the lack of morals shown by Larry Lucchino.

But mostly, it’s just the sense of impeding dread that the Red Sox will bring in a retread GM who’ll help the team tread water at 88-90 wins for the next 5 seasons, lining the pockets of ownership, but never getting over the hump. With a fervent fan base like the Sox have, it’s a pretty prudent business decision. And, after all, isn’t that why John Henry has Larry Lucchino?

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By Sully,

Say what you will about Baseball Prospectus but this piece (subscription required) by Kahrl is magnificent. What a writer.

The poisonous synergy between baseball’s old guard and media figures only too ready to rely upon them for the peculiarly dopey “inside dope” is a significant component of this backlash. Both are motivated by careerism, and both stand to lose a lot to what will inevitably be characterized as the “Moneyball” generation of GMs. Again, baseball reflects the times in which we live, an age where the historical actors and the fourth estate interact in such a way that each simultaneously perverts and supports the purposes of the other. Journalists consider their jobs to be no more than the regurgitation of the information they’re handed, either from every baseball club’s increasingly polished media relations department, or courtesy of some unnamed inside source…

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By Sully,

Ok, here’s my take, going on nothing other than my own piecing together of events. There were two primary reasons Theo Epstein resigned his post as General Manager of the Boston Red Sox.

The first reason was that negotiations with Larry Lucchino had to have gotten a tad ugly. For the ordeal to drag on as it did, Larry must have been sitting across the table from Theo repeatedly telling him why, in his estimation, Epstein was not worth the money he thought he was. “You’re only 31…Edgar Renteria…Wade Miller…You were in the right place at the right time when you were hired.” Not that I have any experience hiring people or negotiating pay with people that work for me but in conversing with various people in upper management positions over the years about negotiations, the one constant has been that you don’t mess with an employee’s (or prospective employee’s) sense of self-worth. The working relationship is a dead-end from there because the employee will always believe the boss does not appropriately value his contributions. So instead of listing off reasons why Theo was not worth what he believed he was, Lucchino could have explained that whatever Theo wanted was simply not in the budget, or better yet, simply walk away from the negotiations.

Still, Theo had agreed to the deal, so obviously a tough, drawn out negotiation was not the only reason he left. No, it only served to plant some doubt. He had his dream job, he would be paid handsomely to do it and he could continue to co-exist with Lucchino because, well, he had done it his whole professional life.

And then he woke up Sunday morning.

If you haven’t seen Dan Shaughnessy’s column from Sunday yet, here’s the link and here are a few highlights.

What is alarming — for the future of the Sox franchise — is Theo’s sudden need to distance himself from those who helped him rise to his position of power. Lucchino and Dr. Charles Steinberg are a pair of Red Sox executives who ”discovered” Theo when he was a student at Yale. They picked him out of thousands of wannabe interns. They hired him in Baltimore and then took him to San Diego with them. They held his hand and drove him places during his Wonder Years. They urged him to get his law degree. And when they set up stakes at Fenway Park, they fought vigorously to bring him home. A year later, when Billy Beane got cold feet, Lucchino turned to 28-year-old Theo and made him the (then) youngest GM in the history of baseball.

Let’s start with Theo being a ”baseball guy” while Larry is a lawyer with a lofty title (CEO). Granted, Epstein is a student of the game, but it’s a mistake to say he knows more about baseball than Lucchino or anyone else in the Red Sox baseball operation. Theo is 31 years old and did not play baseball past high school. He spent four years at Yale and three years at law school. That hardly leaves time for much more than rotisserie league scouting. He can read the data and has a horde of trusty, like-minded minions, but we’re not talking about a lifetime of beating the bushes and scouting prospects. Lucchino was a good high school baseball player and made it to the NCAA Final Four with Princeton’s basketball team. He came to baseball as an executive in 1979, when Theo was 5 years old. That doesn’t make him George Digby or Ray Boone, but he’s not Les Otten, either.

Shaughnessy’s tone in this column was different than anything he had theretofore written on Epstein, and it was apparent to me at least, that Lucchino’s fingerprints were all over the column. Still weathered and carrying the burden of some measure of self-doubt from the negotiation, I have to think this column was the final straw for Epstein. OlePerfessor from Baseball Think Factory, in explaining the gist of CHB’s column on the forum, said it better than I ever could hope to. This sums up my feelings perfectly.

The bulk of it (the column) was pseudo-psych crapola about Theo resenting Lucchiavelli the way a son resents his father, etc.

Theo HAD to read that and just say, “how the eff can I work for a guy who would put this nonsense out there? This is disingenuous, calculating, malignant, and manipulative… and I’m not gonna stand for it anymore.”

So: KUDOS TO THEO. THIS IS THE MOST PRINCIPLED STAND I’VE SEEN IN SPORTS–OR IN BUSINESS–FOR A LONG TIME.

I’m disappointed, shocked–and damned proud of Theo all at the same time.

Strangely, while it makes me anxious about the near-term fate of my Sox, I find it reassuring that there are young men of high ideals like Theo.

Godspeed, Theo. Thank you for everything, and know that you will always have legions of admirers, particularly amongst my demographic (College Grads in their 20’s). Graduating college and entering the real world can be tough because there’s no real manual on demeanor, professionalism, humility and really just how to carry yourself as an ambitious young adult. But the reason why this one will hurt for a long time for us is that I think we all got the sense that Theo had it all down pat – extremely hard working, smart, humble and ultimately, principled. I have no doubt that he will enjoy considerable success throughout the remainder of his working life.