WCPatsFan quintessential tool - The 1967-1978 Red Sox would school Theo all day long. If you want a true definition of successful Gm look up Dick O'Connell.  
Posted by BurritoT

spaceman, based on your sentence structure, you should be posting in crayon.
Posted by the-yazzer

too many errors to mention; just know that you failed. maybe hammah can help you with  your grammah.
Posted by the-yazzer

THEO is a "back of the baseball card" GM. LUGO, CRAWFORD, LACKEY, DREW. prime examples of not improving the team, but being swayed by statistics. the SOX would be better served with THEO out of the loop when signing free agents. heck, give him the job of directing the minor league system.
Posted by the-yazzer

Carl was the best available on the market and not the best available for the team.  Thus Theo signed him with complete disregard to what makes sense for the team, not only now but long-term. I think that sums it up, perfectly. Theo fails to anticipate on the issues of player value and movement, and reacts instead of shrewd planning in advance. He frequently sells low and buys high, in a year to year reactionary dance. With all the player development and scouts he has, it's pretty pitiful the way he does business. He also makes the mistake of being sentimental in constructing a roster, with a squat spot on the roster for cumbersome washed up profiles like Lowell, Wakefield and Varitek. His favorite term in writing off bad contracts is "sunk cost", yet he fails to apply that term to most fan favorite veteran profiles. Instead of going out and finding affordable improvement profiles in constructing the roster, he has frequently made the mistake of constructing the roster around old washed up veterans, effectively creating a 23 or 24 man unbalanced active roster.  I think he fails to admit his mistakes and tries to spin them by using media access "lackeys" to advance silly themes like "speed ages more slowly than power", to defend his decision to pay a massive premium to sign Crawford into his mid 30's and pass on VMart. Even if those two players were not either or decisions, it's still a PR campaign that is childish and intellectually dishonest.  The Braves are one of the best mid to large size models on competent upper management decison making, anticipating moves and market well and adjusting well by not repeating the few mistakes that are made.  Renteria, Lugo, Scutaro and Crawford are value mistakes that are simply an escalation of the very same mistake of paying for a career high contract year on players that are not superstar profiles at the position. They are all reactionary moves that were not planned, despite the phony claims that the radar and study on Crawford had gone on for a long time.  Bay non-serious-market tender was correct, but a lot of people on this board saw that coming because Bay was a poor fielder and could not consitently handly breaking balls well enough to get a huge multi-year contract.  Bay, as an OF'er and RHB, was not a good enough overall hitter to be a frequent DH, so his age was too old unless he was truly a gifted hitter. He was a good slugging fastball hitter, but that was it, and made it clear that his performance decline with age would be steep. I gave Theo the benefit of the doubt for years, and still consider him to be better than the average GM. But that isn't saying much because the GM pool is mostly made up of political hires that aren't based upon merit. Theo has always been a bean counter guy who isn't a baseball genius. Given the pay, Red Sox ownership could and should do a lot better.  
Posted by SoxSoldRed

Carl was the best available on the market and not the best available for the team.  Thus Theo signed him with complete disregard to what makes sense for the team, not only now but long-term. I think that sums it up, perfectly. Theo fails to anticipate on the issues of player value and movement, and reacts instead of shrewd planning in advance. He frequently sells low and buys high, in a year to year reactionary dance. With all the player development and scouts he has, it's pretty pitiful the way he does business. He also makes the mistake of being sentimental in constructing a roster, with a squat spot on the roster for cumbersome washed up profiles like Lowell, Wakefield and Varitek. His favorite term in writing off bad contracts is "sunk cost", yet he fails to apply that term to most fan favorite veteran profiles. Instead of going out and finding affordable improvement profiles in constructing the roster, he has frequently made the mistake of constructing the roster around old washed up veterans, effectively creating a 23 or 24 man unbalanced active roster.  I think he fails to admit his mistakes and tries to spin them by using media access "lackeys" to advance silly themes like "speed ages more slowly than power", to defend his decision to pay a massive premium to sign Crawford into his mid 30's and pass on VMart. Even if those two players were not either or decisions, it's still a PR campaign that is childish and intellectually dishonest.  The Braves are one of the best mid to large size models on competent upper management decison making, anticipating moves and market well and adjusting well by not repeating the few mistakes that are made.  Renteria, Lugo, Scutaro and Crawford are value mistakes that are simply an escalation of the very same mistake of paying for a career high contract year on players that are not superstar profiles at the position. They are all reactionary moves that were not planned, despite the phony claims that the radar and study on Crawford had gone on for a long time.  Bay non-serious-market tender was correct, but a lot of people on this board saw that coming because Bay was a poor fielder and could not consitently handly breaking balls well enough to get a huge multi-year contract.  Bay, as an OF'er and RHB, was not a good enough overall hitter to be a frequent DH, so his age was too old unless he was truly a gifted hitter. He was a good slugging fastball hitter, but that was it, and made it clear that his performance decline with age would be steep. I gave Theo the benefit of the doubt for years, and still consider him to be better than the average GM. But that isn't saying much because the GM pool is mostly made up of political hires that aren't based upon merit. Theo has always been a bean counter guy who isn't a baseball genius. Given the pay, Red Sox ownership could and should do a lot better.  
Posted by SoxSoldRed

Some say threads like this are just to antagonize and bash - but that simply is not true.  There are many many strong posts for and against qualifying Theo as a good GM, and the Red Sox brass in general.  If you look at each page of this thread you will see posters like fivekatz ,  SpacemanEephus , soxsoldred ,   and jimdavis making some great cases. Looking at the entire first page of On The Front Burner I would say this thread served to benefit the forum - 100+ posts in 24 hours , and with quality. It normally takes days for any thread to reach 100+ posts. "I will give you a tip of the hat on one thing BT, you freely admit you started this thread to stir a beehive, something that authors of a lot of these kind of threads would never do and you have managed to do it without any "dark" posts on your part, something else that does not often happen when folks try to manufacture controversy." fivekatz Go Sox, only .05 games out of 1st!
Posted by BurritoT

THEO would have failed miserably as the GM for the RAYS. NO QUESTION!
Posted by the-yazzer

In Response to Re: Let us ADMIT it, our GM really is not all that good..... : Really? Seems to me Theo has done quite well for himself in the draft. Would love to see what he could do with the #1 overall pick for a decade or so!
Posted by CORRADJ

...Theo inEpstein is flawed and flawed as much as any GM in the history of baseball.   Feedback welcomed.
Posted by BurritoT