Re: The I hate BC brigade even before he gets a chance to do anything
posted at 11/19/2012 8:28 PM EST
In response to pumpsie-green's comment:
In response to Joebreidey's comment:
The bottom line is he was the GM immediately before last season. Our pitching has deteriorated nearly every year since 2007, and he made some huge boners by signing Lackey, Beckett, and many others to long term contracts. I think he was a very mediocre GM; below average.
The bottom line is that he had one bad month in 8 years, won 2 WCS and was in the ALCS 4x. As soon as he left, the place fell apart. He's been the most successful GM in BB since he was hired, was voted GM of the decade by SI, and was hired by Chicago as the highest paid executaive in BB.
Yeah, he was wonderful.I will give him 2007; even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. He also signed Beckett, Lackey, Lugo, Renteria, Matsusaka, Gagne, Crawford...need I go on? I can. I am not going to give him much credit for 2004; too many of the pieces were already in place then. And he was in charge over the the last five year when our pitching deteriorated consistently. He skipped town leaving the franchise with the bloated contracts of Beckett, Lackey, Crawford and Gonzalez and during his incompetent reign, despite having one of the highest payrolls in baseball to work with, his teams failed to make the playoffs three years in a row (yeah, he gets the blame for 2012 as well since this is the team he created and left for Cherington to deal with). He destroyed the pitching staff and depleted the farm system. Just because he is paid a lot of money does not mean he is competent. Look at some of his acquisitions as proof that highly paid people are not always good at what they do. This isn't even debatable; Epstein left this franchise in ruins.
I agree that many pieces were in place in 2004, but (disclaimer: I am not a Theo apologist) the moves he made, including adding Ortiz, Mueller, Millar and mostly, adding Keith The Real 2004 WS MVP Foulke, Curt Schilling and trading off Nomar were moves that simply were the difference bewteen ANOTHER Red Sox failure and the first WS win of our lifetimes. He HAS to get credit for that.
If Theo did one thing right, he understood the main reason for historic Red Sox playoff losses was no closer (after he got over the bullpen by committee/ Sun Yun KIm debacle) and had the relief pieces in place in 2004 and 2007.
While everyone enjoys the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, I still think he did the right thing bringing in Gagne, to bolster that bullpen and take the pressure off Okajima.
He accomplished some great things and made some big mistakes.
I will agree that it seemed everything he did the last couple years was a disaster and he did leave the team in ruins. Im not going to ignore his successes, though.
