The Red Sox ownership group spoke to the media at the team's Spring Training complex this morning, with chairman Tom Werner saying this season "is going to be a new chapter." Here's a recap of their media session, with all source links going to Twitter…
- When asked if he and his partners would consider selling the Red Sox, ownerJohn Henry said, "It's a valid question … people involved in RedSox partnership, we've made enough money," tweets Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com.
- Henry didn't sound thrilled about the compensation his team received from the Cubs for Theo Epstein, says Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. Henry did say that's how tough negotiations go, calling it a "basic misunderstanding" according to Tim Britton of The Providence Journal.
- Team president Larry Lucchino said the Marco Scutaro trade was "a little bit of both," meaning a baseball move and a financial move. They believe they can get similar production from other players. (Heyman)
- Henry said the luxury tax will be a "bigger issue every year moving forward" and the team has to be "more careful" spending money, according to Heyman and Britton. He noted that other clubs are catching up economically.
- Lucchino said payroll would be upwards of $190MM according to WEEI.com's Alex Speier, adding that the team will have money to make moves within the season.
- "So far, he's done everything we could have hoped," said Werner when asked about new manager Bobby Valentine, according to Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com.
- Henry backed off his comments about not wanting Carl Crawford from earlier this offseason according to McAdam, saying: "I should have never made those comments."
Not thrilled about acquiring Chris Carpenter; how often do you hear that in baseball?
What were they expecting? Starlin Castro? Carpenter could turn into a good bullpen arm who could contribute in the majors this year.
I guess you failed to see where I was going with that. Did you know the Cardinals have a Chris Carpenter too?
I guess you failed to see where I was going with that. Did you know the Cardinals have a Chris Carpenter too?
How can Henry say he regrets the Crawford comments and then in the same breath say he is upset about the compensation? He must hate players with the initials C.C.
Henry and Lucciano probably wanted Garza, Castro, Jackson for Epstein and when they didn’t get them, they are whining like spoiled brats, but when the Red Sox kept hounding the Jays about Farrell earlier in the off season and Anthopolous told Lucciano that the Red Sox would lose Lester or Bard, suddenly Boston shouts that they are being unreasonable and dreaming. Isn’t it interesting how they complain about one and whine about the other, expecting everything to always go in Boston’s favour. lol.
They are talking about a suit that will never hit a home run, steal a base, or have an MVP season, since suits don’t play the game, athletes do. Factor in that permission to speak to suits was given and you take what you get, if anything, and call it a day. Teams have always allowed suits to take promotions, it wasn’t a player trade, yet someone forgot to explain that to the Boston brass.
my guess is at first they were just happy to unload pstein’s contract for vague promises, since getting him out the door ASAP was essential for Boston this off-season (once they knew he wanted to leave, having him linger would have wasted time on other more pressing issues).
Then, after the Cubs decided to play hardball on the negotiations and Epstein stole the manager they wanted and several people from their scouting department, the legendary Red Sox Grudge settled in, and the ownership just had to find some way to stick it to Epstein and the Cubs for outsmarting them. So they dug their heels in, demanded unreasonable compensation and whined and moaned until the commissioner threatened to step in… at which point they’d get effectively nothing for all their bluster.
Chris Carpenter’s got a decent arm, a good fastball, and will be mighty cheap for years to come. Personally i think they got more then they deserved, but surprise surprise the Red Sox front office is unhappy about not getting everything they wanted….
In other words, the Red Sox are a mess, and don’t really know what direction they are going in. Theo had a plan, and now they are lost.
Beckett, Buchholz, Lester, Bailey, Bard, Ellsbury, Pedroia, Gonzalez, Youkilis, Ortiz, (Crawford?). I wouldnt call that a mess or lost. Still one of the best rosters in the majors.
Of course, but the moves that they are making now, and the lack of communication about their moves tells me they are lost. Also, those were all Theo’s guys. If holding on to obvious talent is all that needs to be done, almost anyone with access to b-ref and fangraphs could be a GM.
The exception being Bailey, but he is pretty meaningless compared to the other guys that you mentioned.
henry didn’t sound much less lost when theo was around. he has little talent for speaking off-the-cuff
they were smart enough to pass on big money closers and made a very good trade for bailey after a defensible trade for melancon. the only thing they’ve really failed at has been spending-related. beltran and oswalt/jackson would have made it a very good offseason, and they didn’t go in that direction precisely because they do have a plan: get under the luxury tax next year to receive the rebate
as for the wisdom of that plan? i’m not a fan. i think it sucks, actually. and the scutaro trade was just terrible. but one bad transaction is very weak evidence for a conclusion as strong as “this team is a mess”. and good or bad, they clearly do have a plan in place
They passed on a big time closer, which was smart, but then they invested all of their energy looking for help in the bullpen. It seems like a contradiction to not value relief pitching, but then trade away a talented reserve shortstop for a relief pitcher, and your starting outfielder for another relief pitcher – with a terrible injury history, no less. It seems like finding another starter (Oswalt, Wandy, Jackson, etc.) would have been a more direct way of fixing the roster, rather than using lesser players in right field, and especially shortstop.
The Scutaro trade was a disaster. There is no justifying that. (Obviously, we agree on that).
Wandy would have probably helped the opposition in the AL East more than Boston and not dicing on houston there, but his stuff IMO would have been a poor match in the AL. I would have preferred to get someone like Guthrie from the O’s over him as an innings eater and honestly? Think Guthrie will do better in 2012 in an extreme hitters park this season.
Jackson is another no heart break loss to me.. now oswalt would have liked, but not much can do if the guy just didn’t seem to want to go anywhere outside of Houston, texas, or St. louie.
Boston just has to hope that Padilla, Cook, Silva will be enough to fill the #5 until probably Doubrant, or Wilson takes over the #5, or that is my thinking at least and Aceves can throw a start now and then if they are forced to.
The SP situation isn’t as dire as it seems..As long as Bucholz is healthy and no prolonged injuries and I have a feeling Wake would GLADLY come out of retirement if they gave him a call anyway in case of emergency.
I think that, coupled with a lack of depth in the farm system – at least as far as big-name prospects go – the rotation doesn’t look like it’s that great to me, but you’re probably right in your assessment of Wandy in the AL East. I’m sure that this won’t go over well with the Astros fans who read this, but I do think that’s probably accurate.
My guess is that Boston felt that the dollars/options out there for starting pitching weren’t worth it for the upgrade they would provide. I don’t necessarily agree with this, I thought at least Oswalt would have been a great addition. But I can see them shying away from any trades for starters, considering what people were asking for players like Gavin Floyd. And Jackson was always going to be out of their price range, unless he was serious about doing a one-year deal. I agree the rotation doesn’t look too great, but we’ve all got to have perspective as well, and realize that the Yanks have succeeded with a rotation that included Burnett, Garcia, and Colon, so anything is possible. Personally, I’m optimistic for this year. An offense like Boston’s will win them a lot of games regardless, and if they get even moderate success from their 5-hole grab-bag, they should be very competitive. Add to that the possibility that they add a pitcher at the trade deadline to take away innings from Bard, and I think Boston will be in the mix for sure. I’m not going to make any big promises, but this is not a cellar-dweller by any means.
Oh, I’m with you. The Sox have a good chance to win the division. In fact, I like them to win the division. Still, though, the team isn’t better because of these moves.
You have to kind of look at the moves separately. Going from Papelbon to Bailey does not make them better, but letting Papelbon go makes perfect sense, and trading for Bailey did make them better (better than they were after they had let Paps go and before they had made the trade).
The trade for Melancon could be argued either way; it made them better at the time because they had Scutaro, but losing both Lowrie and Scutaro looks like it makes them worse (even factoring in the addition of Melancon). But they claim to have a lot of faith in the adjustments Aviles made (he is said to have worked a lot on his footwork and balance toward the end of last year and showed huge improvements), so if they are correct they may be better overall because of this move too (I’ll have to see it from Aviles before I believe it though).
I still say that the only move they have made that does not make sense, when put into context, was the Scutaro trade. I still don’t like that move at all, but it’s the only move they have made this off season that I can find any real fault in.
I also don’t like the Bailey trade. He is an injury liability, and it seems like Reddick and Scutaro could have brought in a decent starter rather than a injury prone reliever, who has only pitched in Oakland.
The tacit piece of the argument is that Bard and Aceves would have been fine from the bullpen, and that a different reliever – perhaps with out closer experience – would have been relatively cheap.
Bard has much more value a a starter then he does as a reliever, and while Bailey does have a couple of injuries in his past, he is a very good pitcher who has had success as a closer.
Reddick is really nothing more than a 4th outfielder until he can consistently control the strike zone (something he really hasn’t ever done, and something he is never likely to do well). So trading him for a successful closer really was a pretty good trade.
So you like them to win the division but they’re not better than last year? The Yankees adding Pinedoa and Kuroda to an already better rotation somehow makes them worse than the Sox?
i don’t disagree with much of that. if you had just said their plan kinda blows, i wouldn’t really feel the need to say anything. but the claim that they don’t have a plan just doesn’t square. everything they’ve done so far has been based on a pretty transparent plan centered around payroll. that’s why they traded talent for elite relief instead of dollars & years
I guess that’s fair.
i don’t disagree with much of that. if you had just said their plan kinda blows, i wouldn’t really feel the need to say anything. but the claim that they don’t have a plan just doesn’t square. everything they’ve done so far has been based on a pretty transparent plan centered around payroll. that’s why they traded talent for elite relief instead of dollars & years
Scutaro is a 36-year old shortstop. How many teams can reasonably expect that a 36-year old shortstop will stay healthy for an entire season?
Reason, enough, I say, to trade him while he still has some market value. Who knows, a month into the season the Sox might have been looking for a replacement with Scuts sitting on the bench with absolutely no market value at all…. and, with the loss of Papelbon, injury to Jenks and Hill, etc. …stocking upon relievers seems pretty a reasonable to do. If 2-3 are solid and injury free, these small investments will pay off. Pitching wins pennants.
Trading Scutaro while he still has value would be a great idea… if you traded him for anything valuable.
And the idea that stockpiling on relief pitching helps win pennants is preposterous in this context. In Mariano Rivera’s best season he put up a 4.4 WAR, which is still less valuable than the 4.5 WAR that Elvis Andrus put up this season.
Seven relief pitchers put up a WAR or 2.0 or higher in 2011, meaning josh Willingham, Alcides Escobar, Darwin Barney, and Jamey Carroll were more valuable than all of the other relief pitchers (and about half of the best seven).
Based on WAR, there were two relief pitchers better than Scutaro in 2011: Papelbon and Kimbrel. In 2010 it was only Carlos Marmol, Brian Wilson, and Heath Bell (Bell Tied at 2.4 WAR).
Basically, the only way the Sox would have won that trade was if they got a top-of-the-line reliever who had a career year (trust me, that isn’t the case). The alternative is that it was all about money (this is likely). They aren’t a better team for making the trade, though.
I get your overall point and I happen to agree to an extent, but judging closers on WAR is kind of silly, isn’t it? They’re never going to get the kind of proper evaluation. Too much happens psychologically in the ninth inning for pitcher, defense and hitter and though it’s just one inning, it’s the “most important” inning (even though it’s technically not). Anyway, my point is, someone like Mariano Rivera, who has blown just four major playoff saves I can think of out of dozens of opportunities and who has been dominant in the regular season for the better part of two decades….Is not able to be evaluated under WAR.
WAR means a great deal to rotisserie baseball fans but far less to people who actually follow the real game without the exclusive benefit of mathematical computations and formulas.
The latter rely upon aggregate performance history, the relationship between all 25-30 players who make up an entire team that actually play the game day-to-day and week-to-week, during the regular season. This does not mean that a single player’s past performance is not an indicator of what to expect from him (or her) in the future as it surely is but it is not the sole indicator….far from it. Stat heads, like yourself serve a purpose, no doubt, but you cannot tell me today, who will be the leaders by 2012 season’s end in MLB’s various statistical categories. Who will be each league’s batting champion, home run leader, or the winner of each position’s golden glove award, for instance? Until you can state unequivocally who these will be position by position your stats have limited value in the real world.Even if you could, would these statistics predict which team eventually will win the World Series? I think not. Thus, to say that Player A is a better value than player B in a trader’s market really has no merit until history has spoken. Baseball history has proven, time and again, that teams that rely upon 36-year old shortstops, to win league or divisional championships, are few and far between. So, getting “something of value” in a trade, as the Red Sox did with Scutaro…is better than getting nothing, should he get injured and be unable to play. And who is to say that the pitcher acquired in this trade won’t blossom in a Red Sox uniform? It has happened before, and will happen again. Until proven otherwise, I prefer to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. BTW, where do you predict that the Astros will finish in 2012…???
How was the Scutaro trade a disaster? They saved money and still have 3 short stops the could be the starter.
None of them are as good as Scutaro, and even if they were, they should have been able to get a lot more than Mortensen for Scutaro.
There has been a lot of talk out of Boston lately about Soler, enough so that I’ve kind of been wondering if the Scutaro trade was in advance of signing Soler rather than signing a SP. It certainly wouldn’t be as explainable to most Boston fans, and maybe it shouldn’t be, but I’d almost rather that be the case personally (I don’t like the idea that they had to move salary before adding someone in any scenario, but if they were going to do it anyway I would prefer it to be to sign Soler than to sign a short term pitcher).
that would justify the scutaro trade in my mind, but i’d still be cranky about making that much of a fuss over ~$6M
A guy called “Houston_Astros” calling someone else a mess?
Pot, this is Kettle…you’re black.
You call Lackey, JD Drew, and Julio Lugo a plan? It’s not a great one. Maybe we are in disarray, but Theo was the one who started it by signing these big deals.
Jesus, did John Henry think he was going to get Matt Garza for a GM?
It’s not like we’re talking about a typical GM. Theo really impacts an organization in a pretty important way.
Theo – the SUPER GM!
The only guy who really deserves that title is Andrew Friedman. Theo, as it turned out, was just like the rest of those mere mortal GMs.
Friedman doesn’t deserve it either. There is a group of very good GMs at the top of the list, but there isn’t one single GM who stands out as head and shoulder above the others and a reasonable case could be made for a few different guys to be the best GM in the game.
How many championships has Andrew Friedman won to be called a “super GM?”
He’s great…but come on now.
The playoffs are about luck. The Rays compete in the best division in baseball, and do it with much less money. Friedman *is* the best in the game.
Friedman is always lifted up because of his ability to find value in the draft (and he needs to find value in the draft to compete), but the Rays haven’t had a good draft since ’08. They still have a good system because of guys like Moore and Lee, but there is a pretty good drop off after that, and they had some pretty big misses in the ’09 and ’10 draft which really doesn’t help. If Moore and Lee graduate this year (and assuming there isn’t a surprise guy who comes out of nowhere) they could seriously be listed in the bottom third of farm systems a year from now, and that would be a really bad sign for a team that relies on their farm to stay competitive.
Like I said earlier, Friedman is very good, and belongs in the top tier of GMs, but he isn’t head and shoulder better than the others and there really isn’t one guy you can say definitively is the best GM in baseball.
I think that Jennings, Price, Longoria, Moore, Hellickson, and company should allow him to buy some time while the farm builds up again.
I’d rank him number one, but you’re right: AA, Beane, Wren, and maybe a few others are probably close.
That’s definitely true when it comes to their pitching staff, but their offense is weak as it is and a year or two from now when their offense consists of Longoria, Jennings, and a bunch of nobodies they’ll be wishing they had more/better position players coming up through the system. They don’t have good players at any of the typical “offensive” positions (1B, 3B, RF, LF) other than Longoria at 3B (assuming Jennings move to CF when Upton leaves), and they don’t have any prospects coming up at those positions. I do think they’ll continue to be competitive, mostly based on pitching, but it will become increasingly difficult in a year or two because of the lack of position player depth.
And I can’t make a solid argument that he isn’t the best GM in baseball, I just think there are too many other guys who are also very good to say with any certainty that he is the best.
then they should have got something more tangible in writing before shipping him out to Chicago.
The fact that he’s a good GM is undermined by the fact that his career was over in Boston, he was gone either this year or the next, and the Red Sox didn’t even want him in the building anymore….
making things up is fun
which is why Sox fan do it so often?
Everything i said was obvious. Francona was gone, the team needed a substantial overhaul and Epstein was clearly burned out in Boston. He wasn’t going to sign an extension, even if the ownership was inclined to offer one, which i doubt, so he was gonna walk next year. So it only makes sense that any half-decent onwership group wouldn’t want somebody like that making money decisions for them, or doing the drafting and free agent signing, or going out to hire a new manager, etc.
So here come the Cubs, the perfect solution for everybody. Epstein gets to leave with minimal fuss, They Sox get their guy in Cherinton to begin retooling, and they even get a little something from the Cubs in return! only thing the Sox could do wrong was start making silly demands for starting pitchers….
So, which part am i ‘making up’?
“the Red Sox didn’t even want him in the building anymore”
perhaps a slight overstatement… but does anybody disagree that Epstein’s career in Boston had run it’s course?
of course not. but that’s a different statement
the plan in boston for quite awhile had been for epstein to leave after 2012 (not 2011), but that was theo’s idea, not ownership’s. by all accounts, henry tried to the end to keep epstein around for 2012 (and perhaps even longer)
the only potential evidence to the contrary is the fact that epstein ultimately left. and that is better explained by the epstein-wanted-out theory. the idea that boston didn’t want him has just been made-up in hindsight, primarily by tedious sports writers and the bitter fans that follow them
except that it matters a lot when talking compensation for him and the negotiations of it. Adrian Gonzalez is a better 1st basemen, arguably, than Mark Texeria…. but because Sad Deigo was going to lose him at the end of his contract the Sox were able to pry him away from a rade package that would have made the Yankees laugh.The argument that Theo was the best GM in baseball, therefore the Sox were entitled to a spectacular return is invalid becuase of this… Theo might be the best in baseball, but because he was leaving the Sox weren’t in a position to demand the moon and the Cubs called them on it when they tried.
The Padres got Kelly and Rizzo, right? That doesn’t seem too bad.
Also, Gonzalez is just better than Teixeira at this point. No arguments needed.
none of that has anything to do with the one and only point i have made to you
the compensation conversation doesn’t interest me
Is there an interview on record where John Henry ISN’T crying about something?
It’s not as bad as when George Steinbrenner and Billy martin were having their sometimes daily marital spats hashed out in the news.. So much that am sure everyone grew tired of that love-hate relationship..
I’m more tired of Brian Cashman patting himself on the back whenever one of his moves goes gold and him blaming ownership or other teams whenever one of his signings blows up in his face.
Well when every person everywhere criticizes everything he does like sign crappy players like Colon, Garcia, Martin etc maybe he wouldn’t have to. I’m all about complaining about people being happy for themselves, but if the media is going to hold you under a magnifying glass and you end up right, you have every right to mention that after the fact. And the Soriano signing, from day one, was not a Cashman signing. Neither was the A-Rod extension, none of that was mentioned for the first time after they backfired.
And now they’re dead. Sheesh, stop wishing death on your own owner.
John Henry needs to learn that you can’t un-ring a bell.
The fact that I like the Astros is completely irrelevant. I would gladly share my thoughts about the McLane/Wade era if the conversation came up.
This is in repsonse to the creative guy somewhere above.
What in the world?
This year we will not be buying tickets for the first time. It appears the Red Sox are counting on the anniversary year celebrations to fill seats rather than making serious moves to get another championship.