Before the season, a lot of people were lauding Red Sox GM, Theo Epstein, for signing a bunch of injury prone high risk/high reward guys. Brad Penny, John Smoltz, Rocco Baldelli, and Takashi Saito all went over there for a few million with incentives for more. They did look pretty good at the time but now that we're hitting the stretch run, we can see these guys haven't really accomplished much of anything at all.
I mention this because its been virtually ignored in the mainstream media. Sure, we have another month and a half left in the year, plus possibly October but right now Theo made some mistakes here. The only one to provide any value at all so far has been Takashi Saito, and DIPS stats show he's due for a major regression. Sure each individual investment looks small but when you add it all together its 13 million guaranteed dollars and could get to as much as 30.75 million if incentives kick in.
Sorry if it seems like I'm stating the obvious but I think it has to be said that Theo's lottery tickets have not paid off much at all.
Monday, August 10, 2009
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Even since the beginning of the season, when everyone was going ga-ga over the Penny and Smoltz signings, and bragging about how Boston's starting rotation was going to be 7 or 8 guys deep, I didn't buy it. And I sure as heck wasn't buying into the idea that a 42/43 year old coming off of shoulder surgery, who had a career ERA over 4 against the American League, was going to suddenly be the Smoltz of the mid 90s.
It's also worth noting that the Sox overpaid for players like Lugo (4yr/$36M) and Drew (5yr/$70M)... those weren't exactly the smartest deals in the world.
People seem to forget the Red Sox "mistake" moves and only focus on their happy accidents (Ortiz, Lowell, etc), which were moves that not even the Red Sox were happy about - they just worked out luckily.
I'm pretty surprised and happy that these pickups have all been so mediocre.
For some reason the media doesnt give Boston much bad press. I thought the best media question asked during the Ortiz interview was towards the player union rep when the reporter asked why he wasn't sitting next to A-Rod when his name was leaked from the list stating that theres a chance he could be on the list but not have used PEDs. If he had that support he might not have admitted to anything like Ortiz. I feel eventually the organization will start being exposed more and more for its shortcomings and MLB will get over its love affair with the team.
-G
The worst has been the coverage of this Ortiz thing. Now all of a sudden they're giving the players the benefit of the doubt? Where was this crap for A-Rod?
I'll admit I thought the Sox getting Smoltz and Saito would be huge for them... it turns out im happily wrong. If anything Smoltz cost them games pitching so poorly and Saito has been ok, nothing special.
and one other note: The only thing that got me a little worried over the weekend was that we really didnt hit Beckett, Lester or even Bucholz as well as I thought we would, but everything else was great.. either way we did sweep those bastards and we showed that we're the kings of the AL East
I didn't understand it at the time, why signing over-the-hill and injured players was such a good thing. The Red Sox had to go out and deal for VMart to make up for it and that hurt them.
I'm so glad they got Smoltz and Penny. Hopefully they go out and get Giambi now. He's available, old, cheap and injury prone.
Greg, my wife said the samething, where was the MLB union for AROD. I'm still beside myself that they had a boston press conference @ yankee stadium, especially with them being home after our sweep this weekend. MLB players union needs to be broken, MLB needs to follow suite with the other major sports with a salary cap & floor, teams. Small market teams are gutting there payrolls, the pirates payroll next yr will be around $20 million, absolute joke
Don't forget about investing $100 Million in Dice-K not working out so well is it.
Mario, I agree. As much as everyone complains about the need of a salary cap, the argument for a salary floor is just as strong. Why is it fair for a team to dump all of its talent so its owners can make a ton of profit while the owners that spend a majority of their profits are scrutinized till the end.
-G
no way should they dissolve the players union. you think pittsburgh is bad with their owners pocketing all the cash? you would see that all over the majors without the mlbpa
The Red Sox are sort of the Ted Kennedy of the baseball world--whatever they do to screw up they get a free pass.
To borrow a phrase from a certain famous company, I'm lovin' it. Those Shanty Town slobs....
Mike
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