FORT MYERS, Fla. — The blame pie is big and heavy.
There’s a giant slice for Bobby Valentine. We all know Bobby’s the reason everything went wrong with the 2012 Red Sox. Ownership gets three hefty slices. John, Tom, and Larry lost their way in the name of sellouts, bricks, and NESN ratings. Theo Epstein is a handy dartboard ornament. He gets a solid slice of blame pie. And we still love to blame Carl Crawford (“When he played against us, we hated him. When he played for us . . . we hated him”) and Adrian Gonzalez, a.k.a. “the Cooler.’’ Jon Lester and Josh Beckett are favorite punching bags. We still blame John Lackey even though he was on the disabled list all season.
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To this very day Theo Epstein has not received half the criticism and critique he so richly deserves from the Boston media.
Not even half the critical review of a job very poorly done over the past 4 or 5 years.
Theo continues to receive the velvet glove treatment.
Is there any greater example of this than Shaughnessy himself??
For Dan Shaughnessy, Theo's shiney new best friend, to now label Ben Cherington as the "teflon GM" is laugh out loud funny.
Laugh out loud funny.
Let's not forget that Danny was the biggest backer of Valentine for Manager along with Cafardo. A valuable lesson that every opinion should be tempered a bit.
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2011/11/22/valentine_is_the_right_sox_fit/
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2011/10/01/bobby_valentine_would_be_good_choice_to_manage_red_sox/
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Isn't it time to move past what happened last year? Rehashing news isn't going to make what happened go away. Just leave it to the history books!
To be able to rid the sox of Crawford,Beckett & Gonzo's contact obligations was a great move in a lost season and cleaned up much of Theo's mess the boy wonder left behind.. If Ben did drive that deal he certainly deserves a lot of credit and a pass for last year. The job moving forward he owns 100% so the jury is still out. I like the 1 year deals Ben has put together. If you had 8 position players and 6 pitchers playing for a future contract you might go undefeated. If the pitching rebounds this team can contend.
Who's next Dan? Yesterday you wanted us to be ticked off at this year's team for last year's flop. Now we're not being mad enough at Cherington for last year. It's a new season. What's your point? Do you want us to egg his house? Go after last year's pitching coach for tomorrow's paper. Then try writing something about baseball while you're down there.
Shoggy's working his way through his hit list. It won't be easy for him, though, since he's pretty much persona non grata within the Red Sox organization. There aren't many, if any, people who'll talk to him, and rightfully so. So, some of this is Shoggy's vendetta. As I say, he's got a hit list and he's working his way through it, day by day, column by column.
Straw-man Dan, checking in from Florida. Considering that he's widely believed to have had the last manager forced upon him -- which, to his credit, he constantly denies -- Cherington nevertheless gets plenty of blame. Whether its for getting very little return for Lowrie and Reddick (funny how Dan competely fails to mention any, you know, BASEBALL stuff), or for not stepping in to quiet the clubhouse riot, he has hardly escaped. Then again, as you point out, he's been here the longest, so maybe he gets the longest rope. Kinda like Teflon Dan Shaughnessy.
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I like the seemingly new thinking of "overpaying" for short term free agent contracts. I'm assuming that Cherington was the one who pushed for this. It seems that long term deals, like the one they signed Crawford to, almost never work out in baseball. If you're a big market team you can afford to overpay, just not for 5+ year contracts. If you can draft and develop well this method of bringing in free agents would seem like a smart idea. I'm interested to see it play out this year.
Yawn. The CHB tries to stir things up again because he can't find something interesting to write about.
Little Ben is a "play not to lose" middle type manager. Again, no leadership here - still all about the status quo. No out-of-town trips for this guy on a holiday. Nope, easier to find out who's available by looking at the morning sports wire then handing the info over to LL.
Ben (Mr. Sir, Yes Sir!) and LL (Mr. Why don't we get players like that?) really make a great team.
How can the Sox UNDERACHIEVE this season? They'd have to come in sixth in the AL East!
How? He got overruled by the shaughnessy-backed hiring of Valentine
Dan go away. Find a cliff take a leap.
Honestly, when I read this stuff (along with the column on Ellsbury) it makes me wonder whether athletes really do have a gripe about the Boston media. Nobody suggests you have to be a cheerleader, but beating the bushes to a) FIND negative things to harp on and B) couch things in a negative manner doesn't do much for the reputation of the Boston press. Cherington's quotes in this column are stand-up from start to finish. He doesn't try to absolve himself of anything. Everything he said seems perfectly reasonable to me. He would appear to have taken lessons from Tom Brady on how to at least SOUND accountable. But the tone of the column is unnecessarilhy negative, and I think that's what these guys mean when the criticize the Boston media as the same.