With The CHB, All Betts are Off

One of the hallmarks of a Shaughnessy column is his tendency to build one person up by trashing another. To that end, today's piece, on Mookie Betts, does not disappoint.

In promoting Betts, The CHB trashes Adrian Gonzalez, just one day after trashing the GM who was "irrationally protective of the trove of draft picks" and traded future All-Star 1B Anthony Rizzo for AGone. Which do you want: develop great players in-house, or sign/trade for them? Because no franchise does both consistently well.

He takes a further dig at team analyst Bill James, whose work, of course, led to the Red Sox signing players like Mookie Betts.

And he gets a basic fact about Betts wrong, writing his "career path has been seamless," ignoring that Betts was slow to hit when he first arrived in the bigs and was sent down to AAA.

On a side note, it's impossible to know what counts with The CHB, since he whines about "results" when the process doesn't work out and whines about lack of "character" when it does (2004, 2007, 2013). In today's column he claims Dave Dombrowksi is the most "accountable" Red Sox GM since the late Lou Gorman, and yet it was Gorman who traded future MVP (and Hall of Famer) Jeff Bagwell (and World Series MVP Curt Schilling) and yet never acknowledged they were stupid trades. The Red Sox are supposed to compete every year, The CHB always asserts. But remember what happened on Dombrowksi's watch the year after his Marlins won the 1997 World Series? They lost twice as many games as they won.

At the end of the day, the proof that Red Sox owner John Henry doesn't interfere in the work of his employees even when he has to suffer complete foolishness from them is this: He also owns the Globe, and The CHB still has a job.