DHL Dan CLXXVIII - Piling On The Red Sox

In keeping with the summetime tradition of constant criticism of the 2023 Boston Red Sox, Shank hires a hitman to take some shots:

Dan Duquette knows what it’s like on the hot seat in the Red Sox front office, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while covering Syracuse’s dugout TVs with shatterproof glass in case things don’t go well for Chris Sale in his Sunday rehab start …

▪ Dan Duquette is one of the few folks in the world who knows exactly what it feels like to be Chaim Bloom. Like Bloom, the Duke took over as baseball boss of the Red Sox when he was 36 and incurred the wrath of Boston fans and local media when things didn’t go well.

“There was one point in time when I had to park my car in center field so that I could get safely in and out of the ballpark,” Duquette said from his new home in Wilmington, N.C. “It’s a very passionate and emotional fan base. You need to make sure you’re all-in to understand how they feel.”

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Dirty Laundry 2.0

Now that the season is more or less over for the 2012 Boston Red Sox, Shank wants to assign some, most or all of the blame on Theo Epstein.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Red Sox owners are here, and they’re having a hard time keeping the smiles off their faces after what they did to the Dodgers last weekend.

It’s hard not to gloat when you dump more than a quarter of a billion dollars in payroll on the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers, by the way, are 2-3 since the trade was announced, including a 10-0 beating (Josh Beckett’s start) at the hands of the last-place Rockies. Los Angeles Times columnist T. J. Simers wrote, “They appear lifeless and uninspired in three consecutive losses to the dead meat likes of the Marlins and Rockies.’’
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But enough about the Sox snookering the Dodgers. John Henry, Tom Werner, and Larry Lucchino are still angry. And I think I know why. It really bothers them that Theo Epstein isn’t getting enough blame for the train wreck that is the Red Sox of the last 12 months.

Since Shank owes Tom Werner for helping to get his daugher an intership six years ago, he'll gladly go to bat for ownership. The representative from Massachusetts now has the floor!

Epstein made a ton of bad moves in the later years of his tenure, then went to Chicago for a $19 million contract and watched from afar as the Sox decomposed. John, Tom, and Larry would like to remind you of this.

So I will do it for them.

Mistakes were made. Money was spent badly. The Sox lost their way and tried to throw money at their problems.

Remember who one of the advocates of higher spending was?

They dished out millions for Johnny Damon, Keith Foulke, Daisuke Matsuzaka and J.D. Drew. They raided rosters of the Have Nots. Now they are complaining about Yankee payroll?

It's absurd. Epstein, like Brian Cashman, can afford to make mistakes. Edgar Renteria and Julio Lugo are examples A and B of Theo's biggest blunders. This year the Sox will pay $18 million to have Lugo and Mike Lowell (trade pending with the Rangers) play for other teams.

Epstein is touting organization prospects named Jose Iglesias, Ryan Kalish, Ryan Westmorland, Casey Kelly and Lars Anderson, but they are a couple of years away. In Boston the message needs to be "win now.''

And that means "Beat the Yankees.''

Of course, you're not fool enough to think Shank did the heavy lifting to make the compelling argument against Theo Epstein, are you?

That’s why it must have felt good this week when the owners read a carve job on Epstein, penned by Tom Van Riper at Forbes. Van Riper said Epstein, “has to go down as the decade’s most overrated baseball executive.’’ The piece said Dan Duquette built the core of the Sox 2004 championship team and that Epstein won the World Series by “tinkering with Duquette’s blueprint.’’

These aren't exactly news flashes to us, but read on to marvel / laugh at Shank's transparent attempt to look fair and impartial.

Hollow Man

The CHB has long since perfected the ability to pen piece together a column with zero effort. Today's mail-job work is one such example.

To wit, only Shaughnessy could write a 994-word obituary on Johnny Pesky and have it come across as completely sterile. But here, and only here, does The CHB truly excel. He works in all the obligatory nostalgia -- Carlton Fisk, the 1975 World Series, Jim Rice, Nomar Garciaparra, Dominic DiMaggio, Tony Conigliaro, Carl Yastrzemski, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx., Roger Clemens, Mo Vaughn. It's as if The CHB just read a piece on search engine optimization and stuffed all those names hoping for some cheap traffic.

And yes, The CHB rehashes the (incorrect) account of how Duquette kicked Pesky out of the dugout, an act which all parties agree was done on behalf of then-manager Jimy Williams.