DHL Dan CCI - Theo's Back!

Shank notes the return of former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein as an adviser to the team:

Theo Epstein has been away a while but he knows how the Red Sox work, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while remembering the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady nine Super Bowls from 2002-19 …

▪ Theo Epstein is back with the Red Sox as a part-owner of Fenway Sports Group and a senior adviser to its many holdings.

Too many holdings.

FSG’s insatiable quest to expand its portfolio and take over the world has made the Red Sox the abandoned stepchild of the corporation’s family. The Sox might as well be Connor Roy.

Theo and Sam Kennedy were teammates at Brookline High and did a lot of their learning as very young men under the tutelage of Larry Lucchino with the Padres in the 1990s. When Lucchino came to Boston as part of John Henry’s group, he had to negotiate with the Padres to acquire the services of “The Brookline Two.”

I don't think he's going to impact things much with the Sox, if at all.

DHL Dan CLXXXVIII - Fingerprints

The Boston Red Sox finally hired a general manager (or whatever his title's going to be) who was by my count the 12th pick in that draft:

Theo Epstein’s fingerprints are all over the Craig Breslow hire, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering how Craig Breslow feels about his former Yale teammate Ron DeSantis …

▪ Perhaps the best news about Breslow is that Theo Epstein’s fingerprints are all over this important Red Sox hire.

Theo is the one who first brought Breslow to the Red Sox in 2006. Breslow pitched in 88 games at Pawtucket over two seasons and got into 13 with the Sox before Epstein let him go on waivers during spring training 2008. Breslow returned in 2012 and was part of the 2013 World Series winners.

While Breslow continued his 12-year big league career, Theo moved on to Chicago, enhancing his Hall of Fame résumé by winning another curse-busting World Series with the Cubs in 2016. All the while, Theo never forgot about his fellow Yale prodigy.

Funny how Shank has newfound respect for Theo Epstein; that was definitely not the case back in 2005, AKA the infamous 'Dirty Laundry' column, the original link which is now 404'd on the original Boston.com website. That story's conveniently buried like a turncoat mobster associate in the end zone of Giants Stadium.

The Dustin Pedroia Retirement Column

Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia finally calls it a career. Since Shank is generally incapable of anything resembling a respectful retirement-type ending when it comes to a local athlete signing off, he wisely turns it over to two guys who know him best, Theo Epstein and Curt Schilling Tito Francoa:

Two guys who know him well have the highest praise for Dustin Pedroia

Theo Epstein and Terry Francona are busy guys with important jobs, not always eager to talk about their Red Sox years, which were important but did not end well.

Just a friendly reminder - Shank was uniquely instrumental in the former's departure from the Red Sox with the infamous 'Dirty Laundry' column. How Shank got Tito Francoa to co-write his book with him after that bullshit will forever be a mystery on par with Jimmy Hoffa's true burial site.

Both responded immediately when I reached out Monday regarding the retirement of Dustin Pedroia.

“It’s a combination of sadness and real appreciation,” Epstein said of a player he drafted in the second round out of Arizona State in 2004. “It’s tough to see someone like him, whose heart would allow him to accomplish anything he wanted, not go out on his own terms.

“But at the same time, it gives everyone an opportunity to think back at everything he accomplished and everything he meant to the Red Sox and how this entire era wouldn’t have been possible without him.

Probably for the best to let them do the talking for Shank, who could not help himself over the years and took some juvenile potshots at Pedroia because of his height. To my recollection, today is the first time he ever put that into its proper context and not made it sound like the juvenile potshot it otherwise is.

'Hall' Guys

Today we turn to The CHB's favorite subject -- baseball -- and his favorite punching bags -- baseball players. 

Specifically, yet another Hall of Fame column column on the Hall of Fame. And, ad nauseam, a shot at David Ortiz for NOT being a talented ass like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez and countless others who might well miss their opportunity at immortality.

"Big Papi has Hall of Fame numbers and is beloved by the baseball community, especially commissioner Rob Manfred. On the day Ortiz retired in 2016, Manfred flew to Boston and gave him what amounted to a presidential pardon, instructing Hall voters not to trust results of the 2003 baseball drug testing in which Ortiz came up positive."

Thankfully, this is just the lede of one of his lazy man "picked-up pieces" columns, so long-suffering readers need not suffer too long.

As we know, The CHB finds abhorrent any data more complicated than an RBI. So it's strange, but not out of form, that he takes yet another shot at the Red Sox, whose received low marks in a recent fan poll. 

Apparently, the Sox finished tied for last of the five major local pro sports teams (yes, the Revolution were included. Has soccer taken off yet?) for “most admired team for the way they run their organization.” But let's be real: Fans are fickle. The Red Sox had a shit year and people are down on the team. 

To further the point, when asked which team’s ownership has done the best job over the past year, the Celtics jumped 36 percentage points from a year ago, and the Pats fell 44 percentage points. 

These are constantly moving targets, like a Top 40 radio list. It's barely worth a mention, even in a Shaughnessy column.

This is the best part. In the same column where -- frontrunner that he is -- The CHB fetes Theo Epstein, calling him a future Hall of Famer, and credits him for the Sox World Series championship in 2018 (not a typo), he manages to excoriate him for being "a Moneyball, card-carrying member of Bill James Youth." 

So it's no surprise, a few grafs later, when he takes the the Red Sox to task for recruiting the wrong kind of staff: "... qualifications include 'advanced understanding of statistical methods or machine learning techniques, proficiency with modern database technologies including SQL, demonstrated experience with programming languages (e.g. R or Python).' So much for a veteran scout who can tell you when a young hitter has trouble with the curve."

Do you think he noticed that Theo's Bill James Youth methods led to (by Dan's count) three WS winners? 

How'd all those veteran scouts work out for the Red Sox between 1919 and 2003?

About as well as this column does.

Shank Still Sucks At Math

Or we might call this one 'wishful thinking' instead:

Is Chaim Bloom the next Theo Epstein?

WASHINGTON — History tells us that the Red Sox can’t go wrong when they hire a young Jewish man from Yale to run the baseball operation.

Theo Epstein broke the mold 17 years ago when — just a few years out of Yale — he took over as the youngest general manager in baseball history. Theo won a World Series two years later. He was the first of a new generation of baseball executives — analytics-driven students of the game who did not play baseball at a high level. Baseball’s annual Winter Meetings today are overrun with bright job seekers well-versed in the topics at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Everybody wants to be the next Theo Epstein.

Say hello to 36-year-old Chaim Bloom, new chief baseball officer of your Boston Red Sox.

Bloom takes over for Dave Dombrowski, who was fired in September, less than a year after winning the World Series. Dombrowski took over for Ben Cherington, who was knifed in the back less than two years after winning the 2013 World Series. Cherington succeeded Epstein, who ignited this whole geek craze back in 2002 when he was named general manager of the Red Sox at the age of 28.

Shank seems to think that one data point (hiring Theo Epstein) indicates a trend; it does not. Furthermore, the announcement hasn't been made yet, and the column doesn't indicate anything about Bloom's hiring - rumors, insider scuttlebutt, etc. It is pure speculation, which of course means Shank could wind up with egg on his face yet again. This is what happens when you nuke your bridges leading into Fenway Park.

Revisionist History - II

Shank wrote about Theo Epstein two days ago, a column that curiously didn't show up on the main page (or Shank's page) until today. I'll speculate on the reasons in a moment.

It’s good to be Theo Epstein.

A modern-day Mozart of baseball ops, the onetime baby general manager of the Red Sox (he was 28 when he took over), is all of 43 now, and he’s just about the hottest thing in sports.

Theo is the architect of the two greatest curse-busting teams in American sports history. He was running the Red Sox when they threw off the 86-year-old jinx in 2004, and less than three months ago he tasted champagne again when the Cubs won their first World Series in 108 years. He is a lock for Cooperstown sometime later in this century.

When Theo went to the White House Monday — where his Cubs were feted by outgoing president Barack Obama — the leader of the free world suggested Theo might be a good fit to run the Democratic National Committee.

Screw that - I think they're doing just fine!

Anyway - I think this column was half-buried by the Globe because this is the second attempt by Shank to rewrite the history books in the span of a year. It's funny how former members of Boston professional sports teams seem to be rehabilitated once they've left town for a few years and had some measure of success, isn't it? I mentioned a few of Shank's previous columns trashing Theo when he was GM of the Red Sox back in May, and my co-blogger Mike, naturally, has a few more Theo trashing items and Shank's many, many bad calls on trades and player personnel.

The message here - don't believe shit like this from Dan Shaughnessy. He's doing this fore one reason only - to co-write a book with Theo Epstein.

Curses! Another Blown Lede

No one loves a good curse more than The CHB. So it stands to reason that today's excrement exercise is one big kiss off to 108 years of Cubs failure

In true Shank fashion, he tries to make poetry out of prose -- "They blew a lead of 6-3 with two out and nobody aboard in the eighth inning. Manager Joe Maddon was being measured for a Grady Little cap. [T]he Cubs ... won it when lefty Mike Montgomery retired Michael Martinez on a grounder to Kris Bryant with the tying run aboard at 12:47 a.m. You could hear Harry Caray hollering'Cubs win' and 'Holy cow' in hardball heaven." -- and in the process completely misses the actual drama of the game. No surprise there.

Even less surprising to those of us who have tortured ourselves to bring you this column for going on 10 years, is his attempt to stick it to the Red Sox in the process. Indeed, this was one of the classic World Series, and Shank spends most of it writing about the Red Sox.

Let's start with Theo Epstein, who has now "has punched his ticket to Cooperstown as the man who killed two curses."

Since The CHB doesn't seem to remember what he previously wrote about Theo, I'll remind him: 

• "Epstein is a student of the game, but it's a mistake to say he knows more about baseball than [Larry] Lucchino or anyone else." 
• "It was charged [in 2005] that Sox management conducted a ''smear campaign" against Epstein. How? Where's the campaign?"   
• "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. ... Mistakes were made. Money was spent badly. The Sox lost their way and tried to throw money at their problems." 

There's Jon Lester, "who was famously lowballed, then traded, by the smarter-than-everybody Sox in 2014, did what he proved he could do in Boston: he came up big in the big moment. Lester was called upon to pitch in relief and stuffed the Indians for three innings." Well, not exactly. Lester allowed two runs in three innings work, and it was his wild pitch that cut the Cubs lead to 2 in the bottom of the fifth, giving Cleveland hope they could come back.

There's John Lackey, who gave up 3 runs in 5 innings in a Cubs loss Game 5.

There's Terry Francona who "[had] a commanding World Series lead, only to see it implode over the final three games."

Imagine what Shank would have said if this had happened while Francona was managing the Red Sox. Oh wait, it did:

The greatest choke in baseball history ended the only way it could have ended, with the Red Sox gagging on the Camden Yards lawn one last time. ... Say goodbye to Terry Francona. In the midnight confessions, Francona spoke of “the mess we got ourselves in,’’ then said, “We needed to take care of business and we didn’t.’’ 

In historic fashion.

Wouldn't losing a 3 games to 1 lead in the World Series, dropping the final two on your home field, be even worse?

Yes it would. I can think of only one thing worse: Shank's column.

Rewriting History, Part II

My co-blogger notes in the post below the many times Shank has trashed a Red Sox player, manager or general manager as they were ending their tenure in Boston, only to have their careers resuscitated in Chicago or Cleveland. Shank's world class hypocrisy tour continues today as we await Game 1 of the 2016 World Series.

CLEVELAND — Theo and Tito.

Theirs are names from “Sesame Street,’’ or perhaps a couple of characters for a children’s book series: “Theo and Tito Go to the Zoo.’’ “Theo and Tito Say, ‘Goodnight, Moon.’ ’’

When I read a Shank column, I often think I'm reading a children's book.

But they are neither muppets nor fiction. Theo Epstein and Terry “Tito” Francona are the men who in 2004 brought Boston its first baseball championship in 86 years. Then they did it again in 2007.

Theo and Tito were together on Yawkey Way for eight years, winning an average of 93 games per season, making the playoffs five times, and filling Fenway for every game of every season. When they left after the chicken-and-beer collapse of 2011 — Theo voluntarily, Tito being pushed — it was like the breakup of Boston’s baseball Beatles.

Shank should have written them a thank you letter for the chicken & beer fiasco - he got about ten columns out of it.

Theo and Tito were together on Yawkey Way for eight years, winning an average of 93 games per season, making the playoffs five times, and filling Fenway for every game of every season. When they left after the chicken-and-beer collapse of 2011 — Theo voluntarily, Tito being pushed — it was like the breakup of Boston’s baseball Beatles.

Now they are on opposite sides of two “other” long-suffering franchises in the 112th World Series, which starts Tuesday night at Progressive Field. The Chicago Cubs, led by general manager Theo Epstein, have not won a World Series since 1908 and have not even participated in the Fall Classic since 1945. The Cleveland Indians, managed by Terry Francona, have not won a World Series since 1948. We have two plagued ball clubs led by a pair of curse-busting bosses.

Something has to give.

Dan Shaughnessy - Master of the Obvious.

Revisionist History

Now that the 2016 Boston Red Sox are kicking ass, Shank decides to rub former Sox GM Theo Epstein's balls:

It’s not Dave Dombrowski. It’s not Ben Cherington, either. It’s not Mike Hazen. It’s not ownership. It’s certainly not Bill James.

None of the above.

No. This Red Sox team you have come to love early in the 2016 Boston baseball season — this team that looks like it might be a worst-to-first facsimile of the 2013 bearded wonders — was largely built by Theo Epstein.

He was the Camelot Kid from Brookline when he became general manager of the Red Sox at the age of 28 in November of 2002. He took charge of a roster assembled by Dan Duquette, made big bold deals, and got all the credit when the Sox won their first World Series in the biblical October of 2004.

Naturally, Shank was singing a different tune a few years ago:

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.

Last but certainly not least, who can forget the infamous Dirty Laundry column?

Let's start with Theo being a ''baseball guy" while Larry is a lawyer with a lofty title (CEO). Granted, Epstein is a student of the game, but it's a mistake to say he knows more about baseball than Lucchino or anyone else in the Red Sox baseball operation. Theo is 31 years old and did not play baseball past high school. He spent four years at Yale and three years at law school. That hardly leaves time for much more than rotisserie league scouting. He can read the data and has a horde of trusty, like-minded minions, but we're not talking about a lifetime of beating the bushes and scouting prospects. Lucchino was a good high school baseball player and made it to the NCAA Final Four with Princeton's basketball team. He came to baseball as an executive in 1979, when Theo was 5 years old. That doesn't make him George Digby or Ray Boone, but he's not Les Otten, either.

Lucchino-bashers, and they are legion, maintain that he repeatedly has undermined Theo and on occasion killed deals made by Epstein and the minions. There was one, for sure. When Theo's assistant Josh Byrnes (hired by Arizona as GM Friday) made a deal with Colorado, Epstein thought he had a better deal with another club and requested that Lucchino fall on the sword and invoke the ownership approval clause to kill the Rockies deal. Accustomed to people hating him, Lucchino took the fall, killing the deal and saving Epstein.
....
Publicly, Theo always has talked about ''mutual respect" regarding his relationship with dad Larry. They know that their silence produced considerable speculation and acrimony. Fans and media members have taken shots and taken sides. The Sox tomorrow will present a united front. It still can work. The only unfortunate aspect is that the embers will smolder for years to come. We know too much now.

Dan Shaughnessy - the ultimate weathervane.

Picking On Shank

Adding to what Roger wrote on yesterday's column:

• "... a Boston bid for the 2024 Olympics [is] the region’s worst plan since Larry Lucchino thought it would be a good idea to hire Bobby Valentine."  

Which The CHB wholeheartedly supported. Not to mention it was The CHB who so happily carried Lucchino's water on multiple occasions with anti-Theo columns.

And it was The CHB who after the end of the 2012 season wrote of the Red Sox owners, "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.

• "We can certainly agree that the last group that should be passing judgment on candidates’ 'character' would be baseball writers."   

And that has stopped The CHB when, exactly?

• "Can we slow down the David Ortiz Hall of Fame Train? ... I can’t get it out of my head that he looked like he was all done at the start of 2009 (39 games and 149 at-bats without a homer) and Mike Lowell was pinch hitting for him in 2010."

Ted Williams hit .254 with 10 homeruns in 1959. And he had the immortal Carroll Hardy pinch hit for him. In his followup campaign he hit 29 homeruns and batted .316. It happens. And no one accused him of using greenies -- although he almost certainly did. 

There's lots of reasons to keep Ortiz out, but singling out the worst 39 games of a 2,000 game career is proof that if The CHB wasn't the guy who sold Deadspin his Hall of Fame ballot, he should have been.

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.’’
...

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.

Rehashing in the Ivy

June 17.

Wrigley Field.

Red Sox-Cubs.

"What a Field Day for the Hate," says The CHB, who knows a little something about hating and being hated.

After rehashing, for the umpteenth time, the bad blood between Dale Sveum and the Red Sox owners (really, a misstatement -- there's no reason to think the Red Sox owners don't like Sveum. After all, they employed him for two years and then interviewed him for the manager's job. It is, however, easy to see why Sveum, manager of the worst team in baseball, might be a tad peeved that he had to settle for the Cubs job.); Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein (never heard that one before); Terry Francona and the Red Sox owners (nor that one); and Starlin Castro and Bobby Valentine (you really think Bobby V cares what a middle infielder on a last place team in the other league thinks of him?).
 
Oh, the humanity.
 Not done, The CHB turns his sights on Josh Beckett, who "simply loves playing the bad guy." Projection alert!

Can't believe he left out Larry Bird and Dr. J. Missed opportunity there.

A Novel Approach for the Ape

The CHB interviews Theo Epstein and there's no mention of the gorilla suit. A first!