example1

I think he is about to go to arbitration. He should have three years of it with Oakland.

I thought by full credit you meant actually having drafted, traded for or signed every player. Not just time in service. Thanks for clarifying.

Brian Sabean from SF might get that credit. Seems rare for recent WS winners though.

If you agree that his legacy couldn't be one of failure, then you agree with me. I said you could argue that he's been mediocre, but you can't argue that it has been a failure. The rest of what you say is immaterial to my post. That said, he added essential pieces to make that initial 2004 core one that could win the WS. It wasn't like he was handed the 2004 club. *Theo landed 5 of the top 9 most valuable pitchers for that club --including 2 of the top 3 SPs (Schilling and Arroyo) and --essentially the entire bullpen, including Keith Foulke (but minus Alan Embree). He also added the pieces from the Garciaparra trade. In fact, if you factor in Millar's walk (Theo player), Roberts' stolen base (Theo player), Mueller's single (Theo Player), Ortiz's home run (Theo player), Schilling's bloody-sock (Theo player), the bullpen's clutchness (Theo players all, minus Embree), I would say the Sox absolutely dont win 2004 without Theo's influence. There can be no doubt about that.

If I were John Henry/Larry Lucchino/Ben Cherrington, I would be very aggressive this offseason, especially with pitching. My hope is that Henry's pride is so injured, that he's willing to spend a shitload of money so he and the ownership group can go on the radio in November of 2012 and say "see, you guys made a big deal out of 2011 and we told you it would all be okay, and it was. We didn't need Theo, we didn't need Tito, we thought and knew Beckett and Lester were good. Now shut up!" This may be a pipe-dream, but: 1. Purchase Yu Darvish (if he's available) (sorry Henry, if you could justify it for Matsuzaka you can for Darvish... plus you need pitching again--more than ever--and he's more cost effective than Wilson, won't cost draft picks, etc.,) 2. Try very hard to get Matt Cain 3. Dump Lackey 4. Re-sign Papelbon 5. Sign a former closer for setup duties 6. Re-sign Miller for minor league duties 7. Use Doubront and Bowden for middle/early relief So my rotation/bullpen would be something like: Beckett Lester Cain Buchholz Darvish That's a rotation worthy of 160+m in spending... CP-Papelbon SU-Bard SU-Madsen/Bell/someone else RP-Aceves RP-Morales RP-Doubront RP-Albers Or something like that in the 'pen... Of course, there's a good chance they will just sit tight too. On offense, if they are willing to make the above moves then they would be okay letting Ortiz go, in my book. The offense will be okay if Youkilis can come back in reasonable health.

Except for the ones where the team wouldn't have picked them if it weren't ultimately for his decision to let the FA go and retain the draft picks. In other words, he would get complete credit for all MLB success from the following group: Vitek Brentz Ranaudo Workman Barnes Swihart Owens Bradley Jr., And major partial credit--I would argue at least the credit that a group leader in a group project gets--for all the rest of their current farm system, given that he could have stopped the drafting of any of them at any time? Seems like there's a lot of potential WAR for not very much money there.

Glad to have you all here. It's not like this is a site without rules. I hope folks know that. Of course there is plenty of room for criticism too.

Plenty of guys have been traded since then too. That depletes a system quickly too. Masterful and Hagadone would look pretty good for this club right now.

So a migration to talksox from another site? I remember seabeachfred. Glad to have you all here. Just in time for what promises to be an interesting offseason.

For soxsport-- All the reason to think very hard before paying either IMO. Free agents--like veteran free agent closets--are simply too risky in most cases. The flip side is that people can't bitch and moan if they have a lower payroll moving dad, which many did 2 years ago.

I think Fangraphs' WAR captures defense and baserunning decently. In the discussion about GMs, I think the Free Agent signing flops are a very obvious and surface-level way of evaluating a GM. We all know the money involved in signing those guys, and can see pretty easily how those veterans do after compared to how they did before. The much more subtle measure is their ability to develop and discover talent 'on the cheap' or for very good value. A cost-controlled star, particularly pitchers, are the absolute most valuable players there can be. By extension, you have to evaluate the choices about re-signing FAs against the talent acquired from the draft picks gained for letting those players go. People can very easily criticize a move like letting Adrian Beltre go, but until we see how those draft picks turn out it will be hard to know whether the investment in the future (Swihart and Owens) was worth it. It's a much more complicated thing than "did the FA work out".

...and I'm not defending his FA acquisitions. I'm saying that calling out Epstein's FA acquisition history as a way of grading him an average GM (that's what a "C" is) is akin to saying that Adrian Gonzalez is an average player because he's not fast. As a proportion of what he does, the running is mitigated by the abiliy to not make outs and play defense. The value of the FA flops was far outweighed by the value of the home grown talent. It wouldn't have if the only home grown talent was Youkilis and Buchholz, but it wasn't. They developed (and didn't trade) an array of All-Stars. That's not average production from the farm system. It didn't break even, it was far exceeded. That's what allowed this team to win 92 games a year despite the struggles with FA. Of course it could have been better in terms of FA. Nobody would argue that, but that doesn't, in and of itself, make him an average GM.

Projecting? At this time of year either your team is on the outside looking in or it is playing for a title. Your team and the Red Sox are both looking in. The Sox lost a bunch of games in September and have a shitload of work to do. It's not projecting to ask why you're not over in your corner nursing your own wounds. Your team was bounced in the first round. Or do you not care about that?

I think if we have a thread for each s*** storm we're all going to be covered in s***. Ultimately all of these issues come down to some sort of disagreement, what the team is going to do about it, and the tangible decisions the team will make in the 2011-2012 offseason.