a700hitter

Any plan that includes finishing last in the two years following a championship while spending more than almost any team in baseball is not a plan that anyone would want.

This is just intellectually dishonest. If you can throw out 2012, then you have no leg to stand on when others want to throw out 2013. Your arguments follow the same pattern. Everything good that happened was Ben's brilliant creation and everything bad that happened was not his fault -- Valentine, Luchinno, reactive fans, etc etc. His record is his record. He is accountable and does not shrink from it. What I find humorous is that you don't want to hold him accountable for any of the failures that happened on his watch, but you are ready to give him credit for successes after he is gone. Too funny.

No there isn't anectodal evidence. There is only internet rumor.

The Marlins case was a travesty, but easy to understand. It wasn't a failure of management. They had spent a ton of money and won a championship. They didn't make any money so they decided to sell off all of their valuable assets and drove their payroll to negligible level. Not surprisingly, they finished last. The Red Sox have maintained one of the highest payrolls throughout this period and still finished last 3 times. That is what highlights the failure of management is how they squandered their assets and resources. This record of futility is unprecedented in sports. No professional sports team with one of the highest payrolls has finished last in 3 out of 4 years. That cannot be sugar coated. That cannot be excused or explained away by spinning and just fabricating facts. That is not a bridge year. That is not building for the future. It is just abject failure.

There is no evidence that Panda was a Luchinno move -- none. There is no significant income stream attached to Panda. There is not a lot of Panda merchandise sold and whatever is sold gets split 30 ways. We would have got the same cut if San Diego signed him.

It wasn't good team building for the long run as there were a number of crumbling building blocks which were retained and the solid blocks were discarded.

And that is why I don't bet on baseball.

Ben gets credit for bringing in Uehara, but he didn't bring in Uehara as the closer. Uehara had not been a closer for most of his career. He had always had trouble holding up under heavy workloads. He was expected to be 1 of the 7 th inning arms. Ben tapped two fat bums to close for us -- the perpetually injured Andrew Bailey and the extremely wild Hanrahan. Had they not both blown out their arms, Koji never would have had the opportunity to have one of the greatest closer seasons in history. Koji was never expected to close for us.

Both of the starters will implode by the 5th inning.

Yeah, I get it, but we went out and got someone even lazier and more lackadaisical and much more expensive than Cespedes. Lol! At least, we would have been rid of Cespedes after this year.

Ben was at the helm for 2013 and he gets the credit for it. It was a perfect season almost from beginning to end. When the starters faltered, the bullpen stepped up. The starters came out of spring training on fire. Buch ignited us with 11-0 to start the season and a miniscule ERA. When the pitchers needed a big out, our fielders invariably came up with big plays. When the fielders made errors, the pitchers picked them up. If we made a base running mistake, our hitters made up for it and the players picked up Farrell every time he made a mistake. What Ben didn't do in building the 2013 team was build a foundation of a consistently good team. People mistakenly believed that Ben had come up with a winning formula for other teams to imitate. The 2013 team was built on a foundation that couldn't support consistent success -- one of the main pitchers (Buchholz) and hitters (Victorino) have chronic injury issues. Napoli has two bad hips and his performance has been decaying for 2 seasons. He kept each of these diminishing players (in health and skill) for the next 2 years and their performances fell off a cliff. The healthy younger players from the 2013 team were allowed to walk away over the next 2 seasons -- Ellsbury, Lester, and Lackey. He let our stud horses walk and he retained the broken down war horses. He also put much too much reliance on too many unproven rookies in the following season. Yes, Ben was the architect of 2013, but he also dismantled that team in the following year and kept all the wrong parts.

Cespedes with 3 Homers and 8 RBI so far tonight for the Mets against the Rockies. Plus, he looks like Willie Mays in the OF compared to Hanley.

Mike Fiers of the Astros with a no-hitter against the Dodgers tonight. He was a nice trade pickup for the Steps.

Winning is fun.

Yep, that will be the most accurate barometer.

Putting a beating on Cueto.

Hanley plays yet another ball like it is a hand grenade.

Dumbass, Jr.

Fatass and Dumbass

Shaw continues to knock the stuffing out of the ball.

There is one major difference when comparing the 2015 team to the 2004 team. The 2004 team was stocked with top talent. This team is not. I'll assume that last post was a joke so your credibility doesn't go into a nose dive.

This will skew your perception of reality even further. LOL!! The Red Sox are dead in 2015 my friend, and those of you who cling to hope that they have a chance are hard to take seriously as objective judges of players abilities and talents.

You have one threesome and you think everything is possible. It may be possible, but it ain't gonna happen. Make yourself useful and come up with some good ideas for the Hot Stove Thread.

The devotees claimed he had no autonomy on the bad moves but credited him for the good moves. I am certain that he would have had some autonomy under DD.

Yes, that is true, but there were articles indicating JH's involvement that stoked that argument.