We would've been better off with him doing just that. Then the Sox could have easily afforded to bring back Miller as the closer.
The thread where Broda discusses his displeasure with the moves Cherington made.
- Thread starter Sandy Leon Trotsky
- Start date
Miller turned down an extra $4 million to go to NY; why are you so sure we could have resigned him?
You should definitely double down on this point but first consider the fact that Porcello signed his extension before ever having thrown a pitch for the Red Sox and that signing an extension was probably discussed prior to the trade happening.
I'm not sure if that's true. But it is certainly a fair point to consider. Those negotiating windows are rare. If they did it without getting special permission that is technically not allowed.
Really? I'm fairly high on Kelly as a reliever, but the evidence to date is that Ben would have been better off putting Lackey on irrevocable waivers than taking on Craig's contract with Kelly. That money could have been used to sign something of much more use than the two of them have been to date.
I'm not so sure BC did all that bad. When you take Panda & Craig out of the equation I see a great deal of good. Remember the payroll dump in 2012. Not sure if he brought in Bobby but he took it on as his responsibility. The signings that made up the 2013 season - not bad. The willingness to hang on to prospects (Betts, Bradley, Bogaerts, Marrero, Vaz, Swihart & Shaw) when others were willing to take them in trades. The shit he took for keeping the prospects. Hanley turned out to be all right once they let him back into the infield. Holt was a great trade. Porcello is great, Wade did okay, Demp & Peavy were not so hot, EdRod is going to be great & Miller did well. Didn't he bring in Uehara? I hated the AJ signing. Castillo may still prove of some value someday. Isn't
All in all he did okay. The team on the field today has a lot to do with his willingness to hang on to prospects. There were mistakes and there were successes but what GM does not make mistakes. Even Theo had his bad moments ... Crawford comes to mind.
All in all he did okay. The team on the field today has a lot to do with his willingness to hang on to prospects. There were mistakes and there were successes but what GM does not make mistakes. Even Theo had his bad moments ... Crawford comes to mind.
He wanted to be on the East coast (his wifes family in NC) and he wanted ST in Florida where he and his family live. I imagine his wife also had ties in Boston after a long stint here and NY is close to Boston. Some players put family over total dollars. That said, with a tax rate less than half what it is in NY I cant imagine why a comparable offer does not land him.
I really wish people would stop citing the Punto deal as one on Ben's masterpieces. That trade was initiated and approved at ownership level - Ben's role in it was to hash out the extra pieces coming back - which really didn't turn out to be much. Although one could argue that they begat Wade Miley which begat Carson Smith.
To what extent is this luck of the draw? Sure, with hindsight paying Castillo 72 million was dumb, but with hindsight paying Yoan Moncada 63 million (counting the tax) was smart. Some prospects flame out, others become minor league player of the year. But that's outside of a GM's control.
I've spent more time than is healthy analyzing and thinking about what went wrong with Ben.
The thing I keep coming back to is what he did differently than Theo. After all, they had a similar approach to player development, to analytics, to financial flexibility, and so forth. Which makes sense as Ben worked for Theo for a dozen years or so. And yet, Ben made a considerable number of moves that Theo probably NEVER would have in a million years.
And all I can think of is this: Ben sucked at one of most important things about being the GM in Boston: managing up. In particular managing Lucchino but also Werner.
Right from the get go with Sveum, Ben was overruled by management. They simply didn't trust him with the keys to the car. And even as he did probably earn their respect—World Series don't grow on trees—I'm not sure they ever thought of him with the regard they did Theo. And to that point, I'm not sure he ever had the cache to push back against their more harebrained ideas – like trading for "major league ready talent" in '14 or signing guys in '15 like Hanley and Pablo to make the team more marketable. I don't worship at the guy's alter exactly but as Tito's book confirms, these are the kinds of things Theo fought off constantly – mostly with success. Ben just didn't have the juice or respect in their eyes to do it – so as a result we got this weird, underperforming front office that seemed to lurch from one philosophy to another.
Ben's folly is that he could never get out from the shadow of Theo. The hiring of Dombrowski is certainly meant to correct for that.
The thing I keep coming back to is what he did differently than Theo. After all, they had a similar approach to player development, to analytics, to financial flexibility, and so forth. Which makes sense as Ben worked for Theo for a dozen years or so. And yet, Ben made a considerable number of moves that Theo probably NEVER would have in a million years.
And all I can think of is this: Ben sucked at one of most important things about being the GM in Boston: managing up. In particular managing Lucchino but also Werner.
Right from the get go with Sveum, Ben was overruled by management. They simply didn't trust him with the keys to the car. And even as he did probably earn their respect—World Series don't grow on trees—I'm not sure they ever thought of him with the regard they did Theo. And to that point, I'm not sure he ever had the cache to push back against their more harebrained ideas – like trading for "major league ready talent" in '14 or signing guys in '15 like Hanley and Pablo to make the team more marketable. I don't worship at the guy's alter exactly but as Tito's book confirms, these are the kinds of things Theo fought off constantly – mostly with success. Ben just didn't have the juice or respect in their eyes to do it – so as a result we got this weird, underperforming front office that seemed to lurch from one philosophy to another.
Ben's folly is that he could never get out from the shadow of Theo. The hiring of Dombrowski is certainly meant to correct for that.
Part of making Porcello work within their payroll was his pitching the final year at pre-free agency rates. The extension was negotiated during spring training that year, and at the time what those of us that liked the deal pointed out was that Porcello was essentially agreeing to a five year deal at Lackey rates to come in here and be a #2 starter. That deal turned out to be the best that he made. Because right now he's been exceeding what people like me expected (I think I was the most optimistic fan of the deal, because I expected him to be an annual 16-18 game winner).
maybe nitpicking, but was it that bada signing? Not great return for investment, but that is different to a bad signing even with hindsight.
Injury shortened, OBP heavy .789 OPS in 2014 with Boston.
Sucked for 98 games in 2015 then .900 OPS the rest of the year in 35 games with Texas.
Back up to 830 OPS this year with 33 HR in 134 games so far this year at age 35.
That strikes me as unlucky injury/slump/face reconstruction/whatever rather than a bad signing that could have been foreseen.
So, every good move was Ben's decision and every bad move was ownership's decision? Got it. Lolz.
And for the millionth time, Ben wasn't fired. Ben quit because he wanted to be promoted to the Theo role and was asked to take the Jed Hoyer role. Too bad, so sad. Enjoy your teaching Ben.
Yoan Moncada looks to be developing into a very nice player. But the story is clearly not over yet. He might be a superstar, or he might be Mark Bellhorn with speed.
The thing about the Lackey trade was, why would the Cardinals make that trade unless they were very down on Kelly and Craig? If they believed at all in Joe Kelly they would have believed he was a great deal more valuable than Lackey because he had 4 years of team control versus Lackey's year and a half. Yes gfin, yes they get out of Craig's expensive deal, but if Joe Kelly becomes a 2nd or 3rd starter here last season the Cards FO gets killed for that move, so they must have been pretty confident that Kelly would continue to struggle and/or would continue to have durability issues. I don't know what a GM does when a team's offer itself reveals so much about how they feel about the player. Given that Ben was going after MLB players I doubt there were many takers in July, so it was still probably worth rolling the dice if he absolutely had to make a trade.
Targeting controllable MLB talent in-season from a team in perennial playoff contention is just not smart business. Especially if the trade is essentially same-for-same.
This trade illustrates why it's a better strategic move either to acquire playoff-worthy talent from a non-contending club or to bundle highly-projectible prospect talent from a contender.
They backed out of the 3 year deal at the time. And it cost them Abreu. Would he have mattered alone, considering the trainwrecks 2014 and 2015 were? Probably not.
But you could say that about each of Ben's bad moves.
So you think they should have stuck to the original 3 year deal?
Or not resigned him after 2013?
Abreu is easy to like in hindsight but there was plenty of risk in that one and double the cost of napolis two year deal 2014-15 (although triple the years obviously to less yearly cost). Locking in such an unknown quantity to 1b and middle order bat as defending WS champions would have been ballsy. The shine is off the star import a little too these days. Not that he isn't still good value so far, but the trend is not in a good direction.
Moved on after 2013.
I was obsessed with Abreu (obviously you guys wouldn't know since I just joined here), and his stats from Cuba even translated over really well (http://grantland.com/features/cuba-jose-abreu-migh-best-offensive-weapon-planet/).
Like I said, the swap isn't the end of the world, but you have enough of those moves and they really start to add up. Especially since that money went to Rusney and Napoli.
Rusney, Napoli, Craig, Panda....they could've used that money on Abreu and more pitching. just some brutal contracts in there.
I think the theory is fair, but we wouldn't be having this conversation if they got Martinez instead of Kelly.
Still a little peeved that the Red Sox were the team punished for the bad acts of the 16/17 year old kid, who then gets to go get money from another team and become a good player.
Not quite. Hired as "a" vice-president of Baseball Ops per link above. Under old pal Shapiro.
Yeah, I mistranslated the report I heard while listening to Rays/Blue Jays game.
I didn't say that -- I am not one of those people who think that ownership is to blame for everything. It takes a village -- and in fact, I'd venture to guess that the Lackey and Reddick deals were Ben's and Ben's alone.
What I did say was that there is ample evidence that Ben was overruled on a number of occasions ... and a lot of smoke that suggests he didn't have the free hand that Theo had and probably had to fight for.
Again, I'd say this: Ben's problem was that he didn't seem to be particularly good at the "managing up" part of the GM job -- which is to say, he either didn't (or couldn't) push back when ownership made a bad suggestion (such as, "Go get us a Cuban!") or made a hash of things when he got marching orders he didn't agree with (such as, "We need major league-ready talent!").
This I agree with. It'll be interesting to see how he does under Shapiro. It's weird to me that he'd leave the same role with the Sox under Dombrowski, but maybe he just couldn't bear the thought of being demoted.
Canadian media is suggesting he's going to focus on Player Development. Which would seem to make sense given his track record here.
IIRC yes. Maybe the GM gig was an excellent example of the Peter Principle?
I wasn't a hater precisely because of Sox record of spitting out excellent young players.
That's great news for the Jays.
Even though I thought Cherington was in over his head as Red Sox GM and made some truly poor decisions, he was always really great at player development.
And that's exactly what the Jays will need once Encarnacion (and probably Bautista) leave in FA.
Jumping in late here re: Abreu, but Abreu made his deal with Chicago during the 2013 playoffs. The deal was formally announced before the WS was over. Red Sox could not have signed Abreu without kicking Mike Napoli to the curb in the middle of a playoff run. Abreu was simply not a option for Cherington.
Is that true. Because I thought it was also reported that the Sox came in 2nd place by like $6m.