August 24th, 2006 → 4:03 pm @ Seth Mnookin // No Comments
Buster Olney, in his daily blog on what’s going on around baseball: “Dan Shaughnessy is embracing the Red Sox plan of ‘Don’t Win Now,’ he writes.”
Huh. That’s not what I got out of this column, headlined “Some advice: Don’t look now.” To wit: “If you can’t see what’s happening here, it is your own fault. The Red Sox, like the Patriots, are simply smarter than every other organization. They have vision while the rest of the baseball world wears bifocals. And they rely on a flock of fans who are willing to pay $12 just to walk into an empty ballpark and look at the ancient poles. Let’s face it: 2004 bought a lot of patience and solidified Epstein as a hardball genius. These are days of Camelot at olde Fenway and there’s nothing that Edgar Renteria, Matt Clement, Coco Crisp, Rudy Seanez, Julian Tavarez, or Josh Beckett can do to change that.”
But maybe I’m just a cynic.
(EDIT: I’m deleting all comments that are personal attacks; see above.)
Post Categories: Buster Olney & Dan Shaughnessy
magnetichf
18 years ago
shaughnessy’s column was one of the more pointlessly snarky things i’ve read in quite some time (and i read a lot of snarky blogs…ok, maybe that’s redundant).
i can understand a fan (or writer) being angry/disappointed if they think their team has thrown in the towel on a season that still holds promise. but dan’s argument seems to boil down to the fact that the sox didn’t make a trade at the deadline. i would have been upset if the sox had taken on abreu at $27M for a season and a half for nothing, let alone for prospects. and as well as lidle appears to be pitching for NY, i don’t recall reading a lot of stories about what a lock this guy was to help a rotation, particularly for a team that had already been burned by clement.
oswalt undoubtedly would have helped, but again, it’s not a lock to say that he would have turned the ’06 sox into a serious championship contender, and given that, why give up prospects to get him? ditto for andruw jones, particularly since pitching is obviously our glaring need right now.
look, all our hand-wringing aside, this isn’t a crappy team. for all it’s flaws, it’s a team with one of the better records in the leauge, and a shot to make the postseason. i’m not saying it was absolutely the right thing to not make a deadline move; i don’t think we’ll know the answer to that for another year or two, maybe more. and that’s the tricky thing about sports; you never know. maybe lester and hansen and delcarmen will never be more than what they are now. maybe abreu and/or oswalt will go on to HOF careers. the only slam dunk in baseball is shaughnessy’s snarkiness (in spite of which, i still think he’s a decent writer).
deversm
18 years ago
BTW – Thanks to Angels skipper Scioscia for running out an all right-handed lineup against Lester last night. Obviously the Angels aren’t getting the same scouting reports the rest of the league is on Lester.
mtalinm
18 years ago
I’d say we are lucky/smart not to have made some mongo-trade on 7/31, only to have several injuries in rapid succession. Better to keep the cash for next season.
Besides, if the Astros laid down $20+M for Clemens in hopes of winning the WS, does anyone really think they would have traded Oswalt? That would have been shooting themselves in the foot.
sonnysiebert
18 years ago
Shaughnessy may be sticking it to Red Sox management in this column but I think it can be fairly said that Theo Epstein handed him the sword with all his talk about long term plans and how great the team is going to be in the future.
Theo’s the boss at work who reduces your salary by 20% when the company isn’t doing well and tells you it’s a good thing because better times are ahead and you’ll get that back and more once things turn around. Somehow it never seems to work out that way because there’s always another corporate crisis to justify continuing the paycut. (ok, so my metaphors aren’t very good either).
Maybe the Red Sox will win it all again in the future. But Theo Epstein has no way of guaranteeing that. The other terms in the division aren’t going to stand still, they’ll be looking to get better as well. And players can be injured, underperform, or get tossed into a Venezuelan jail just as easily in the future as now.
To explain current Red Sox failure in terms of anticipated future success is a tossed glove invitation to a Shaughnessy-style skewering. After all, he lives for this.
Ogie Oglethorpe
18 years ago
There is a scene in the movie Jurassic Park where Sam Neil upon seeing the genetically engineered Dinosaurs says something along the lines of, “I think I’m out of a job.” and Jeff Goldblum jumps in and says, “Don’t you mean extinct?” I thought that the CHB must have felt this same way after the Sox swept the Cards. I used to get really fired about his articles and used to go back and forth with him via email about some of his ridiculous material. At one point he called me at the office and dropped numerous f-bombs in response to some of my feedback. After we swept the cards I would pass by his articles and laugh thinking to myself, “This guy is irrelevant now.” I was guessing he probably felt that way too since somebody took away his security blanket. Then the Theogate happened and he was back in the think of things. I think he never really felt like his days of calling out the Sox at every turn were over, he was just laying in wait.
Bill Pratt
18 years ago
Reading anything written by Dan Shaughnessy is like sticking your tongue into a sore tooth. Every time you do it, you know its going to bother you, but you do it anyway.
crimsonohsix
18 years ago
I don’t know where you get this impression of Theo, sonny – but to me (and Seth can correct me if I am wrong), he seems like the type of boss who stays at work until 1am grinding it out with the most junior staff, a boss who is open to creative ideas that are backed by numbers, and someone who will readily admit that he is wrong when presented with a cogent argument. He’s also not an old stiff. Pretty much every (junior analyst’s) dream boss.
sonnysiebert
18 years ago
//I don’t know where you get this impression of Theo, sonny – but to me (and Seth can correct me if I am wrong), he seems like the type of boss who stays at work until 1am grinding it out with the most junior staff…//
hmmm…well, not sure how I would know about Theo Epstein’s inspirational office heroics (which don’t seem germane to this discussion in any event). But then I’m not a camp follower of the casually cool. Is glorifying all things Theo the shibboleth?.
crimsonohsix
18 years ago
Who cares if his actions are a “tossed glove invitation to a Shaughnessy-style skewering.” I’d take a GM that makes decisions based on objective analysis and logical thinking over one that makes decisions based on what some silly reporter thinks any day of the week, even if he did go to a safety school. Apparently you wouldn’t.
Rating Theo’s ability to be a good GM on a single year (or two years, even) is like saying someone’s a bad poker player because he goes all-in preflop with AA and loses to someone who calls. It’s silly.
Alright, not gonna clutter the blog with this discussion anymore.