I think there have been a number of different guiding philosophies over the years. I believe they themselves acknowledged that at the time of the Lester negotiations they were trying to limit long-term deals for older pitchers and that they changed their minds on that. I thought Dombrowski rather aggressively trading prospects represented a change in philosophy.
I don’t know if signing Carl Crawford, who was nothing like the sort of player they typically acquired during the Theo years Part I or Part II, was a change in philosophy or just insanity.
There was something in the Francona book about how Tom Werner would tell the baseball ops folks that the team needed to "win in more exciting fashion". And that seemed to be linked to the Crawford signing.It was horrible. Really, the Adrian Gonzalez trade was a pretty horrible trade at the time and it felt like rearranging the cards for the sake of it (just sign Adrian Beltre damnit and hold on to Rizzo!!!!)
Theo had been coveting Gonzalez for a long time, as he felt his swing was built perfectly for Fenway. Actually, he was correct. Where Theo went wrong was (a) ignoring the risk of injury; (b) the impact on roster construction; and (c) signing Crawford on top of everything else. Thankfully, Cherington rescued us by signing Nick Punto the following offseason.