Worst Boston General Manager -- the 00s

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Much like this other thread I'm interested in getting you opinion about the guys who run the teams in Boston. Here's what I wrote in the last thread:

Recently I was thinking that during this century, Boston has had a lot of smart (and a couple of dumb) guys running their four franchises. What prompted this thinking was the absolute heist that Danny Ainge pulled off with the Nets a few years ago (Pierce, Garnett and Terry for three unprotected number ones, the right to flip picks and some flotsam) and I think that may have been the best deal (not draft pick) that any Boston GM has made since Duquette landed Pedro.

After you tally up the draft picks, the trades, the free agent signings; which GM has made the worst moves? In the comments say which moves you hated. Don't be afraid to defend your choices.

A couple of caveats before we begin:

1. I chose 2000 as the beginning of this poll because that's when most Boston GMs began, but Dan Duquette's and Rick Pitino's careers began prior to that. If you want to weigh the moves made during the 90s, that's fine by me. If you don't, that's okay too.

2. For simplicity's sake, I have Mike Hazen and Dave Dombrowski as a two-headed beast. Hazen has the GM title, but Dombrowski seems like the moves man. I have no idea how their responsibilities are split and I'm not going to hazard a guess because I'll be wrong. Same thing with Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli.

3. Finally, I know that the Bruins, Celtics and Patriots don't play baseball but I couldn't figure out a way to cross post to all four Boston sports forums, so I stuck with the Sox forum because it gets the most eyeballs.

4. I really wanted to add Chris Wallace, Jeff Gorton, Mike Port and a separate line items for Belichick and Pioli and Cherington and Hoyer but there are only so many responses you can give.

5. See the earlier thread about the Best GMs of the 2000s. Again, you can only ask one question per thread.

 

[bankshot1]

I really don't follow the Bruins that closely but for me it was Pitino, for both basketball and non-basketball issues. And i liked the job he did with the Knicks, but he muddied the C's franchise with his outsized ego.

btw Pitino's tenure with the Cs was from 1997/8-2001 (4 seasons) and had nothing to do with the 2007-08 championship team.

 

[Harry Hooper]

It's Pitino in a landslide. His damage lived on well after he departed.

 

[Seels]

I really disliked Cherington and think the Celtics of the post Auerbach era were pretty fucked either way. I don't remember specific things Pitino did in his stay aside from trading Billups. Though Billups is probably a Hall of Famer if he has a reasonable head coach early on.

Cherington for me was awful aside from what happened in the lower levels of the minors. I think the ratio of hits to misses for me was like 1:5 at best. Granted it's hard to say how much is on him and how much isn't, but I feel like he gets too much credit for the Beckett++++ trade and not enough for the rest of lousy trades he did and the mess of free agency he put the team through. 2013 was a fluke and aside from 2013 the franchise has had its worst run since the 60s, and at a time the AL East was otherwise mediocre.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

2013 was a fluke and aside from 2013 the franchise has had its worst run since the 60s, and at a time the AL East was otherwise mediocre.

Why was 2013, in particular, a fluke? What marks it as particularly flukey, as opposed to the years when things went poorly?

 

[Seels]

Why was 2013, in particular, a fluke? What marks it as particularly flukey, as opposed to the years when things went poorly?

Well it was sandwiched between two notably awful years in 2012 / 2014 and many players on the team had career years. Generally teams that win 28 more games than the previous year, than go back to losing basically the same amount are pretty flukey.

 

[InsideTheParker]

Yes, the business about 2013 being a fluke is puzzling to me. That team was constructed very differently from a lot of others, putting together relatively short-term contracts for good veterans with some established Red Sox players and youngsters. The bullpen depth turned out to be crucial and amazing. It was flukey because it was the result of a different and successful approach?

 

[Adrian's Dome]

Yes, the business about 2013 being a fluke is puzzling to me. That team was constructed very differently from a lot of others, putting together relatively short-term contracts for good veterans with some established Red Sox players and youngsters. The bullpen depth turned out to be crucial and amazing. It was flukey because it was the result of a different and successful approach?

It's fluky because it's not a sustainable approach. Look how a similar approach worked in 2012, 2014, and 2015.

If you consistently place weight on guys like Gomes, Victorino, Carp, Aceves, Dempster, Drew, and Breslow and pray they have career years, you may hit the jackpot, but more often than not, you're going to be stuck with replacement-level talent or worse. It just so happened those all worked out that year, plus our own annual wildcard Buchholz was solid. Not exactly bets I'd be comfortable making again without the clarity of retrospect.

 

[MiracleOfO2704]

I ended up with Pitino, just because the damage he did to the Celtics was salvaged only by Trader Danny's 2007 off-season, where he finally got sick of waiting for the lottery balls to bounce his way and just went out and got the guys that put the team back on the map, but Mike O'Connell should really get a lot more votes, with a probably assist to his mentor, Harry Sinden. Besides being the guy to send Ray Bourque on his way (creating the lowest moment for Boston sports: a City Hall rally for the Avalanche winning the Stanley Cup, just 8 months before the Patriots would end the 15-year slump for Boston), he turned two of the top 10 picks in the 1997 Draft into a handful of serviceable parts, the only one of which had any lasting legacy in Boston was Milan Lucic. Had Jeremy Jacobs not decided to abandon the Sinden model after the 2005-06 season, the Bruins may be totally irrelevant in an otherwise thriving Boston sports scene.

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Yes, the business about 2013 being a fluke is puzzling to me. That team was constructed very differently from a lot of others, putting together relatively short-term contracts for good veterans with some established Red Sox players and youngsters. The bullpen depth turned out to be crucial and amazing. It was flukey because it was the result of a different and successful approach?

Cherington hit on seven of eight free agents that year. One of which (Uehara) saved him from a missable trade he made for a bullpen ace. All of these guys had career or close to career years and the one guy who didn't was perfectly serviceable and retired before his last year kicked in.

It's also fluky because Cherington wasn't very good at grabbing free agents or making trades. He has a tremendous eye for young talent and would be a great Director of Player Development but he was limited in other roles that were just as important.

But for one offseason it all came together for him, and that's the definition of a fluke. And BTW, a fluke championship is not a bad thing. It's still a championship and there's nothing anyone has to apologize for. If you think about it most championships are flukes because layers have to perform their best all at once, injuries can't strike and the front office needs to make all the right moves. Essentially the stars have to align perfectly.

In 2013, the stars really aligned for Ben Cherington and made him look a bit smarter than maybe he really was.

 

[shaggydog2000]

Mike O'Connell traded a player who went on to win that year's MVP award, and all he got back was a bunch of depth players and no draft picks. He deserves as much scorn as Pitino, but he was less of a personality, so he probably won't be remembered by most Boston sports fans in just a few years.

 

[Philip Jeff Frye]

Cherington hit on seven of eight free agents that year. One of which (Uehara) saved him from a missable trade he made for a bullpen ace. All of these guys had career or close to career years and the one guy who didn't was perfectly serviceable and retired before his last year kicked in.

It's also fluky because Cherington wasn't very good at grabbing free agents or making trades. He has a tremendous eye for young talent and would be a great Director of Player Development but he was limited in other roles that were just as important.

But for one offseason it all came together for him, and that's the definition of a fluke. And BTW, a fluke championship is not a bad thing. It's still a championship and there's nothing anyone has to apologize for. If you think about it most championships are flukes because layers have to perform their best all at once, injuries can't strike and the front office needs to make all the right moves. Essentially the stars have to align perfectly.

In 2013, the stars really aligned for Ben Cherington and made him look a bit smarter than maybe he really was.

Cherington drew an inside straight in 2013 and concluded that he was the world's best poker player.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

Well it was sandwiched between two notably awful years in 2012 / 2014 and many players on the team had career years. Generally teams that win 28 more games than the previous year, than go back to losing basically the same amount are pretty flukey.

But you're begging the question. You assume (like a true Boston fan) that it's the winning rather than the losing that requires explanation. Maybe if he had ten losing years and one winning year that would start to look persuasive; but a four-year stretch doesn't seem anywhere near long enough to say with any certainty that the losing years are signal and the winning year noise.

It's fluky because it's not a sustainable approach. Look how a similar approach worked in 2012, 2014, and 2015.

In what way was the approach similar across all four of those years?

 

[Adrian's Dome]

But you're begging the question. You assume (like a true Boston fan) that it's the winning rather than the losing that requires explanation. Maybe if he had ten losing years and one winning year that would start to look persuasive; but a four-year stretch doesn't seem anywhere near long enough to say with any certainty that the losing years are signal and the winning year noise.

So you set your own personal arbitrary level of a sufficient sample size at 10 losing years and chalk up an entire side of a debate to a stereotype. I hope you never run any professional sports team I root for.

In what way was the approach similar across all four of those years?

You mean besides repeated unsuccessful attempts to outsmart all other competition with the acquisitions of undervalued assets, whether it be players at a low point in value or statistics they hoped other teams weren't capitalizing on? Every year there was a new "market inefficiency."

To answer a question with a question, what about Cherington's tenure can you classify as concrete, inarguable successes outside of the Punto trade and his minor league track record (neither of which anyone here will argue against?)

 

[Papelbon's Poutine]

I'll argue your last point. It's pretty widely accepted that Lucchino played a pretty large part in the Punto trade. A lot of that negotiation was above his pay grade. Can't say I give BC a ton of credit on that one.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

I'll argue your last point. It's pretty widely accepted that Lucchino played a pretty large part in the Punto trade. A lot of that negotiation was above his pay grade. Can't say I give BC a ton of credit on that one.

Well, to be fair, we don't know for sure (nor do we know why the hell the Dodgers signed off on their end,) and even if that's true, it only supports my greater point.

 

[Papelbon's Poutine]

Well, to be fair, we don't know for sure (nor do we know why the hell the Dodgers signed off on their end,) and even if that's true, it only supports my greater point.

We do know, actually. http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/8323305/boston-red-sox-los-angeles-dodgers-blockbuster-trade-anatomy


And I agree with your greater point.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

We do know, actually. http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/8323305/boston-red-sox-los-angeles-dodgers-blockbuster-trade-anatomy

Fair enough.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

So you set your own personal arbitrary level of a sufficient sample size at 10 losing years and chalk up an entire side of a debate to a stereotype. I hope you never run any professional sports team I root for.

Well, I hope so too, because I totally suck at negotiation. (What you should hope for is that someday you're on the other end of a Craigslist deal with me.)

Ten years is only an "arbitrary level" in the sense that it's a point I selected arbitrarily from a continuum. I didn't say that no amount of losing would be convincing until it hit the magic number of ten years, and then it would be indisputable evidence. Four years is more meaningful than one, seven would be more meaningful than four, et cetera.

You mean besides repeated unsuccessful attempts to outsmart all other competition with the acquisitions of undervalued assets, whether it be players at a low point in value or statistics they hoped other teams weren't capitalizing on? Every year there was a new "market inefficiency."

Really? I don't recall Cherington ever using that phrase. Can you point me to where he did?

To answer a question with a question, what about Cherington's tenure can you classify as concrete, inarguable successes outside of the Punto trade and his minor league track record (neither of which anyone here will argue against?)

There's a bit of a straw man there, in that I'm not arguing that Cherington is a genius or that his tenure here was a triumph. I'm arguing that his record here was a mixed bag, with some good moves and some poor ones, and that talking about him as a candidate for "worst" GM is revisionism. We love to get on a bandwagon around here; a couple of years ago it was "in Ben we trust," now he's a candidate for worst of the century so far. I don't think the evidence of his tenure as a whole justifies either of those responses--but dismissing the solid performances of Victorino et al in 2013 as a "fluke" while claiming that the grotesque underperformance of Panley & Porcello in 2015 is diagnostic of fundamental shortcomings in Ben's approach is the worst kind of cherry-picking.

 

[lexrageorge]

I don't know how anyone could rate Cherington below either Pitino or O'Connell.

Pitino: Sure, maybe the Celtics were screwed anyway. But he managed to make Boston an even less attractive place to play, all the while messing up the team's salary cap situation with bizarre trades and free agent signings that had no chance of helping the team. He also couldn't coach at the NBA level.

O'Connell: I was in Toronto when the Joe Thornton trade went down. The media types could not get any GM to acknowledge even off the record that O'Connell had contacted them about Thornton; many of them said they would have given up much more than a middle pairing defenseman, an unproven winger, and a bad checking winger for one of the league's top play makers. He was in so far over his head when the league changed after the lockout that it wasn't even funny. Off topic rant: and what did Sinden ever see in him over Al Secord anyway?

Cherington: Yes, he hit on every free agent signing after the 2012 fiasco. And he hit on the fact that some key returning players that were hurt in 2012 (Ellsbury and Ortiz) came back strong in 2013. And the 2013 team, by design, had little staying power; Victorino, Napoli, Drew were not long term signings, and were all injury risks. But Cherington found the guys that he felt would fill some key holes from the prior season, and then went out and secured the pitching rotation depth by acquiring Peavy. He should get credit for that 2013 title. He should also get the blame for the moves since then. But I agree with Savin that dismissing the successes as fluky while calling the failures indicative of his approach is pure cherry picking.

 

[reggiecleveland]

delete

 

[reggiecleveland]

He also couldn't coach at the NBA level.

This is the big thing. He thought he could use the same style in the NBA as he did in college, and then thought a "new class" or new group of players could fit his program, so he never left things alone. They improved almost instantly after he was no longer the coach. 18 year old kids may like his personality, but NBA vets didn't.

The Thornton trade is still unfathomable to me. I recall the stunned silence on TSN as it was announced. The announcers are all hockey guys and don't want to insult the players going to the Bs, but they were taken by surprise. I remember they ended the show with the idea that Thornton was perhaps injured or there was some dark secret that made teams not want him. Later in the week they talked to their sources and (as mentioned above) said teams did not even get a chance to trade for him.

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

The Thornton trade is still unfathomable to me. I recall the stunned silence on TSN as it was announced. The announcers are all hockey guys and don't want to insult the players going to the Bs, but they were taken by surprise. I remember they ended the show with the idea that Thornton was perhaps injured or there was some dark secret that made teams not want him. Later in the week they talked to their sources and (as mentioned above) said teams did not even get a chance to trade for him.

This was my breaking (up) point as a B's fan, so O'Connell, and his puppet-master Sinden, got my vote in the poll and it wasn't really close. I walked away so completely the moment I heard about the trade that this is the first I'm hearing that Thornton wasn't even shopped around to the highest bidder...just makes it all the more worse. That they swept out (finally) the Sinden regime and then won a title soothed some of the bitterness I felt, but I can't go back.

Beyond him, the only one on the list even worth considering for worst is Pitino. He should get credit for putting some pieces together that Wallace and O'Brien were able to cobble together into a semi-contender for a couple years, but the best way to describe his approach to roster building was simply chaos. There never seemed to be rhyme or reason to what he was doing. And then there was the unforgivable sin of insisting on taking the President title from Red. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot.

 

[shaggydog2000]

This is the big thing. He thought he could use the same style in the NBA as he did in college, and then thought a "new class" or new group of players could fit his program, so he never left things alone. They improved almost instantly after he was no longer the coach. 18 year old kids may like his personality, but NBA vets didn't.

The Thornton trade is still unfathomable to me. I recall the stunned silence on TSN as it was announced. The announcers are all hockey guys and don't want to insult the players going to the Bs, but they were taken by surprise. I remember they ended the show with the idea that Thornton was perhaps injured or there was some dark secret that made teams not want him. Later in the week they talked to their sources and (as mentioned above) said teams did not even get a chance to trade for him.

I remember all the fans who tried to justify it by saying the league MVP was practically worthless because at 6'4" and 220 he was "soft" (never mind the way he setup behind the net and carried a defenseman or two on his back while constantly getting hacked and slashed and still delivered perfect passes, and never let a puck get past him when it was dumped along the wall to him) and that the real win in the trade was "cap room." So why not trade him for good draft picks, get even more cap room, and have a chance to possibly end up with a talented young player or two in the draft and money to spend?

And I won't deny that Pitino was terrible. Unlikable, seemed to be an 80's yuppie parody (he was one Phil Collins review away from being Patrick Bateman), and always seemed to be making excuses and blaming others for his failure here. But I think O'Connell was quietly the worst GM on the planet in the early 2000's.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

Well, I hope so too, because I totally suck at negotiation. (What you should hope for is that someday you're on the other end of a Craigslist deal with me.)

Ten years is only an "arbitrary level" in the sense that it's a point I selected arbitrarily from a continuum. I didn't say that no amount of losing would be convincing until it hit the magic number of ten years, and then it would be indisputable evidence. Four years is more meaningful than one, seven would be more meaningful than four, et cetera.

No professional sports franchise is going to give 7, let alone 10, years of rope to a person making ineffective decisions when it comes to player personnel.

Really? I don't recall Cherington ever using that phrase. Can you point me to where he did?

I can point to numerous SoSH posts using it to justify his annual moves in a vacuum, plus this is just trying to avoid the true point about the transactions themselves, not the verbiage he may or may not've used to describe them.

There's a bit of a straw man there, in that I'm not arguing that Cherington is a genius or that his tenure here was a triumph. I'm arguing that his record here was a mixed bag, with some good moves and some poor ones, and that talking about him as a candidate for "worst" GM is revisionism. We love to get on a bandwagon around here; a couple of years ago it was "in Ben we trust," now he's a candidate for worst of the century so far. I don't think the evidence of his tenure as a whole justifies either of those responses--but dismissing the solid performances of Victorino et al in 2013 as a "fluke" while claiming that the grotesque underperformance of Panley & Porcello in 2015 is diagnostic of fundamental shortcomings in Ben's approach is the worst kind of cherry-picking.

And I'm not saying he was outright terrible and did absolutely nothing right, but I will argue that his tenure was a "mixed bag." You're basically arguing against 2013 being a fluke, but you've done nothing to actually show it outside of "well, the sample size isn't big enough in my eyes." While that may or may not be true, the sample size of failure is 3x the size of success. In retrospect, nearly all of his moves didn't work out as intended, and the ones that did in 2012-2013, it isn't unreasonable to classify them as consistently unsustainable. They did happen, and rightly so he does deserve credit for the title, but if that's true he also personally deserves 3x the opposite amount of said credit for the last place finishes. I'm just a believer in calling a spade a spade, and I will forever believe that title was fluky as that team wouldn't have been a WS contender with that 90% of that same roster in other seasons.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

No professional sports franchise is going to give 7, let alone 10, years of rope to a person making ineffective decisions when it comes to player personnel.

Maybe not, but that's not at all the same thing as saying that a period significantly shorter than that is really long enough to rely on results in determining how good his decisions have been. Which I think is what we're talking about. I mean, nobody's disputing that Cherington got fired. Nobody's necessarily even disputing that he should have been. We're disputing whether his record shows him to have been a notably terrible GM, and more specifically, whether you can throw out his one year of success as a "fluke" in answering that first question.

And I'm not saying he was outright terrible and did absolutely nothing right, but I will argue that his tenure was a "mixed bag." You're basically arguing against 2013 being a fluke, but you've done nothing to actually show it outside of "well, the sample size isn't big enough in my eyes."

Why is the burden of proof on me? You're saying we can reliably use the 2012, 2014, and 2015 results as evidence in evaluating Cherington's competence, but not the 2013 results. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on the person who makes that arbitrary distinction. The only obvious difference between 2013 and those other three seasons is that 2013 didn't suck. And if that's your grounds for insisting that 2013 is not reliable evidence, then you're arguing in a circle.

While that may or may not be true, the sample size of failure is 3x the size of success. In retrospect, nearly all of his moves didn't work out as intended, and the ones that did in 2012-2013, it isn't unreasonable to classify them as consistently unsustainable. They did happen, and rightly so he does deserve credit for the title, but if that's true he also personally deserves 3x the opposite amount of said credit for the last place finishes.

That's a reasonable statement, but it's very different from saying 2013 was a fluke. It's simply saying that on the whole, Cherington's moves resulted in more failure than success. Note that that's not quite the same thing as saying that Cherington's moves were bad more often than they were good; in order to make that leap you have to assume that luck played a neutral role in the outcomes.

I'm just a believer in calling a spade a spade, and I will forever believe that title was fluky as that team wouldn't have been a WS contender with that 90% of that same roster in other seasons.

One way to factor out 20/20 hindsight is to look at how the team performed relative to projections. According to this FG page, the Sox won this many more games than they were projected to in each of Cherington's seasons:

2012: -22
2013: +15
2014: -19
2015: -8

In this sense, 2013 was the second-least fluky season of Cherington's four-year career.

 

[MiracleOfO2704]

O'Connell: I was in Toronto when the Joe Thornton trade went down. The media types could not get any GM to acknowledge even off the record that O'Connell had contacted them about Thornton; many of them said they would have given up much more than a middle pairing defenseman, an unproven winger, and a bad checking winger for one of the league's top play makers. He was in so far over his head when the league changed after the lockout that it wasn't even funny. Off topic rant: and what did Sinden ever see in him over Al Secord anyway?

The Thornton trade is still unfathomable to me. I recall the stunned silence on TSN as it was announced. The announcers are all hockey guys and don't want to insult the players going to the Bs, but they were taken by surprise. I remember they ended the show with the idea that Thornton was perhaps injured or there was some dark secret that made teams not want him. Later in the week they talked to their sources and (as mentioned above) said teams did not even get a chance to trade for him.

This was my breaking (up) point as a B's fan, so O'Connell, and his puppet-master Sinden, got my vote in the poll and it wasn't really close. I walked away so completely the moment I heard about the trade that this is the first I'm hearing that Thornton wasn't even shopped around to the highest bidder...just makes it all the more worse. That they swept out (finally) the Sinden regime and then won a title soothed some of the bitterness I felt, but I can't go back.

I remember all the fans who tried to justify it by saying the league MVP was practically worthless because at 6'4" and 220 he was "soft" (never mind the way he setup behind the net and carried a defenseman or two on his back while constantly getting hacked and slashed and still delivered perfect passes, and never let a puck get past him when it was dumped along the wall to him) and that the real win in the trade was "cap room." So why not trade him for good draft picks, get even more cap room, and have a chance to possibly end up with a talented young player or two in the draft and money to spend?

And I won't deny that Pitino was terrible. Unlikable, seemed to be an 80's yuppie parody (he was one Phil Collins review away from being Patrick Bateman), and always seemed to be making excuses and blaming others for his failure here. But I think O'Connell was quietly the worst GM on the planet in the early 2000's.

While everyone remembers just how god-awful the Thornton trade was, later that season, O'Connell traded Sergei Samsonov to the Oilers for Yan Stastny, Marty Reasoner, and a second round pick in 2006. The reason everyone forgets how awful this trade was (keep in mind, Reasoner was gone after the 2005-06 season and Stastny was a bubble player into the 2006-07 season, then gone) and remembers the suck that was the Thornton trade was Samsonov's rapid decline after 2006 and the second round pick the Bruins got, which became Milan Lucic.

EDIT: From ESPN's article on the trade 10 years ago:

"We still want to give ourselves a chance to get in the playoffs," general manager Mike O'Connell said. "I think we've done that."

The Bruins finished the season with 74 points, worst in the division, 3rd worst in the conference, 18 points from the playoffs, and tied for the 5th worst record in the league with Columbus. They couldn't have been very close at the deadline and finished they way they did unless they hit the tank hard, but either way, the quote highlights O'Connell's incompetence.

 

[strek1]

I'm not sure how anyone associated with a world championship gets on this list let alone voted for.

 

[Bergs]

Cherington should get some credit for what he DIDN'T do, which was to burn young assets in a desperation play. Betts, Bogaerts, and JBJ could all be gone, and might have been with a shittier front office.

My vote goes to Pitino, but O'Connell is also richly deserving.

 

[RustyKuntzwasnotastripper]

I voted Pitino for many reasons already noted. Cheringtons 1st year last place finish is really a plus for him though. If he just ran the season instead of making the punto trade, he would not have finished last. Instead he puntoed on that season to set up for 2013.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

One way to factor out 20/20 hindsight is to look at how the team performed relative to projections. According to this FG page, the Sox won this many more games than they were projected to in each of Cherington's seasons:

2012: -22
2013: +15
2014: -19
2015: -8

In this sense, 2013 was the second-least fluky season of Cherington's four-year career.

Projections are not evidence of anything, actual performance is. If you seriously with a straight face believe that 2013 was the second-least fluky year of those four based entirely on what a projection system thought, we're never going to agree. Ever.

 

[shaggydog2000]

While everyone remembers just how god-awful the Thornton trade was, later that season, O'Connell traded Sergei Samsonov to the Oilers for Yan Stastny, Marty Reasoner, and a second round pick in 2006. The reason everyone forgets how awful this trade was (keep in mind, Reasoner was gone after the 2005-06 season and Stastny was a bubble player into the 2006-07 season, then gone) and remembers the suck that was the Thornton trade was Samsonov's rapid decline after 2006 and the second round pick the Bruins got, which became Milan Lucic.

EDIT: From ESPN's article on the trade 10 years ago:



The Bruins finished the season with 74 points, worst in the division, 3rd worst in the conference, 18 points from the playoffs, and tied for the 5th worst record in the league with Columbus. They couldn't have been very close at the deadline and finished they way they did unless they hit the tank hard, but either way, the quote highlights O'Connell's incompetence.

Why was it that the Bruins had to draft and also trade for the only Stastny that sucked?

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

Projections are not evidence of anything, actual performance is.

What is it that actual performance is evidence of? I mean, other than itself?

Projections aren't evidence in themselves, they're analytical interpretations of evidence. No one would claim they're definitive, but their relevance to this discussion is that they represent the most objective possible a priori evaluation of the job the general manager has done the preceding winter. If a team significantly underperforms its projections three out of four years, then it seems like a reasonable surmise that the general manager didn't do as bad a job as the results indicate. At the very least, you can say that if he overestimated the quality of the team he had put together, he wasn't alone or unsupported in this.

If you seriously with a straight face believe that 2013 was the second-least fluky year of those four based entirely on what a projection system thought, we're never going to agree. Ever.

I don't believe that 2013 was the second-least fluky year of those four; I don't have any beliefs at all about it. I'm just pointing out that there is evidence to support that view. What's your evidence for the view that 2013 is the most fluky?

 

[lexrageorge]

Regarding O'Connell, during his last season in Boston, there were also credible rumors that Bergeron was going to be traded in the upcoming offseason, during which Bergy was going to be arbitration eligible. Patrice was Boston's leading scorer that season with 31 goals, but there were rumblings that his asking price was going to be too high. Fortunately, those never came to pass, as O'Connell was mercifully let go late in the season.

I walked away so completely the moment I heard about the trade that this is the first I'm hearing that Thornton wasn't even shopped around to the highest bidder...

I was spending a lot of time in Toronto for work around that period. The hockey coverage there, both in the local rags and on TV, was far superior to what we would get from KPD and his gang at the Globe and Herald. The Globe beat writers, KPD in particular, were always too quick to defend the Bruins management, and of course claimed that O'Connell had no other choice but to trade Thornton, and that the return was the best that could be expected, blah, blah, blah.

While everyone remembers just how god-awful the Thornton trade was, later that season, O'Connell traded Sergei Samsonov to the Oilers for Yan Stastny, Marty Reasoner, and a second round pick in 2006. The reason everyone forgets how awful this trade was (keep in mind, Reasoner was gone after the 2005-06 season and Stastny was a bubble player into the 2006-07 season, then gone) and remembers the suck that was the Thornton trade was Samsonov's rapid decline after 2006 and the second round pick the Bruins got, which became Milan Lucic.

Warning: off topic alert. Yes, that was a pretty bad trade, despite how it worked out. But it's fun to look at that trade as part of a continuing thread that dates back to June 6, 1986, when flashy center Barry Pederson was traded to Vancouver for a young but raw right winger named Cam Neely.

After having scored 163 goals for the Bruins in 4 full seasons (and one injury shortened one), Pederson would score only 60 in 4 difficult seasons for Vancouver, and would end up being traded to the Penguins for Dave Capuano, Andrew McBain, and Dan Quinn. Capuano (16 career goals with Vancouver) would get traded to Tampa Bay for Anatoli Semenov (10), who would be claimed by Anaheim in the expansion draft the following season. McBain (5) would leave as a free agent.

Quinn (34) would be traded to the Blues for Geoff Courtnall, Robert Dirk, Sergio Momesso, Cliff Ronning, and the draft pick that would become Brian Loney. Courtnall (102) would go back to St. Louis as a free agent. Dirk (9) would be traded for a low round draft pick. Momesso (68) would be traded to Toronto for Mike Ridley (26), who would retire after 2 seasons with the Canucks. Ronning (112) would leave as a free agent to Phoenix. Loney would play in 12 career NHL games, all for Vancouver, and contribute 2 goals.

We all know that Cam Neely would score 344 goals with Boston. However, Boston also got Vancouver's first round pick, which the Bruins used to draft Glen Wesley. After 7 productive years with Boston (77 goals, or 17 more than Pederson had with Vancouver), Wesley would be traded to the Hartford Whalers for 3 first round picks that would become Kyle McLaren, Jonathan Aitken, and Sergei Samsanov. After 7 years and 34 goals with the Bruins, McLaren would be traded to San Jose for a pair of Jeff's in Jeff Hackett and Jeff Jillson. Hackett would play only 18 games in net for the Bruins before leaving as a free agent. Jillson, somehow, was traded back to San Jose for Brad Boyes. After 39 goals with the Bruins, Boyes would be traded, perhaps prematurely, for mobile blue liner Dennis Wideman. After 33 goals with the Bruins, Wideman would be flipped for Nathan Horton (56 goals with the B's) and Gregory Campbell (39), both of whom have since left as free agents.

Aitken would only appear in 3 games with Boston. Samsonov, of course, would score 164 goals in 8 productive years with Boston before the above mentioned trade. Looch would add 139 of his own, and has since turned into Colin Miller, Zboril, Sean Kuraly, and a 2016 first round pick.

Vancouver's net from the trade: 444 total goals.

Boston's net from the trade: 928 goals, two young defensemen prospects, an upcoming first round pick, and 3 key members of the 2011 Stanley Cup winning team.

 

[reggiecleveland]

We have to wait and see for Ben. If JBJ, Rusney, go on to be good MLB players that would be a big plus for him.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

I don't believe that 2013 was the second-least fluky year of those four; I don't have any beliefs at all about it. I'm just pointing out that there is evidence to support that view. What's your evidence for the view that 2013 is the most fluky?

If you don't believe it, why are you posting it? It's not evidence of anything, projections are nothing more than guesswork, highly inaccurate guesswork given those numbers. Lastly, we've already been over this in the topic on why 2013 was fluky: career years and circumstance. If you disagree and you'd like to project Cherington as anything but a failure of a GM entirely because Iglesias missed a play he makes 99 times out of 100 and Hunter didn't jump a half second later, then fine.

 

[lexrageorge]

If you don't believe it, why are you posting it? It's not evidence of anything, projections are nothing more than guesswork, highly inaccurate guesswork given those numbers. Lastly, we've already been over this in the topic on why 2013 was fluky: career years and circumstance. If you disagree and you'd like to project Cherington as anything but a failure of a GM entirely because Iglesias missed a play he makes 99 times out of 100 and Hunter didn't jump a half second later, then fine.

I don't believe that the concept of 2013 being fluky is an inarguable concept that cannot be debated. The argument hasn't been settled to anyone's satisfaction. And, even if it was, and even given the plays you mentioned, that doesn't make Cherington a "failure of a GM". As noted above, we probably need to see what guys like Moncada, Castillo, JBJ, and others turn into before we make that the final statement on Cherington's tenure.

Also, I wonder if anyone is ready to nominate Sweeney right about now [/game thread alert]

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

If you don't believe it, why are you posting it? It's not evidence of anything, projections are nothing more than guesswork, highly inaccurate guesswork given those numbers. Lastly, we've already been over this in the topic on why 2013 was fluky: career years and circumstance. If you disagree and you'd like to project Cherington as anything but a failure of a GM entirely because Iglesias missed a play he makes 99 times out of 100 and Hunter didn't jump a half second later, then fine.

This is asinine. Even if the Tigers had won that series, that season was an enormous success. It feels like people are forgetting that the plan was always to build a bridge (or bridges) to the prospects who are blossoming right now (Betts, Bogaerts, Swihart, etc.). Maybe taking 2.5 years to come to fruition is on a longer timeline than some had hoped, but it's not an unreasonable amount of time. The Red Sox approach was essentially to use their financial muscle to take chances on free agents in shorter deals where possible and hope for some good health and luck to maybe get into the playoffs while waiting on the kids.

It worked one year, it didn't in 2014 and it wasn't really too far from working last year. The Red Sox were a very good team from the point Cherington left until the season ended (25-17 record). They were even a pretty good team post all star break (36-37 record). Cherington took over a team that was a bloated mess in 2012 and hit the reset button at the trade deadline. After just three more seasons he left them with what, at that time, was arguably the best farm system in the sport (still top 5 after dealing to top 50 prospects), a young major league roster with several budding stars and a team that was an ace and a bit of bullpen help away from being playoff caliber.

Any argument that he is in the discussion for worst GM of the 2000's is silly, IMO.

 

[reggiecleveland]

If Cherington had come along and done what he did anytime before 2004 he would be on the list of greatest with Belicek and Red. He got lucky to win a title? Well pitino got lucky and drafted Pierce, that was part of winning a title long after Pitino's smell had washed off the team, we have asimilar silver lining with Lucic. I mean we have two guys that fluked into drafting good players, not championships.

I have coached hoops for a long time, so I will use a hoops comparison for BC. There are times you do things that take luck to win, and you get lucky, or unlucky, but you have to make a decision that allows that luck to play out. It is not like Ben hit half two court shots in 2013. It is more like he put all his shooters out there and they made 14/20 3s in the 2nd half to win. It would likely not happen again, but they were all guys that had a chance of going off. It wasn't like a bunch of bad shooters made shots Where Ben gets a black mark in my books is repeating the same type of mistake he extricated himself from with the Punto trade,by signing questionable guys to overpays that hamstring the franchise. But, even that has yet to be played out. Less than great GM? Probably. Below average? possibly. Worst? Not a chance.

Edit: Theo didn't get lucky? He went out and got Jason Giambi then later picked up the Ortiz kid after Pedro suggested him, and he was safe by like a foot.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

Stretch much? It was posted earlier the "reset button" wasn't Cherington. Plus, being "an ace and a bullpen away" from being a "playoff contender" is a pretty gargantahugean chunk of a team. I'm only an Oscar and a couple million in the bank away from bagging Jennifer Lawrence, you know.

All that, plus cherry picking arbitrary chunks of an otherwise garbage season to describe them as "pretty good" is what's truly asinine. One could just as easily say they were "pretty good" once Cherington's two high-profile FA signings were off the field and they were essentially working with a squad they were forced into rather than one the GM envisioned.

 

[InsideTheParker]

But for one offseason it all came together for him, and that's the definition of a fluke. And BTW, a fluke championship is not a bad thing. It's still a championship and there's nothing anyone has to apologize for. If you think about it most championships are flukes because layers have to perform their best all at once, injuries can't strike and the front office needs to make all the right moves. Essentially the stars have to align perfectly.

Yes.

If you disagree and you'd like to project Cherington as anything but a failure of a GM entirely because Iglesias missed a play he makes 99 times out of 100 and Hunter didn't jump a half second later, then fine.

2004 was a fluke because Jeter's tag was a second or two late and he didn't get Roberts at 2nd? Also, the usually infallible Mariano wasn't?

 

[Adrian's Dome]

That may be a comparable argument if Jeter hadn't made that play because of an error, not because Roberts beat him there straight up.

 

[lexrageorge]

No, 2004 was a fluke because Tony Clark's double went into the stands.

The Patriots 2001 Super Bowl title was also fluke by the definition being used here.

 

[MiracleOfO2704]

@lexrageorge I was going to mention something about the trade continuing the legacy of the Pederson trade, Wesley branch, but yeah, that's a better summary for those that didn't know.

I also forgot that Wideman and Horton/Campbell were in the lineage.

 

[Adrian's Dome]

If it weren't for '03 and '04, the 2001 SB very well may have been remembered as a fluke. Go ask your average football fan their opinion of the tuck rule, regardless of what the rule book said.

Comparably, 2013 may be looked at in a different light if not for the results of 2014 and 2015 and their offseasons under the same regime.

But by all means, bring on the hyperbole.

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

If it weren't for '03 and '04, the 2001 SB very well may have been remembered as a fluke.

So "fluke" is defined by the occurrence of completely unrelated events in totally different sports? Good lord...

Edit: No, wait you're talking about the 2003 and 2004 Superbowls. Still dumb, but whatever. Your position has zero consistency. Not worth engaging anymore.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

No, 2004 was a fluke because Tony Clark's double went into the stands.

And he spat on a middle-middle Keith Foulke "fastball" in Game 6.

 

[crystalline]

If it weren't for '03 and '04, the 2001 SB very well may have been remembered as a fluke. Go ask your average football fan their opinion of the tuck rule, regardless of what the rule book said.

Comparably, 2013 may be looked at in a different light if not for the results of 2014 and 2015 and their offseasons under the same regime.

But by all means, bring on the hyperbole.

I wasn't really on board with your argument before but now I'm fully off your train. It's not even clear what you're arguing anymore. It started as "only results matter, not process", which I don't agree with. But hey, I realize some people like to focus on the final outcome, which includes things outside of Cherington's control.

But now your argument seems to be that flukes (things outside of Cherington's control) should be ignored. Come again???

---

For the record I mostly agree with Snod when he says Cherington lost his job and probably deserved to lose it, but he did good things too: building the farm, keeping the blue chip prospects, and acquiring a couple short term guys that pushed them over the hump once.

Pitino is far far worse than Cherington, despite picking Pierce. There's a reason he hasn't moved back to the pros. Cherington is very likely to get another chance at a GM job.


Also on the main thread topic-- Pioli's performance outside of New England makes me think he might have been a terrible GM too if he was allowed to go it alone.

 

[SydneySox]

Why is 2013 the fluke? Why not three years around it? It's almost as if we could examine every one of those years and define reasons for success and failure beyond luck. Sorry, flukiness (does flukiness have an i or a y?).

These years didn't exist in a world where World Series success was the only verifiable success on a season and therefore the GM's ability. Of course, it would be impossible to suggest a GM who wins every year was anything but perfect, but that GM does not exist.

A greater question would be what happened in the years that weren't 2013 that could be defined as failure; 29 GM's fail every year. Usually the same ones, some of them never succeeding, if winning a World Series is the only definition of success.

For instance, an obvious point would be that 'failing' in Major League Baseball (and most US sports) actually brings relative benefits. The first is the amateur draft positioning and the second is the potential for roster flexibility. I'm going to acknowledge the role of every GM is to win a World Series every year just this one last time so we can all agree that's a Universal Truth but there is a multitude of clear reasons why, when it's clear you're not going to win, it makes sense in many ways to move forward. I'd argue it's the good GM who makes good decisions in a failing season - you aren't a bad GM because you don't win the World Series and I think any argument that reduces the conversation to 'Ben got lucky' is ridiculous.