The reason I'm not quick to forgive Cherington for three failures out of four is that he had the third highest payroll in the game, and that brings with it certain expectations. When you have significant monetary advantage over 90% of the other teams out there, then yes, it's reasonable to expect a winning record every year at the very least. I understand that markets have changed, and free agency isn't nearly the guaranteed difference maker it used to be, but at the end of the day, Cherington's job was to put together a winning team, and he had the third most money of any GM to work with, and he failed 75% of the time. So I think it's fair to call 2013 a fluke. Sure, you could say that 4 years is too small a sample size to make judgments on, but in that case, you can't really judge any GM's four years, and that's just silly. If your response is to say that Cherington caught some unlucky breaks, then well, that's possible in some cases. But it's also his job to anticipate and plan for those breaks (which, it should be noted, is what he drew praise for in 2013: building depth, so that there were players to step in when starters got injured). The third richest team in baseball shouldn't have to rely on lucky breaks. We're not the A's.
Worst Boston General Manager -- the 00s
- Thread starter John Marzano Olympic Hero
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After all this talk about Cherington, where at least reasonable people can disagree on his track record as GM, something appears to have slipped under the radar: in the all time WTF category, we have 2 votes for The Hoodie???!!! I didn't know Ron Borges trolled this board....
Earlier today I thought I saw a vote for DD. It`s not there now, I could be wrong but I thought at the time it was completely nuts.
I know this is a baseball centric forum, but I find it unfathomable to compare the recent Sox management teams to Pitino and O'Connell. Sure maybe one was a highly optioned BMW, and the other was that Caddilac that tries to compete and people say nice things about, but you know is just not the same, but the competition is a Yugo and an AMC Pacer. If you win a championship, even by accident, you are simply in a higher league than two franchise destroying jackasses.
I don't get the bitterness that some folks hold towards Ben Cherington. Four years ago was the second-lowest point I can remember as a Red Sox fan. A team that just had one of the biggest late-season chokes of all time. Chicken and beer. Tito and Theo gone. Bobby f****** Valentine being introduced as Francona's replacement. It felt like ownership was clueless and the greatest Red Sox era in a century was over for good. Instead, we got the amazing 2013 championship ride and the introduction of an exciting core of young players. As much as some of Ben's moves are frustrating to consider in retrospect, those misgivings will never overshadow his role in bringing another title to Boston and leaving a strong foundation of young major and minor league talent for Dombrowski & company to build upon.
No matter what one thinks of Cherington, he gets a pass for 2012. His choice for manager was overridden by Lucchino; they had no budget to go out and sign free agents; and he was forced to trade Youkilis for pennies after Valentine destroyed whatever trade value Youks had remaining.
Could have been worse. At least Bobby the Fifth got the boot. Do we ascribe that to Cherington? I think he gets some credit.
Ben certainly pulled the trigger, but I have to think the autonomy to pull that trigger wouldn't have come if Bobby hadn't been Bobby. I don't think there was any other choice but to fire him after that season. Could there possibly have been even one person in that organization who thought bringing Bobby Valentine back for 2013 would be a good idea? Aside from Bobby, of course.
Ps the Popeye's on Brookline used to have a picture of Beckett featured prominently.
I always laughed a little inside at it.
I was never sure who was the real shot caller during the Cherington years, Ben or LL. Once they neutered Ben with the Valentine hire, I assumed LL was the real GM.
Youkilis playing like crap for a year+ destroyed whatever trade value Youkilis had remaining. The mistake was not trading Youkilis when he still had value and re-signing Beltre (or just not making the Gonzalez trade), but that was on Theo, not Ben.
I think we're getting into Inigo Montoya territory with this word "fluke." It's not synonymous with "uncharacteristic or exceptional result." Here's one online definition:
unlikely chance occurrence, especially a surprising piece of luck.
It's one thing to say that Cherington made more bad decisions than good ones, and that his 2013 success was not characteristic of his performance here--which is what your first sentence quoted above boils down to. I wouldn't be inclined to push back very hard on that. But that is not the same as saying 2013 was a fluke. Saying it was a fluke is saying that he was essentially flying blind, had no idea what he was doing, and just happened to get very lucky that one year and have everything go right for him. And I think that's absurd.
Agreed, but also because it comes to the completely arbitrary and simple conclusion that there's only one way to succeed.
I voted pitino, but it should be noted the team he left went to the conference finals as soon as he was gone. I don't give him credit for taking pierce at 10 though. That was a no brainer.
It's hard to evaluate Cherington because we don 't know exactly how much real power he had. The disaster that was to be Bobby Valentine was forced on him. (How great his own choice of Dale Sveum would have been is questionable, but surely not worse.) On the other hand the Punto trade was apparently the work of John Henry after he concluded the season was hopeless, according to a recent book on the Dodgers by an LA reporter whose name escapes me now.
We don't know to what extent the disastrous singings of Ramdovar and Porcello were primarily at the instigation of Ben or John and Larry. The same for the more promising expensive signings of Moncada and Castillo.
Cherington should get credit for his handling of Cody Ross who was signed late in the free agent season of 2011-12 for a bargain one year contract of $8,000,000. He hit 22 home runs with 81 RBIs and an.807 OPS. He wanted to stay but Cherington let him go to Arizona for three years and $30,000,000. In the last three years total he has hit 10 HR's with 33 RBI's. Those are the kind of moves that enlightened GM's are supposed to make..
In the future we may remember Theo Epstein's last years not for the postseason misses and the Carl Crawford signing but for his perhaps epochal last draft in 2011 of Blake Swihart, Mookie Betts, and Jackie Bradley. In the same way if we are celebrating a championship in the future we may also remember Ben Cherington not just for the free agent signings of 2013 tut also for his farm system and the signings of Rafael Devers, Yoan Moncada, Rusney Castillo, Javier Guerra, Anderson Espiinoza and Andrew Benitendi.
We don't know to what extent the disastrous singings of Ramdovar and Porcello were primarily at the instigation of Ben or John and Larry. The same for the more promising expensive signings of Moncada and Castillo.
Cherington should get credit for his handling of Cody Ross who was signed late in the free agent season of 2011-12 for a bargain one year contract of $8,000,000. He hit 22 home runs with 81 RBIs and an.807 OPS. He wanted to stay but Cherington let him go to Arizona for three years and $30,000,000. In the last three years total he has hit 10 HR's with 33 RBI's. Those are the kind of moves that enlightened GM's are supposed to make..
In the future we may remember Theo Epstein's last years not for the postseason misses and the Carl Crawford signing but for his perhaps epochal last draft in 2011 of Blake Swihart, Mookie Betts, and Jackie Bradley. In the same way if we are celebrating a championship in the future we may also remember Ben Cherington not just for the free agent signings of 2013 tut also for his farm system and the signings of Rafael Devers, Yoan Moncada, Rusney Castillo, Javier Guerra, Anderson Espiinoza and Andrew Benitendi.
On Theo's 2011 draft: ...and Barnes, and Owens, and Shaw. I know you were listing the standouts, but getting six players who get more than a cup of coffee from a single draft is a *haul,* especially when there's at least one All Star in there. That draft has *already* yielded 12 WAR.
Thanks for your reference. I never thought of WAR as a way to evaluate drafts. (I should have.) I took a quick look at the 94 Nomar/Pavano, the 02 Lester/Brandon Moss and the 05 Ellsbury/Buchholz /Lowrie drafts. It is very hard to get above 50 or 60 WAR even with international signings included. The 2011 draft has the potential to blow through that ceiling to over 100