Cherington's FO mea culpa this morning in the Globe:
http://www.boston.com/sports/basebal...tKN/story.html
Pretty much consistent with my previous post last night, before this article came out. The decline of the Red Sox was a decline of the front office. It wasn't chicken and beer, and other such nonsense. It wasn't even Tito--though Tito was a very lax manager--at least in the end without his bench coach, Mills, to keep things in order.
Cherington says they changed direction. Part of the problem was Lucchino-Epstein's cost cutting, which eliminated a number of saber consultants, including Bill James. Maybe others, since we don't know much about the FO.Another part was the loss of Hoyer and Byrnes by promotion to other teams. These guys were probably no. 2 and 3 in the FO. Were they replaced? Doesn't appear so.
Cherington, under obvious financial constraints, made a number of personnel decisions this year which blew up in his face. The worst one was moving Bard to starter. Especially when it was known that he might have anxiety issues on starting based on his minor league experiences. They figured they would save money on signing a new starter by moving him, and they may have wrecked his career. The other bad moves were the trades-- with Oakland and Houston. Lowry would probably found injuries again in Boston, but he is a better SS than what they presently have. Melancon was a disaster. In Bailey, they inherited another injury machine, when they might have gotten Gio G. with close to the same package. They tried to get both, but their priority was Bailey--the closer. Wrong priority. Bard would have probably made a better closer than Aceves. Now we may never know. The oine decent thing they did was sign Ross.
Cherington mentions the Dodger deal that "we" pulled off. Even though Henry has dictated that Cherington get "credit" for the deal (isn't it nice to be stroked by your boss?), the facts reported in several places says the deal was pulled off by Henry and Kasten at the owners meetings in mid-August. GMs don't do these kind of deals, and nobody really thinks Ben had the authority to do anything like this anyways. I do, however, think Ben et al in the FO had a big hand in picking out the Dodger prospects coming to Boston. Good job, there, I think.
I still have my doubts the current FO is capable of turning this team around--at least very quickly. More changes will probably be needed, and the addition of James and other veteran scouts is a step in the right direction.