On Friday I listed the winners of the off-season. Now let’s look at the losers.
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Boston Red Sox
It’s not the maneuvers they made that are specifically bad.
Confusing? Yes, trading Marco Scutaro to free up some money and then spending some of that money to sign Cody Ross while leaving shortstop in the questionable hands of Nick Punto, Mike Aviles and/or rookie Jose Iglesias was one of a long line of bizarre decisions, but none could be called “bad”.
My focus is on the perceived and practical appearance of disarray that’s taken hold in Boston since the departure of Theo Epstein.
Say what you want about Epstein and the moves he made, but you knew he was in charge.
Now, with Ben Cherington elevated to GM and Larry Lucchino clearly diving into the breach and interfering in team matters (Bobby Valentine would not be the Red Sox manager without Lucchino championing him), there’s a troubling lack of cohesion.
What you have is a team of well-paid stars whose behavior was enabled by a disciplinary lackadaisical former manager, good guy Terry Francona; a transition from a clubhouse dominated by Jason Varitek to…who?; a front office with multiple voices and philosophies trying to gain sway; and a polarizing manager who won’t want to blow what is probably his final chance to manage in the majors and working on a 2-year contract.
They haven’t addressed issues in the starting rotation other than hope that Daniel Bard can make the transition from reliever to starter and sign a bunch of low-cost veterans on minor league deals to see if they can cobble together a back-end of the rotation. But what happened with the Yankees and Freddy Garcia/Bartolo Colon in 2011 doesn’t happen too often, so the Red Sox shouldn’t expect to get similar renaissance-level/amazing rise performances from Aaron Cook, Vicente Padilla, John Maine and Clayton Mortensen.
There are more questions than answers with this team and the solution to what ails them starts at the top.
And at the top, it’s chaos.
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Baltimore Orioles
Regardless of the ridicule his hiring received, Dan Duquette is a highly competent baseball man who never got the credit he deserved for helping put together the Expos of the 1990s or the Red Sox of recent vintage.
But the Orioles are devoid of talent, especially on the mound, and it doesn’t matter how qualified the manager (Buck Showalter) and GM are, you can’t win if you don’t have talent.
What the Orioles have to do is make the difficult decision to take their most marketable assets—Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Jim Johnson and even Matt Wieters—and let the rest of baseball know that they’re open for business and willing to listen to any and all offers.
Whether owner Peter Angelos or Showalter will be on board with that is up in the air.
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Oakland Athletics
So Billy Beane gets another rebuild?
How many is this now? Five?
The Athletics use a lack of funds and a difficult division—along with their GM’s increasingly ridiculous and fictional reputation as a “genius”—to justify trading away all of their young talent for the future.
That future is far away in the distance and contingent on a new ballpark that they hope, pray, plead, beg will one day come their way.
Here’s a question: why do the Rays, facing the same logistical issues as the Athletics, try and win by making intelligent, cost-effective moves with their players and somehow succeed while a supposed “genius” is continually given a pass because of a resume that is bottom-line fabricated from start-to-finish?
Yet we’ll again hear how Beane got the “right” players in dumping Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill and Andrew Bailey.
Right players for what?
If the answer is losing close to 100 games, then he’s definitely succeeded.
Oh, they kept Coco Crisp and signed Bartolo Colon.
Beane deserves an Oscar more than Brad Pitt for maintaining the veneer of knowing something others don’t.
It’s a ruse and you’re a fool if you continue to fall for it.
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Milwaukee Brewers
They understandably lost Prince Fielder because they couldn’t and wouldn’t approach the $214 million he received from the Tigers.
Signing Aramis Ramirez was a good decision and they kept their bullpen and starting rotation together, but their hot stove season was pockmarked with the failed(?) drug test of NL MVP Ryan Braun and possible 50 game suspension for using PEDs.
With the pitching and remaining offense in a mediocre division, they’d be able to hang around contention even without Fielder, but missing Braun for 50 games could bury them.
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St. Louis Cardinals
You can’t lose three Hall of Fame caliber people and consider the off-season a success. Albert Pujols, Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan are all gone. Lance Berkman and Carlos Beltran will offset the loss of Pujols…somewhat, but he’s still Pujols and fundamentally irreplaceable.
Mike Matheny has never managed before and it was the rebuilding aptitude of Dave Duncan that salvaged something out of the broken down and finished pitchers he continually fixed like an abandoned but still workable car.
LaRussa is the best manager of this generation.
A seamless transition? No way.
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