This week the biggest news has not been on the player front, but rather noise from some front offices. Theo Epstein returned as general manager of the Boston Red Sox and new Cincinnati Reds owner Bob Castellini's first move is to fire GM Dan O’Brien.
Leaves as a Gorilla, Returns as a King
Epstein was the epitome of the new breed general manager, highly educated, analytical, and not a baseball insider. He was also just 28, the youngest GM in baseball history. In just three years under his direction, the Boston Red Sox won at least 95 games a season, and won the World Series for the first time in 86 years.
While Red Sox fans celebrated, there was a fundamental disagreement between Epstein and his mentor, club President Larry Lucchino. This disagreement boiled over on Halloween; Epstein quit and Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington were promoted to co-GMs.
Then again, did Epstein ever really leave? In December, he was hired as a special assistant. Hoyer and Cherington were told that their promotions were only temporary. Epstein would return.
After I spent 10 years working in a completely dysfunctional organization, when I read the press release announcing Epstein’s return, my bull-meter spiked. I’ve read this crap before. My former organization would realize that it needed to “maximize a large scale inward investment” as a “prospectus for change” to better “leverage” some “synergy” in order to “take it to the next level.” It would require some immediate “matrix working” to “mainstream good practices,” but once everything was “actionable” all “functions would operate as a single entity instead of being integrated into key functional areas.” In the meantime, be prepared to “jump through hoops” during the “exercise in box-ticking” lest you are left “out of the loop.”
Every time that e-mail was sent out, I’d play Rush’s "Bastille Day" full blast out of my cubicle. After 10 years of this stupidity, I looked forward to seeing who was going to take the long walk up to the guillotine.
The best method of translating management speak into common english is to cross out every word that doesn’t mean anything and see what is left. When you perform this exercise on the Red Sox press release you see two things. Epstein has been rehired as general manager and his new title is Executive Vice President and General Manager as opposed to “Senior Vice President and General Manager.” In other words, he won the argument.
Exactly was made Epstein leave is unknown. All the Red Sox will say is that it had to do with baseball philosophy. Conventional wisdom says that there was a disagreement between Lucchino and Epstein over player development vs. win now or are the Red Sox a business or a baseball team.
I look at from a more pragmatic perspective. This argument was more in line about whether Lucchino was going to treat Epstein as a kid or whether he was going to treat him like a general manager. The answer is that Epstein will be treated as the general manager.
From a fantasy perspective, Epstein wants to develop the minor leagues as a means to bring in talent and to help keep costs down. This is a long-term approach and requires that the team keep its prospects instead of trading them for pieces to win now. By not trading for the present, the Red Sox will sacrifice some wins over the season, but in the long term, they will be better off. Epstein realizes that to beat the Yankees means being smarter than the Yankees and not falling into the trap of trying to match them tit for tat.
New Owner, New GM
It took only four days for new owner Castellini to make some changes and he started from the top, firing GM O’Brien. The payroll was increased from $40 million to $62 million in the two years O’Brien was GM, but the team was no better in the standings.
It is pretty obvious where the problem lay. The Red signed Eric Milton to shore up the starting rotation. Of course Milton is an extreme fly ball pitcher pitching in the best hitting park behind Coors Field. Even if they find someone to trade Milton for a ground ball pitcher, when your double play combination is Felipe Lopez and Ryan Freel, solid defense is not the first thing that comes to mind.
No, O’Brien’s response is that they needed a lefty, so he traded Sean Casey for Dave Williams, a more extreme fly ball pitcher than Milton. Needless to say, O’Brien is so clueless that he said he was surprised when he was let go.
What happens in Cincinnati depends upon who is hired. Castellini has made it clear that he is looking for results and will continue to make changes until he gets those results.
Other News
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