Red Sox Pitchers Deny Report Of Drinking In The Dugout

Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino opened the affair with a brief introduction, after which Cherington mostly took over. He’s an impressive fellow, and began by speaking at length and in complete sentences, without notes. He was more articulate than Theo Epstein, who had seemed somewhat ill at ease in the same setting. Which doesn’t necessarily say anything about their relative abilities as baseball executives. It’s just something that struck me.

Otherwise, Cherington said exactly the sort of things you would expect him to say. There was an interesting question, but how to formulate an interesting answer?

From Taiwan:

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Another selection from Feeding the Monster; this time it’s George Steinbrenner on Larry Lucchino:

↵He’s not the kind of guy you want to have in your foxhole. He’s running the team behind John Henry’s back. I warned John it would happen, told him, “Just be careful.” He talks out of both sides of his mouth. He has trouble talking out of the front of it.

I’ve got ambivalent feelings about John Henry.

It’s quite possible that Fenway Park would today be just a memory without John Henry. The previous owners wanted to destroy Fenway, and Henry probably could have made that happen after taking over. He chose not to, and baseball is better for it. A lot better.

But aside from the timing, what sticks out to me is: who really cares what an owner thinks about a baseball player? Owners are not talent evaluators. That’s why there are front offices, made up of a bunch of talent evaluators. Evaluating talent is their business, not ownership’s business, so of course Henry deferred to Epstein and his assistants. It would be stupid and arrogant if he didn’t. Look at that quote. “We had plenty of left-handed hitting.” Like that’s what matters. Does that sound like something that would be said by someone who ought to be building a roster?

This isn’t the first time Henry has said that he opposed a move. In the past, as here, he deferred to his front office. That is the right thing to do. An owner should trust his front office and sign off on its decisions. If an owner does not trust his front office, he should put together a different front office.