Red Sox Plagued By A Spoiled Brat Front Office

Boston Red Sox principal owner, John Henry describes baseball as "an affair of the heart."

However, he forgot to use his head.  Using an extensive bank account, he tried to buy pennant after pennant.  The reality of baseball is that players, who are hungry, produce.  Those that are not, have a sense of entitlement.

Second generation baseball man, Terry Francona, saw the decay with his own eyes during his eight year tenure.

Listening to Moneyball baffoon, former number crunching security guard, Bill James over knowledgeable baseball people, the Red Sox after breaking an 86 year drought with Francona as manager in 2004 has slipped into the category of expensive also ran.

The 2004 team was filled with pros like Bronson Arroyo and Kevin Millar, the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALCS after losing the first three games.  That team had character.  The 2011 team had characters and spit the bit, losing 20 of its last 27 games.

Henry and his partner Tom Werner, who was a TV executive, took over the team from the Tom Yawkey trust in 2002.  The Red Sox farm system had the team stocked with talent.  The Reds Sox made the playoffs in 2003 and reached game seven against the Yankees in the ALCS.  A home run in extra innings by former Cincinnati Reds player, Aaron Boone, spoiled the season.

The neophyte front office made manager Grady Little the scapegoat.  This head scratching move should have tipped baseball off to the infantile management style that led to the current decay of the Sox.  How can you fire a manager because his team lost a hard fought game on the brink of the World Series.  It took a season of success to get to that point.  One shouldn't throw it away because one game did not go your way regardless of the magnitude.

Dan Duquette, as general manager, built the core of the team that was in place that made the playoffs in 2003 and 2004.

Ivy leaguer, Theo Epstein, was named general manager prior to the 2003 season.  Talk about being in the right place at the right time.  The youthful 28 year old baseball neophyte had the luxury of a big checkbook to go out and buy players.  As any young entitled rich kid would do, he threw money at problems, taking the easy way out.  It was like giving any kid in their mid 20's a credit card with no limit.  He spent and spent.  He hired the number crunching Bill James as an advisor.

The Red Sox had the core in place to win and early success was inevitable when the money could mask the problems.

The Red Sox despite winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007 began to decline under his overspending.

Red Sox players now have little motivation to produce.  The lack of perspective has given way to a decline in production.

Terry Francona with limited baseball talents worked his way to a baseball career.  Unfortunately, his charges lost that work ethic.  Francona stepped down but alluded to lack of commitment from ownership down the stretch.

"I don't know that I felt real comfortable," Francona was quoted in the Boston Globe during the press conference set up for his resignation. "You've got to be all in on this job. I voiced that today. Going through things here to make it work, it's go to be everybody together, and I was questioning some of that a little bit."


Major League baseball has become the playground of the rich and entitled.   John Henry got into baseball with the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Baseball League.


I was an intern with that league during my days at St. John's University's athletic administration program.  I worked in the league office and was in on several conference calls.  I got the impression that the owners had no clue what they were getting into.  They wanted the prestige of owning a baseball team whether or not it made fiscal sense.  They had the money to waste.


The tragedy is that these same rich fans are buying into baseball with the same spend-because-you-have it attitude.  Real baseball people are no longer hold the key baseball operations jobs.


Theo Epstein was a decent PR guy for the San Diego Padres but making baseball decisions is not his strong suit.  It has taken nine years for the decay of the Red Sox to show the folly of building teams with "stats gurus" and check books.


Terry Francona is the fall guy because he knows the team has taken the incorrect approach all along and said so.