Ken Davidoff's baseball insider
Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka looks at the ball during a 2010 game against the Yankees. Credit: AP
New Sox GM Isn’t Green
This coming week, once the compensation deal can be worked out, the Cubs likely will introduce Theo Epstein as their new general manager — at which point the Red Sox will anoint current assistant GM Ben Cherington as Epstein’s successor in Boston.
As we’ve seen from the revelations of the past few weeks, the Red Sox fell apart in shocking fashion and must repair fractured relationships both inside and outside the organization.
One step toward closing their credibility gap would be the hiring of an experienced manager such as Joe Torre or Bobby Valentine to complement their rookie GM.
That’s not expected, however — Torre says he isn’t interested anyway — because the Red Sox don’t regard Cherington as a bona fide rookie. The 37-year-old actually served as co-GM during Epstein’s temporary departure in late 2005 and early 2006, and in more recent seasons, he has been handling many of the day-to-day duties associated with the GM post.
You can find a similar setup in Oakland, where David Forst does much of the work under GM Billy Beane, and you used to in Cleveland, as Chris Antonetti (now the GM) apprenticed under Mark Shapiro (now the team president).
The better bet is that Cherington replaces Terry Francona with someone like the 2004 version of Francona. Some major-league experience would help, but more important is a willingness to utilize statistical analysis and to work in conjunction with the rest of the baseball operations department.
Steady, but Slow
During the 2006 World Series, Major League Baseball and the Players Association proudly announced that they had come to terms on a five-year collective-bargaining agreement. It set a new benchmark for timing, and as the two sides began working toward their next CBA, they aspired to match it this year.
With the World Series just three days away, however, people in the loop aren’t optimistic that such an accord will be completed.
The two sides are meeting virtually every day, engaging in a largely healthy back-and- forth, with the biggest rancor surrounding Bud Selig’s desire to implement hard slotting in the amateur draft.
It’s hard to envision the disagreements leading to any sort of work stoppage. Yet it appears that the owners and players won’t be able to match the positive public relations they generated five years ago.
Working the System
The Rangers and Angels just aren’t going to make trades with each other. There’s too much anxiety over getting burned.
The Rangers used to admire Angels catcher Mike Napoli from a distance, trying and failing to acquire him. When the Angels dealt Napoli to Toronto on Jan. 21, Texas quickly reached out to the Blue Jays. Within four days, Napoli went to the Rangers for reliever Frank Francisco and cash.
I asked Rangers GM Jon Daniels — he’s a Queens native — if he routinely kept an eye on players in the AL West whom he couldn’t acquire by trade but could hope would get dealt to a different club so he could pounce.
“I don’t think of it that way. It’s not that clear-cut.” Daniels said. “But sure, you see a guy you get interested in, and he moves, you check in on him.”
Back in 2007, the Red Sox eyed the Yankees’ Kei Igawa from a distance, hoping the Yankees would give up and trade the Japanese lefthander so Boston could go after him. But the Yankees never dealt Igawa, who turned out to be an all-time bust.
Soft Market?
Baseball officials are increasingly convinced that the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters will post righthander Yu Darvish to the major leagues, and industry folks wonder: How much will teams pay for the right to negotiate with Darvish?
The Red Sox paid $51,111,111 five years ago to talk with Daisuke Matsuzaka, and that hasn’t worked out very well. The expectation is that, given Boston’s disappointment with Matsuzaka, teams won’t bid as high to get to talk with Darvish.
