12/21/24
February 28, 2002
New Red Sox owners oust Duquette.: Not a big surprise. The question is, who will be his permanent replacement? More importantly, will it matter?
For today, I'm not concerned about the new GM. I'm too busy jumping for joy.
posted by Scottymac at 04:36 PM on February 28, 2002
There is a Santa Claus! Now, hopefully the Easter Bunny will bring the Sox a competent GM.
posted by trox at 04:47 PM on February 28, 2002
All the what ifs in the world won't help the Sox holden, Nomar will be on the DL, Pedro is still your only good pitcher, Joe Kerrigan is still the manager, and of course it's still the Red Sox, 1918 was so long ago, Buckner, Bucky Dent. I can't pass up a chance to stick it to a Red Sox fan.
posted by jbou at 05:20 PM on February 28, 2002
I strongly oppose this move. If they had just upgraded Dan's OS and added more RAM, I think he might have been able to cut the mustard. Wait a second. That was the robot that traded Ceasr Saba and Dennis Tankersly for the Corpse That Was Ed Sprague. Never mind: there was a fundemental flaw in some logic chip.
posted by yerfatma at 05:52 PM on February 28, 2002
There is nothing to jump for joy about here. Duquette still built the 2002 team, so we know they will suck and collapse. Worse, Kerrigan is a punk of a manager that went from respected pitching coach (maybe the best in the biz) to a dead duck within days of his hiring. Sorry Sox fans, but you better find Babe's piano soon.
posted by Dwight Gooden at 06:02 PM on February 28, 2002
Well, if 2002 is a wash-out, maybe 2003 will be fine once someone revamps the team and spreads the money out differently (I cringe every time I think of how much they paid Dante Bichette). As for Kerrigan, he's very good as a pitching coach (though my money's on Mazzone as best in the biz), but I wasn't too impressed with him as a manager. Give me Jimywocky!
posted by trox at 08:49 PM on February 28, 2002
If you look at what Billy Beane has done in Oakland with less than one-third the payroll of the Red Sox and start to wonder what he could do with the budget of a higher-revenue team, it seems entirely likely that if Boston could get Beane from Oakland (he has three years left on his contract) it could spell the end of the Yankee's stranglehold on the AL East.
Beane is an excellent judge of talent, has shown he can develop players from within his organization, and would never sign Jose Offerman to over $6M a year.
Duquette's record since I moved to Boston three years ago is fairly atrocious and is well-chronicled (albeit in a rather biased manner) at this site "intended to detail why Dan Duquette is the worst GM in baseball." A decent series of offseason moves this year can't redeem a multitude of past sins.
Personally, I think it would even be worth waiting it out to make sure they could get someone like Beane or the Padres' Kevin Towers as a GM instead of looking for a quick fix and getting stuck in a bad situation.
Keep this interim guy in for as long as it takes to get the right guy.
The fate of New England rests upon it.