Theo Epstein: "we’ve made a conscious effort to ignore anything that focuses on the short term"

Theo Epstein told Amalie Benjamin of the Boston Globe: “we’ve made a conscious effort to ignore the media, ignore the next day’s headlines, ignore anything that focuses on the short term.”

Theo has made it clear that he doesn’t want to win a World Series in 2010. He doesn’t seem to really want to win a World Series at all.

It seems as though his mission statement as GM is to produce young talent and be consistently good without ever making a push for a World Series.

Remember, Theo Epstein was on a “hiatus” back in November of 2005 when the Red Sox traded Hanley Ramirez to the Florida Marlins for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell.

If the Sox hadn’t made that trade, they wouldn’t have won a World Series in 2007. And I guarantee that Theo wouldn’t have made that trade. Hell, he’s been trying to get Hanley Ramirez back ever since.

In Amalie Benjamins piece Theo went on to say, “I’d say 90 percent of our time as baseball operations is spent trying to build the foundation and build our long-term outlook. Ten percent of our time is spent maximizing our competitiveness in any one particular year.”

Memo to Theo: Red Sox fans would rather “maximizing our competitiveness in any one particular year” and win a World Series every few years than be a “competitive team and come close” year in and year out.

We did that for 86 years and it SUCKED.

The sad thing is that the Red Sox are so close to being a World Series contender that I can smell it. They are one impact player away. But Theo wont pull the trigger on a Hanley Ramirez for Mike Lowell and Josh Becket type of deal. And as a fan it sucks.

Boston Red Sox have become the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s and the Oakland As of the early 2000s--a team that is happy simply “contending” every year but never going for the gusto.


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