One of my friends thinks Theo Epstein is an overated GM.

[rwperu34]

Here's the farm system Theo built. The grades are preliminary and ties are not sorted. Pitchers and hitters aren't comparable.

Player Pos Team 2008 Age 2008 Level Grade

Buchholz,Clay rhp Boston 23 MLB 10.0
Bowden,Michael rhp Boston 21 AAA 8.0
Masterson,Justin rhp Boston 23 AAA 7.0
Haigwood,Daniel lhp Boston 24 AAA 6.0
Jones,Hunter rrp Boston 24 AAA 6.0
Johnson,Kristofer lhp Boston 23 AA 6.0
Rozier,Michael lhp Boston 22 AA 6.0


Player Pos Team 2008 Age 2008 Level Grade

Reddick,Josh of Boston 21 A+ 8.5
Ellsbury,Jacoby of Boston 24 MLB 8.5
Anderson,Lars 1b Boston 20 A+ 7.5
Lowrie,Jed ss Boston 24 AAA 7.0
Place,Jason of Boston 20 A+ 7.0
Wagner,Mark c Boston 24 AA 7.0
Carter,Chris 1b Boston 25 MLB 7.0
Daeges,Zachary of Boston 24 AA 6.5
Engel,Reid of Boston 21 A+ 6.5
Still,Johnathan c Boston 23 A+ 6.5
Bates,Aaron 1b Boston 24 AA 6.5
Granadillo,Tony of Boston 23 AA 6.0
Soto,Luis of Boston 22 AA 6.0
Chiang,Chih-Hsien 2b Boston 20 A+ 6.0

[Kneel B4 Zod]

I guess he didn't draft Papelbon or Pedroia; however he also made the correct decision to hold on to them when many teams wanted to make a trade for vets/whatever

[NT!]

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its hard to take pretty much any boston fans analysis of the dice k deal seriously because of their bias. if he went to the yankees for the exact same amount of money and had the exact same first year I think everyone knows how peoples opinions would change. This is true of 99.999% of fans worldwide, myself included with the yankees.

[/ QUOTE ]

then don't take my analysis, take PECOTA's

projected MORP and mean VORP for some recent SP FA's:

(for 2007-2011)

matsuzaka 61.5MM / 169.6 VORP
zambrano 52.2MM / 136.1 VORP
zito 34.0MM / 89.8 VORP
westbrook 33.9MM / 92.8 VORP
meche 18.6MM / 48.7 VORP

why is matsuzaka so highly valued? because he's young and he has a huge upside. we spent less on him than it would take to land a zambrano or a zito, and he actually projects to be far more valuable over the life of the deal.

FWIW, santana's projected VORP over the same time is 249.1, and beckett's is 118.6.

[34TheTruth34]

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I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's almost impossible to discern whether Theo is a good GM or not.

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I hope you're not being serious.

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I know you're just trolling as usual, but I'll go against my better judgement and clarify.

What I'm saying is that while we can look at all the stuff done during the Epstein regime and decide whether it's been a successful era for the Red Sox or not (and this thread has done a pretty good job at that), we can't actually discern how much Theo is responsible. So IMO it's less accurate than looking at, say, the Oakland A's over the same time period and discerning how successful Billy Beane has been.

[zer0]

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I guess he didn't draft Papelbon or Pedroia; however he also made the correct decision to hold on to them when many teams wanted to make a trade for vets/whatever

[/ QUOTE ]

both of them were drafted while theo was the gm

[Triumph36]

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I guess he didn't draft Papelbon or Pedroia; however he also made the correct decision to hold on to them when many teams wanted to make a trade for vets/whatever

[/ QUOTE ]

so trading hanley ramirez instead of pedroia was the right move

[NT!]

theo didn't do the hanley deal, did he?

[Vyse]

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I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's almost impossible to discern whether Theo is a good GM or not.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hope you're not being serious.

[/ QUOTE ]


I know you're just trolling as usual, but I'll go against my better judgement and clarify.

What I'm saying is that while we can look at all the stuff done during the Epstein regime and decide whether it's been a successful era for the Red Sox or not (and this thread has done a pretty good job at that), we can't actually discern how much Theo is responsible. So IMO it's less accurate than looking at, say, the Oakland A's over the same time period and discerning how successful Billy Beane has been.

[/ QUOTE ]

Almost all of the Red Sox deals have been sabermetrically inclined in some way or another, which strongly suggests Theo has his hand in matters more than you're apparently willing to admit. I'd say 90%.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I guess he didn't draft Papelbon or Pedroia; however he also made the correct decision to hold on to them when many teams wanted to make a trade for vets/whatever

[/ QUOTE ]

so trading hanley ramirez instead of pedroia was the right move

[/ QUOTE ]

well, we don't know that that was ever an option.

and regarding the Hanley deal, I'm not sure how that grades out. Florida got what they needed, a cheap awesome player (19 WARP in 2 years). We got what we needed, 2 awesome players (31 WARP in 2 years).

[sethypooh21]

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theo didn't do the hanley deal, did he?

[/ QUOTE ]

To be fair, we can't really give him credit for beckett and then say he didn't do the deal that gave up Hanley.

I will say the Pedros is so obviously a Theo pick, I mean everything about him indicates "who are you going to believe, my statistical projections or your lying eyes?"