JT Snow Signing Soon? Epstein Back?

by Randy Booth on Dec 27, 2005 10:04 AM EST in News

According to Tony Massarotti from the Boston Herald, JT Snow could be the next free agent to sign with the Red Sox:

Meanwhile, the Sox also continue to negotiate with free agent first baseman J.T. Snow regarding a role as the backup and defensive replacement for Kevin Youkilis. Snow is believed to be negotiating with three or four other clubs, including, perhaps, the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles. Agent Dan Horwits said Snow could have a decision by today or tomorrow.

It's a name I haven't mentioned much on this website, but signing Snow would make me a happier man. He isn't Troy Glaus or Kevin Millwood, but he's a dependable first baseman with a terrific glove. He also can work a walk with the best of them.

But look what else this article says: "regarding a role as the backup and defensive replacement for Kevin Youkilis."

So does Youkilis have the job now? Nothing has been confirmed since the end of the season, but this is a move that I think everyone wants to see happen. Youkilis has been riding the pine for way too long. It's time to get him 500+ at-bats and see what he can do.

Gordon Edes lets it fly
One of my favorite Sox writers, Gordon Edes, lets it be known that nothing would be different if Theo Epstein had re-signed with the Red Sox.

The latest to point a damning finger was Johnny Damon, who pegged his departure in part to a fractured front office, suggesting that if Epstein was still in place he might never have left.

Oh, really? Are we to believe that if Epstein was the GM, the Red Sox would have offered a deal more competitive than the one the Yankees used to lure Damon from Boston?

I'm not buying it. I can't offer incontrovertible proof -- it's hard to do so when people operate from the shadows -- but my take on the Sox' stance with Damon is that it was absolutely consistent with Epstein's position regarding the club's free agents: You make your best judgment of a player's value to you, you set a price, and you don't allow anything -- sentiment, nostalgia, public pressure -- to cause you to stray from it.

The decision not to offer Damon more than the four-year, $40 million proposal they made to him was, in my opinion, every bit as much, if not more, Epstein's as it was Larry Lucchino's. There's nothing keeping Epstein from speed-dialing John W. Henry and Jed Hoyer from the shadows, and they are both predisposed to allow Epstein to shape the Sox'future according to his vision.

Edes also goes on to say that Epstein could become an 'adviser' to the Red Sox sometime soon. But, as we all know, Epstein wouldn't just sit on a bench and twiddle his thumbs. He'd have a big say in what would go down. But I think in his new 'adviser' role he'd be doing more of what he wants to do, and less of the other pain-stacking work that he deals with -- like talking to Larry Lucchino.

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Re: Damon---I blame Boras

Interesting theory, but it doesn't strike me as terribly consistent with what we saw. From my perspective, I kept seeing Sox media report that of course negotiations with Boras were going to go to January. From that perspective, you'd expect smart teams to (a) make a lowball offer early, just to keep negotiations open, then (b) try to suss out the other offers on the table in January, when the deal actually gets struck, so you can make a close-to-match raised offer and avoid paying too much more than you have to. That, plus Boras kept, you know, misrepresenting the other offers on the table (we got 5 years for 65 mill, etc.), so it was hard to decipher that negotiations really did need to hurry up.

Re: Youk. Here's hoping. But does it bug anyone else that we seem to be accumulating a lot of players at positions we've already got covered (we got three 3B and like twelve starting pitchers), rather than address the rather obvious holes in the field?

Tony the Pony

by Tony the pony on Dec 27, 2005 10:11 AM EST reply actions

I agree with Tony.

Even the Yankees seem to have been kind of surprised by their luck in landing Damon. It's kind of like they caught a flush on the river in Texas Hold-em.

Cashman made a ballsy and intuitively smart move for once: He raised Boras aggressively, making a big "take it or leave it" offer with a very short deadline attached.

That, coupled with (a) the fact that Boras was almost surely bluffing about having a five-year offer on the table, and (b) that Damon was stung by the Sox's lack of attentiveness meant that Steinbrenner and the MFY stole Damon.

We may be seeing a Sox management that is starting to get burned by playing only the odds, and ignoring all intangibles.

Sizing up every statistical measure, and playing every hand conservatively, worked real well for a while there (World Series well). But now the rest of the players at the table, to continue the poker metaphor, see what kind of player they're dealing with and are adjusting their games accordingly.

So we lose Damon, miss out on Millwood, and still have big holes in the roster.

(The only other factor which was probably out of everyone's control, including Johnny's, is his wife -- who one can only imagine was very eager to make the move to New York City with its concentration of media and high living. Maybe that's a sexist assumption, but she seems like the type to have put a lot of pressure on Damon to keep upgrading not just their lifestyle, but their profile, too.)

by Hudson on Dec 27, 2005 4:03 PM EST reply actions