Boston Red Sox

Boston Red Sox Deservedly Continue To Feel The Pain

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Hindsight is always 20/20. But if you are a Boston Red Sox fan, you have to be a little disgusted with your front office right about now. Unless you are looking forward to the reemergence of Pablo Sandoval next year of, course. But while you are chewing on that thought, consider this…

The Boston Red Sox gave away the ace of the Cubs pitching staff and a likely candidate to win the Cy Young in the National League – and they have nothing to show for it except the money they threw away on the blimp they signed to play third base. You think that’s severe? Think again, or better yet ask a Red Sox fan.

Jon Lester hasn’t just emerged as one of the premier pitchers in baseball. His 146-84 record with a career 3.14 ERA in a DH league speaks to the fact that he’s been doing this for a while. He helped lead the Red Sox to two World Championships in 2007 and 2013, and he’s bound to figure strongly in another one beginning this Tuesday.

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He’s also one of the few home grown Red Sox who still maintains a home in nearby Newton. But he made the first mistake in a game of chess that ultimately led to his departure from Boston. His mistake? Get this – he said he liked being with the Red Sox and he’d like to finish out his career in Boston.

You can count on your fingers the number of players who play their entire career with one team these days, right? And after Derek Jeter, I can’t think of another one, but I’m not really going there. Where I’m going is that the Sox management, and that means ownership, decided to offer a home town deal to Lester. Meaning that they low balled him hoping he would succumb.

He didn’t, and subsequently he was traded to the Oakland A’s for Yeonis Cespedes who lasted about a half a minute in the Red Sox clubhouse. And so ended the career of Jon Lester with the Boston Red Sox.

To replace him, the Red Sox came up with the idea of hiring David Price, who now commands a postseason record of 2-8 with a bloated ERA of 5.54. So, go figure.

This year, the American League Least didn’t prove to be as bad as previous years. But if the Toronto Blue Jays had awakened a few weeks sooner, the decidedly mediocre Red Sox would have had their hands full and more likely tied up.

Theo Epstein took a lot with him when he left Boston to move in with the Cubs. And one of the things he apparently took with him was the conviction that the Cubs needed a pitcher like Lester to nail this thing down. Only the ensuing years will tell if he overpaid for Lester’s talent (6 years, 155 million), but the bottom line is easy to read.

Lester is leading the Cubs into the World Series with a start on Tuesday night while David Price is sitting at home and Pablo Sandoval is looking for the nearest McDonalds.

Hindsight is 20/20, but really the Red Sox should have known better.

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