Epstein’s Vision Coming to Pass
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

It’s rare to see a 105-win team completely overmatched, but that’s what the St. Louis Cardinals have been in this World Series. The ALCS showed us that you can never count a team out, and those inclined to believe in such things are just waiting for The Curse to strike down the Red Sox. I don’t see it happening, though. Boston was the best team in baseball this year, and they’re the better team in this series.
Last night the Red Sox won with pitching and defense. The first was no surprise; though his flamboyant teammate Curt Schilling has been the subject of the headlines, Pedro Martinez was once, during a peak from which he’s not far removed, as good a pitcher as anyone, ever. He reminded everyone of that last night, dominating a St. Louis offense in many ways equal to Boston’s.
The defense was a surprise: Manny Ramirez saving Martinez from a scrape by turning a double play complete with an out at home plate is among the more unlikely of possible scenarios. So is David Ortiz saving the team from another jam by catching a napping runner off third base. Still, that’s how it went, and now the Red Sox are poised to claim their prize, a world championship that’s been a long time coming.
There will be a great deal of talk over this winter about the manner in which the Red Sox were built. Enormous credit will rightly be given to general manager Theo Epstein’s philosophy and management style. The success of the Red Sox will also be seen to some extent as a vindication of the ideas of Bill James, who works for the Red Sox as a special adviser.
As far as it goes, this is perfectly fair. When Epstein took over in fall 2002, the Red Sox looked as if they were on a path to becoming like the current Mets. Saddled with bad long-term contracts, declining veterans, and a poisonous clubhouse atmosphere, the Red Sox hardly seemed like a powerhouse in the making. Epstein has done a remarkable job salvaging the organization.
This year’s Red Sox, though, are only half Epstein’s. He inherited three-quarters of the starting pitchers in this World Series, catcher Jason Varitek, and the entire outfield. Of the regular players, he signed Schilling and closer Keith Foulke, which required little imagination, and brought in every member of the current starting infield, which took quite a bit more effort, risk-taking, and foresight.
This doesn’t diminish Epstein’s accomplishment in the least – to take over a club as profoundly troubled as the Red Sox were and do what he has done in the time he’s done it is about as impressive a feat as any general manager could pull off. But it does make one wonder what sort of team this will become over the next few years. With the contracts of key players such as Martinez, Varitek, and Derek Lowe expiring, Epstein will have a chance starting this winter to wholly redesign the team. The Boston team of 2007,not the team we saw last night, is the one that will fairly reflect Epstein’s ideas.
For Yankees fans, that should be a discomfiting thought. Boston will never be able to compete with the revenues generated by the YES Network and Yankee Stadium, but I expect this team to improve over the next few years.
While the Yankees have systematically gutted their farm system in recent years, Epstein has brought to the Red Sox an emphasis on applying modern analytical techniques to player development. This won’t show up on the field for a few years. When it does, the team may well start to resemble what the Oakland A’s would look like if they could retain their best players and compete for the biggest names on the free agent market.
The most important idea Epstein brought to the Red Sox is what won them the game last night and what will keep them excelling for years – a focus on what players can do, rather than what they can’t. That’s not an abstraction. It’s an organizational approach that informs every decision taken by the team, and one that filters down from the top.
Across the field from the Red Sox last night were the Cardinals. Their manager, Tony LaRussa, probably lost Game 1 because he burned out his bullpen worrying that his right-handed relievers couldn’t get out left-handed hitters, and because he worried that his best DH option, John Mabry, wasn’t fast enough to serve as a second leadoff man at the bottom of the lineup.
Boston hasn’t fretted about such things. Pedro Martinez pitches better with extra rest, so the Sox started Tim Wakefield in Game 1 to get Martinez that extra rest. They were rewarded with last night’s brilliant performance.
Ramirez and Ortiz are MVP-caliber hitters who can’t field. To some teams, that would be a great issue, especially given that bad Sox fielding nearly cost them the first two games of the Series. There are teams that wouldn’t have put Ortiz in the field last night. The Sox didn’t worry about it, put their best players in the lineup, and were rewarded with unexpected defensive excellence to go along with the great hitting they expected.
This is consistent with the patient approach the team has showed with Epstein’s infield. All four of these players, especially second baseman Mark Bellhorn and third baseman Bill Mueller, are incomplete and in some ways grievously flawed.
Bellhorn seems to start every at-bat in an 0-2 count, and was loudly jeered by the Boston fans early in the ALCS. Mueller had a nightmare of a game on Sunday, committing three errors and botching another play. It would have been easy to take either player out, but the Sox didn’t. Bellhorn has rewarded them with game-winning home runs, and Mueller dealt the knockout blow to Cards starter Jeff Suppan last night. The Sox ignored their shortcomings, and it paid off.
Emphasizing what players can do and following through on that emphasis may be the single most important difference between good teams and bad ones, and great ones and good ones. The Cardinals are a very, very good team. Last night the Red Sox looked like a great one.