There's been an awful lot of discussion lately about how Boston should approach building what
Ben Cherington has called, "the next great Red Sox team". The new
Terry Francona book has re-kindled this discussion—since it was really about two competing Red Sox World Views. You know, either Theo and BenCher's
small, homegrown player development machine or Larry and John Henry's
big, image-conscious free-agent ratings monster.
Either
/Or. Yin/Yang. Ginger/Mary Ann. But, in the real world (as we have seen in Washington, D.C.),
poles apart leads to
polls apart—and gridlock. The Red Sox don't have to be
all one or
all the other. What's wrong with a
mixture of the two approaches? Why can't we have a core foundation of quality players born and raised in the organization—supplemented with a sprinkling of key free agents and trade targets? Isn't this the very formula that got us the 2007 ring? System kid Ellsbury's late season play pushed out veteran
Coco Crisp when the chips where down. Home-grown
Dustin Pedroia was maniacal. Like-wise with
Jon Lester. Trade acquisitions like
Josh Beckett and
Mike Lowell energized the team in the post-season. And, free-agent
J.D. Drew (while maligned everywhere) had two of the biggest post-season hits that year. In the Francona book,
Theo Epstein daydreams about the "all-homegrown" team that might have been:
Josh Reddick,
Jacoby Ellsbury,
Ryan Kalish,
Anthony Rizzo, Pedroia,
Hanley Ramirez,
Will Middlebrooks,
Ryan Lavarnway—along with
Clay Buchholz, Lester,
Anibal Sanchez and
Felix Doubront. Hey, that's a hell of a lot more interesting than what we have now. But, honestly, probably not a World Series contender. On the other hand, the NOG's ideal of
Carl Crawford,
John Lackey, and
Adrian Gonzalez did not exactly work out either.
So, why don't we opt for the
Third Way—and maybe get another ring in a year or so?
