SoxSail wrote:

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Any chance Ben is better than Theo anyway? I mean, the core of each winning championship was set up by another GM. Ok, I'm only half serious, but it was Cherrington, not Epstein, who had the balls to pull off the move for Beckett and Lowell. And of course, other than the Nomar trade, and a couple of other guys, it was largely Duquette's players who were on the Sox in 2004.

Well that trade wasn't exactly a slam dunk, despite winning the WS, and we don't know who exactly was responsible for it.

Also, just to be clear, a "couple guys" = Curt Schilling, Keith Foulke and the majority of the pen, David Ortiz, Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, Orlando Cabrera, Mark Bellhorn, etc.  You can't turn over a contending team in just two seasons more than Theo did (especially without MLB ready minor league talent), yet people feel the need to point out that the GM from only a few seasons before had 7 of his 25man roster still with the team.  Almost all of those guys were well paid for their contributions.  Congrats to Duquette, he wasn't completely incompetent. Can we please stop giving him extra credit just because his successor did such a great job that he built a winner before all the old guys turned into pumpkins?