The View From Down Here - Larry Lucchino: A Woman Scorned

As if enough hasn't been written about this already.....

A recent report out of Chicago indicates that the months long drama regarding the Cubs' compensation to the Red Sox for Theo Epstein may be nearing a resolution.  Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe quotes an anonymous AL GM as saying, "I don’t think MLB wants executives leaving their teams before their contracts are up and therefore he will try to deter teams from doing that again." 

Uh.....what?

A few things about that statement:

• If Bud Selig did not want executives leaving for promotions, why did he approve the deal in the first place?  When a compensation package couldn't be reached from the outset, why did he push the deal through?  It obviously favored the Cubs then.  So we are now supposed to believe that he allowed the deal to happen just so he could screw the Cubs later on down the line for doing it?  If he is so against "executives leaving their teams before their contracts are up", this is a horrible way to show it.  Bear in mind that Selig also has to keep other owners' interests in mind, and it's not in the owners' best interests to have to pay a high price for executives.
• Not to mention, if the Red Sox did not want Theo to leave, why did they allow him to speak with the Cubs in the first place?  It's not a difficult concept to grasp.  If you don't want your executives to leave while they are under contract, don't give them permission to talk to other teams!  The Red Sox had every right, and it was within their power, to keep this whole situation from happening, yet they chose not to.  If the Red Sox wanted to keep Theo so badly, they should have denied permission for him to speak with the Cubs from the very beginning.
• Finally, this was a not a lateral move.  It was a promotion plain and simple, a fact further solidified with Theo's hiring of Jed Hoyer to be the GM under him.  (It should be noted, as well, that the compensation process with the Padres took a matter of days.)  There is no other major professional sport, aside from baseball, where a team asks for compensation if an executive is receiving a promotion.

The Red Sox organization, and Larry Lucchino in particular, has been extremely childish throughout this whole process.  They are taking Theo's departure personal, like a girlfriend scorned for another woman.  (Keep in mind that this is after an end of the season collapse where field manager, Terry Francona, was fired, and there were whispers that Theo himself would be let go.)  In the end, I'm sure the Cubs will end up giving up more than they feel they should, and the Red Sox will not get what they think they deserve.  But I would just like to believe that somewhere along the line during the talks, this conversation took place.