Red Sox GM Search

The 2005 season has been over for six weeks, Theo's been history for a month and the Red Sox have already pulled off the biggest blockbuster trade of the winter before winter technically started. Amid all of this excitement, the higher-ups on Yawkey Way have yet to find a general manager -- and remember the MLB Winter Meetings are just days away! The GM search has been put on the backburner due to the Beckett/Lowell/Mota acquisition and rightfully so. It's not every day that a team can pick up a frontline starting pitcher, Gold Glove third baseman and a dominant set-up man so excuse the Red Sox if finding the replacement for Theo Epstein is on temporary hiatus. To get you up to speed, the current candidates for the GM opening are retreads Jim Beattie and Jim Bowden with names such as Kim Ng surfacing on the rumor mill. But correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the GM-less Sox front office just pull off the coup of the offseason? That means someone over there is doing something other than slurping down $5 beers at Game On. So, TheBostonInsider thinks, why not hand the reigns over to one of Theo's young apprentices. Would it be so bad if a guy like Jed Hoyer -- a valued Epstein assistant -- got the GM job? Larry Lucchino and Bill Lajoie could be mentors to Hoyer while guys like Ben Cherington and Craig Shipley can be his day-to-day advisors. This ensures that all the good that was done in Epstein's years (building a great minor league system, player development, good community relations) would continue. Bringing in new blood would threaten that. It may not grab the headlines but if Theo taught us anything, headlines do not win the World Series. Plus, if public relations was so vital to the top brass, surely the Beckett trade has generated enough type to allow for the likes of a Jed Hoyer to assume the duties of GM. It would be a wise choice to keep the franchise moving on the same path it has been on since the last time John Henry and Friends entrusted the GM post to such an unproven commodity, a young man named Theo Epstein.