Lucchino pleased with offseason moves

12/15/2005
BOSTON -- Red Sox president and chief executive officer Larry Lucchino told a radio audience on Thursday that he was happy with the club's front-office work since the departure of general manager Theo Epstein, and added that if Epstein returns to the club in some capacity, it won't be a distraction.
Lucchino, who appears weekly on WEEI, the club's Boston-based flagship station, during Spring Training and the regular season, made his first on-air comments on WEEI since Epstein declined a contract extension on Halloween night.
The trades for Josh Beckett, Guillermo Mota and Mark Loretta told Lucchino that the front office was running smoothly.
"We were hardly a rudderless ship down there," Lucchino said of the club's 26-person contingent at the Winter Meetings in Dallas. "We were one of the most active teams in baseball during this transition period."
And on the heels of the promotion of Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington to co-general managers, Lucchino acknowledged that Epstein, who has advised the team on personnel moves, could be returning to formal role in the organization.
"My general feeling is that he will find that there is a role in this organization [in] which he will feel comfortable and work productively and happily and make a real contribution," Lucchino said.
Lucchino said that the club wouldn't be distracted if Epstein returns.
"Perhaps [it would be a distraction] for the media, but not for the rest of us," Lucchino said. "Bill Lajoie and Craig Shipley did an exceptional job during this transition, and are real baseball veterans."
Lucchino also explained his relative silence since Epstein's departure.
"It isn't fair to ask me questions about Theo's state of mind," he said. "One reason why I was more silent in that time period after he made his decision to decline the offer was that so many of the questions being put to me were about his mindset or his motivation or his point of view.
"It didn't seem appropriate to me to be speculating on that, particularly when Theo made clear in his press conference that there were a variety of factors and variety of reasons that were quite personal, and he didn't want to get into them."
Lucchino also took strong objection to reports that Epstein would remain on the "perimeter" of the Red Sox organization until Lucchino leaves for the Washington Nationals or another destination.
"That's absurd," he said. "That's just completely wrong. I and my family have dropped our roots and we're trying to plant our roots even more deeply in Boston. We love it here. It's a great city to live in and a great region to live in. It's the best place I have lived. As much as I have liked the other places, there's just something exceptional that fits me and our personality here. And this rumor, just like those written in certain tabloids, are just hogwash."
Lucchino tried to debunk any theories suggesting that he and Epstein could not work together.
"I think that's wrong," Lucchino said. "First of all, I have worked with Theo with three different teams in three different cities over 14 years and we have the ability to work together productively, and I think we've demonstrated that over the last four years.
"The issue of changes in our front office and the diminution of my role in the front office, I think that's already been addressed. We have a good front office -- an excellent front office. That is a point of pride, and we will do whatever it takes to make it stronger and better, and Theo Epstein can contribute to that, to be sure."
Lucchino was asked whether Epstein has already been promised the title of president/vice president of baseball operations, should he return.
"I'm not going to get into who or what was said along the way, but I don't think that's an accurate statement," Lucchino said.
The Red Sox executive also vehemently denied that his friendship with Epstein had taken a hit with the front office upheaval of the last two months.
"That's ridiculous," he said. "I've known him for 14 years and I've talked to him a couple of times since his final departure decision that he made. I'm not going to get into that. I don't feel the need to respond to that type of provocative inquiry."
Other topics included the potential trade of Manny Ramirez, the possibility of bringing Miguel Tejada back in a deal for Ramirez and the front-office discussion on the acquisition of Beckett.
On Ramirez: "We still have three or four months before baseball season begins," Lucchino said. "A lot of work has gone on in the last two months, but there's still January, February and March until we get to the opening of the season. Our commitment to Manny is to make a good-faith and extensive effort to see if there is a trade that is a win-win proposition that gets him to a part of the country or a team that he would like to be with going forward and gets us something approximating fair value, and we have been faithful to that obligation we have made to him and we are still engaged in that undertaking."
On Tejada: "There have been some discussions -- that much, I will say. We haven't doused any lights with respect to the possible trade of Manny to other teams, and we certainly haven't eliminated Baltimore, either. We're talking to a bunch of teams trying to find the right fit that Manny's comfortable with and gives the Red Sox fair value."
On Beckett and the club's discussion of the health of his right shoulder: "There's always healthy debate on major transactions, as there should be. There were medical factors that had to be considered, but we felt that it was a good deal, a reasonable medical risk and we were prepared to go forward, and we did. We succeeded in beating out three or four teams that were banging on Florida's door to be part of this early fire sale."

Source: http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/