Say What?

Here's a quote from Theo Epstein (cited in a Gordon Wittenmyer article) about how the 2014 season will be judged by the front office.  I defy anyone to make any sense of this truly Rumsfeldian rambling.

Entering the third year of team president Theo Epstein’s regime, the front office won’t be focusing on whether the team wins more than the 66 games it won last year, Epstein said — or even on identifying so-called core guys for the future.

“I think too much has been made about identifying core guys,” he said. “You can be a good player and not be a core guy.”

The front office will measure this season “just by the progress of our young players,” Epstein said. “Are they in an environment where they can go through some adversity, make adjustments and thrive? Are our guys getting the most out of their ability at the big-league level? Are we putting them in a position to succeed, giving them the support system that they need and also holding them accountable, and holding them to high standards, and creating a winning-type environment?”

I am not at all clear about the notion you can create a winning environment without actually winning more often than you lose.  I suppose the nearest translation here is that we do not have a lot of really good players, in fact we have hardly any, so we are backing off the notion that Castro and Rizzo are the building blocks.  Instead, we are going to continue to lose nearly a hundred games a year and concentrate on nursing along the kind of guys who can tolerate that environment.

I'm sure these guys are smart because they keep telling us they are smart and know how to evaluate young talent and even old talent, but they have been wrong on numerous occasions as everyone in baseball almost surely is, but this kind of gibberish is just beyond comprehension.

Good luck, Rick Renteria.  You are going to need it.

Oh, and, by the way (from Mark Gonzales, Chicago Tribune), we are not going to talk any more about Jeff Samardzija, not ever again, OK.  Because nothing we have said or may say will make any sense anyway.  There.

"We talked about it early in spring training," Epstein said before today's game. "We indulged the questions. Right now we're just focused on the games and just going out and winning." Going on to discuss the team's general approach, Epstein indicated that the club would be cognizant of its place on the win curve in considering its options.

"All contracts collectively form a market and you have to be aware of the market and operate in the market when you're in free agency, and it affects everything you do, to a certain extent. But we have to make smart decisions for our situation, for the situation we're in now and the situation we're going to be in in a few years."

There are known knowns and unknown knowns and known unknowns we don't know anything about, but one thing is certain, we know we are going to lose, so whatever.