Ken Rosenthal reports that one Boston Red Sox front office legend could be on his way to the Pittsburgh Pirates -- if his interview goes well.
Here is a real live tweet from Rosenthal:
"Former #RedSox GM Ben Cherington has emerged as a candidate to be the #Pirates’ new head of baseball operations, sources tell The Athletic. Cherington, 45, was the Sox GM from Oct. 2011 to Aug. 2015, and has been the #BlueJays’ VP of baseball operations since Sept. 2016."
That's right, ya boy Ben Cherington could be back in action generally managing another Major League Baseball team.
As we saw, there were ups and downs in the Cherington era for the Red Sox. The team came in last place three times and won the World Series one time. Honestly though, that's pretty much a worthwhile tradeoff. You win one, you lose some. How many other guys can say they did that? Not many. And it's kind of a good achievement because there is that World Series title in there.
Cherington did help build up the Red Sox farm system by drafting pretty well (not Trey Ball, but some of the other picks). And he signed free agents like Mike Napoli, Ryan Dempster, Shane Victorino, Jonny Gomes and others which allowed the Red Sox to win the World Series in 2013.
There's the obvious knocks on Cherington like the fact that he signed Rusney Castillo, but you have to remember he got his first MLB hit against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Pittsburgh, so they probably think it was a good signing or something.
And here's Castillo hitting a home run.
It'd be cool to see Cherington out there making moves once again. We need as many disciples of Theo Epstein out there running the league. He's a legend and it only adds to his legendness, and that is definitely a good thing.