Debunking the “blame Theo” movement

I suppose that if the Rays keep losing and the Red Sox right the ship that everyone will quickly forget that we were all supposed to blame Theo Epstein for the Red Sox’ woes. Hard to forget such a blitzkrieg of a meme, however, with so many people hitting on it all at once. No, no matter what happened, you wanted to blame Theo, America. You really and truly did.

But over at The Platoon Advantage, The Common Man shows us that the blame Theo movement never truly made sense. Mostly by underscoring the fact that the “Epstein should have done something to bolster the rotation depth” charge is ridiculous on its face:

The Sox were prepared if one of their starters proved injured or ineffective. They were prepared if two of their starters couldn’t go. But the Red Sox this September have seen three members of their rotation on the sidelines, and John Lackey’s baffling inability to get anyone out. What reasonable GM would feel like they needed to have 9 viable starters on hand at the start of a season?

The answer is no one. But when a team slides, it’s hard to write a column about how it takes many things working right at the same time to win baseball games and how if some things go wrong it’s much harder to do so. But “blame Theo?” Hell, that writes itself.