Henry says he didn’t want Crawford

Take this how you want, but I kind of take this as a swipe at soon-to-be-ex General Manager Theo Epstein. This offseason, the Boston Red Sox made some huge splashes in free agency, including signing Carl Crawford. Everyone thought that they had pulled one over on the Yankees, who actually got better production from Brett Gardner at a fraction of the price.

But, what’s done is done. The Sox signed Crawford to a seven-year, $142 million contract and what did they get out of that? He played 130 games and hit .255 with 11 HR’s and 56 RBI’s. That’s not $142 million worth of baseball right there.

And now the owner, John Henry, went on a radio station to declare that he never wanted Crawford (who he’s stuck with for six more years by the way).

“[Crawford was] definitely a baseball signing. In fact, anyone involved in the process, anyone in upper management with the Red Sox will tell you that I personally opposed that,” said Henry. “We had plenty of left-handed hitting. I don’t have to go into why. I’ll just tell you that at the time I opposed the deal, but I don’t meddle to the point of making decisions for our baseball team. … It wasn’t a PR move. Neither was the [Adrian] Gonzalez signing.”

Great. Now Crawford knows that the guy who signs his paycheck doesn’t want him there. What was the purpose in saying this? Taking a shot at Theo? Perhaps, but I think it’s a little odd that you take a shot at the architect of two World Series teams when remembering 2003 and that mindset is not hard to do.