Pedro and Theo at it Again

You have to always be prepared to move on, you can't get tied too much to any one player. The second you say we have to retain this player is the second you know you are in trouble. In the end the best thing for him and his family was to get 4 guaranteed years from the New York Mets, and the best thing for us was to move on, take that money, and spread it around a little bit.

That is what Theo Epstein had to say about not resigning Pedro Martinez during an interview that was featured in ESPN's The Off Season: Boston's Winter of Bliss. The way the show was edited a few seconds later Theo said this about resigning Jason Varitek.

Varitek really embodies everything we want our players to be.

They seemed like pretty benign matter of fact comments to this viewer. Karen Guregian wrote in Wednesday's Boston Herald about Pedro's reaction to Theo's harmless comments and a whole gamete of other things. Apparently Petey didn't think Theo's words were too kind, but it seems that what pissed off Petey is not what he said about Petey but what he said about Varitek.

I wanted to stay in Boston. Hearing Theo talk today on ESPN, saying they wanted to spread my money around, and keep Jason, that's a smart thing to do. He could afford to get rid of all of us, except Jason. I can appreciate that, but there was no need to mistreat my name . I can understand the business part of it. I can understand, I can live with the business part of it, not being able to afford me, or thinking I'm not that good, but I cannot understand the part where you mistreat my name, or mistreat what I did for the city of Boston because they have to build another image of me.
"If they want to keep the (World Series) ring, that's fine... "I just know I contributed to that team to win, and I'm proud of it. They can never erase what I did in Boston."

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