John Henry Discusses the Off-Season

John Henry answered questions from NESN's Tom Caron and explained the Red Sox approach this off-season:

TC: Theo Epstein and manager Terry Francona have often pointed out that championships are won in October, not in the middle of winter. That said, do you feel good about your current team’s ability to compete for another championship?

Henry: Yes. It’s hard to predict how one player and especially a group of players will do from one year to the next. The recent history of the Cleveland Indians is illustrative of that point. They have a great organization and a great group of players, but recently they’ve only been able to put things together successfully only every other year. We have a young team and that bodes well for the future, but as the Indians, Yankees, Tigers, Rays and others have shown recently — the game is changing. It’s getting harder and harder to predict who is going to do well.

Henry makes an excellent point that the moves in the off-season and a player's past performance do not guarantee anything, look at where Andruw Jones has been the last few seasons after what he did earlier in his career. Theo and Red Sox management have shown the ability to adapt throughout the season and do what it takes to get into the playoffs and then play from there. It is really amazing just how sucessful the Red Sox were last season when you consider the injuries to Papi, Lowell, Lowrie, and the whole Manny situation.