Time for the Sox to step up

[Providence A's]

http://www.boston.com/sports/basebal..._to_the_plate/

The baseball meetings are three days away and the Red Sox still don't have a general manager. This continues to surprise officials from other ball clubs. Yet what amazes them more is the dearth of candidates to run one of the most storied teams in baseball.

In spite of this, Boston made one of the more significant offseason acquisitions by reeling 25-year-old pitcher Josh Beckett into the fold. That deal was pulled off, we are told, by a multiheaded group of internal Sox officials, a mesh of young bucks and old guards who have joined forces while the search continues to fill the void left by Theo Epstein.

There has been the temptation in the wake of the Beckett-Mike Lowell-Guillermo Mota trade to chortle, ''So who needs Theo, anyway?" The Red Sox do, but that's dirty water under the bridge. Suffice to say as exhilarating as the Beckett-Lowell-Mota trade was for the psyche of this team-under-siege, the search for a general manager has been underwhelming. A succession of interesting and promising candidates withdrew from consideration, leaving us to wonder why this franchise went from a hot commodity to a radioactive proposition.

You really have to wonder how it has come to this.

[Fishercat]

Well, the way they are going, I could live with whatever GM set-up they have. I mean, they got Beckett (a bit of a high price, but Beckett/Mota/Lowell is a pretty nice group) and they even had a sweet UTR play: Jermaine "President" Van Buren for a PTBNL. He has some really nice K rates and, well, how can you not like a guy who, at any point in his delivery, looks like...