I am sticking with the opinion that the biggest mistake Rogers/Bell made was sending Anthopolous out the door after building this team, building relationships and trust with players on this team, then bringing in a talking head friggin' suit that effectively ended any of those pre-existing relationships. That was evident with Edwin leaving and it's evident by the players' apathy to play for this team in the final years of their contract (e.g. Estrada).
So so dumb. Yet these fools get paid so so much.
Let me just poke a couple of holes into your opinion then.
1) Anthopoulos was offered a contract and left with reports citing lack of autonomy as his reason. He then proceeded to sign with the Dodgers as VP of baseball ops, a position that gives him zero ability to make decisions. You can conspire all you want about the situation, but it's just as easy to make the claim that he feared criticism and lost the comfort level that a true "talking head friggin' suit" provided in Beeston.
2) The "talking head friggin' suit" has more baseball management experience than Alex Anthopoulos, and is known for developing some of the best current minds in baseball. Current GMs that have worked under him include: Ross Atkins, Mike Hazen, Mike Chernoff, David Stearns, Derek Falvey, and Neal Huntington (and this does not include the many other front office executives).
3) If players purposely play poorly in the final years of their contracts then they're idiots. Nobody wants to play bad when they're approaching their free agency... and Estrada is the worst example considering he was the first free agent they signed and both parties made it a priority to get the deal done.
