The Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig have agreed Wednesday to grant the Red Sox and Cubs a one-week extension as they work to come to an agreement regarding the compensation the Red Sox will get in exchange for their former general manager, Theo Epstein, who took the same job with the Cubs on Oct. 26.
The teams were originally given a Nov. 1 deadline and Selig had said earlier that if a deal were not cemented by that date, he would intervene. Clearly, he has changed his mind.
"We're going to have a little more time to work it out,'' Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington said, according to ESPN Boston. "I'm not sure exactly how much, at least a week, I would guess. I think this is just a practical decision, with everything going on, Theo in Chicago, for us here with a managerial search and whatnot, just haven't had a lot of time to spend on it. So we got a little more time and hopefully will have a little more time to talk about it.''
For Cherington, coming to an agreement is difficult because there is not much precedent as far as what a team should be compensated in exchange for its general manager.
"Because of that, our position has been we have to look at this particular circumstance," Cherington said. "There was an understanding, again, at the very beginning the Red Sox would get significant compensation if Theo left to go to Chicago. That's been the challenge, agreeing on what significant means.
"But I think again, in Theo's case, if we rewind the clock this was not someone who ownership was looking to push out the door in any way and we were still in a position of having a really good team in 2012. He was under contract, and then we had a manager leaving, we had a manager search going on, so there were a lot of things going on at the time that made him leaving perhaps challenging. I think that's where our ownership feels we need to be compensated for that.''
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