While Johnny Damon anticipates the upcoming WBC games (and Mariano Rivera lets out a long sigh), Murray Chass examines the state of affairs in Boston:

Last Thursday, announcing that Theo Epstein would return to the team’s front office 12 weeks after he walked away from his role as general manager, club officials issued a statement that made them sound so full of themselves that they must have been inflated like hot-air balloons.

John Henry, Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein all released statements to the media:

The statements totaled an astounding 2,500 words. If they were printed in their entirety in this newspaper, they would take up three columns, or half a page. Henry & Company could have used a good editor.

For much of the past 12 weeks, the Red Sox had been widely viewed as having a dysfunctional front office. I disagreed. Epstein’s departure, I believed, did not throw the front office into a malaise that rendered club executives ineffective and incapable of performing the team’s off-season personnel activities.

With those statements, though, the Red Sox are beginning to sound dysfunctional. Their verbosity runneth over, and they tripped all over their words. Maybe that’s what happens when you put executives from Princeton, Yale, Amherst and Wesleyan in a room together.

Meanwhile, while it is not likely that we’ll see Mike Piazza in pinstripes this year, he’s not completely out-of-the-picture yet either. Accoding to The Daily News:

“I have not made a decision,” [Yankee GM, Brian] Cashman said. “We’re still going through it. I’m obviously evaluating Mike and seeing if he fits where we’re at at this point in time.

“I don’t have a need for anybody, but that doesn’t mean you don’t constantly evaluate what’s available and the price they’re available at.”

Too bad the Big Hurt was already nabbed by Oakland; Piazza would have looked great in the Green and Gold.