Dave Dombrowski of the Detroit Tigers is paid a reported $2 million a year, but Dombrowski is also president of the club. Atlanta GM John Schuerholz is paid $1.6 million a year, while Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics is reported to have a salary in the $1 million-plus range, but has an ownership stake in the club that raises the value of the contract considerably.
On Tuesday, Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino met with Epstein and presented him a three-year offer at $1.2 million a year, according to a major league executive with knowledge of the negotiations. Epstein, who was paid $350,000 in the last year of a three-year deal that expires Monday, is believed to be seeking $1.5 million annually. That would seem to leave room for a compromise relatively easy to achieve, but there are other issues that could get in the way of a settlement.
Those issues revolve around management style and other philosophical differences that have left some members on the baseball operations side privately expressing anger at the way they are regarded by the Sox' hierarchy, i.e. Lucchino, who has always taken an active role in baseball decision-making with the Red Sox, as well as the other teams he previously served as CEO, the San Diego Padres and Baltimore Orioles. Lucchino has publicly denied ''chain of command" issues but otherwise has vowed to keep negotiations private.
Sources familiar with Epstein's thinking said he does not question the propriety of reporting to the CEO but chafes at times at the degree to which Lucchino involves himself in baseball decisions, and at a perceived lack of respect toward the baseball side.
