The words didn’t come from Sox GM Theo Epstein directly after the Mark Teixeira last December, but it was the Fenway mantra for the remainder of last winter headed into the spring.

The Red Sox front office has proven in the past that free agency isn’t the perfect solution for all that ails a big league baseball club, and a 2006 offseason is beginning to look more and more disastrous as time slowly marches on.

The Red Sox shelled out over $100 million for J.D. Drew and Julio Lugo, and – while one is still with the team in name if not quite in spirit – neither player has done anything significant to help the team out of its current post-All-Star break funk.

Add another $52 million over six seasons for Daisuke Matsuzaka, not counting the $51.1 posting fee, during that fateful month of December that saw Dice-K, Drew and Lugo come into the fold, and you’ve got a month that just about everybody associated with the Red Sox would love to have wiped away from the books.

For that $150 million total sum and the $31 million doled out this season, the Sox have received a .262 batting average along with 14 home runs and 53 RBIs in 451 at bats along with the unforgettable 1-5 record and Smoltz-esque 8.23 ERA from Dice-K.

If it weren’t for the amazingly consistent work of Hideki Okajima, who was ostensibly brought over to the US as a sidekick to Matsuzaka in the very beginning of it all, the winter months between 2006 and 2007 would have been something north of a complete disaster.

Sure Drew hit a grand slam in the 2007 ALCS and carried the Sox for a month in 2008 when David Ortiz went down with injury, but he’s confounded teammates and management with his sometimes uninspired act.

Lugo was a disaster from Day One, and things never got better. That’s being kind when there wasn’t another team that was offering him the shortstop anything close to the $9 million a year deal he took down with Boston.

The aftermath of that free-spending winter – coupled with the failures after signing Edgar Renteria and Matt Clement – soured the Sox on free agency as a reliable tool to significantly improve their baseball team. Drafting and developing was always the mantra, but it was girded by their misadventures with flawed free agents.

Promise-filled, affordable youngsters like Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and Jon Lester became the poster boys for the new Red Sox Way, and everything appeared to be going right with the Olde Towne Team.

That, combined with the relatively small crop of legitimate “A” free agents available in their young prime years between 27-29 years of age in this day and age of revenue sharing, has steered Sox execs away from free agency, and things intensified even more when Epstein, John Henry and Co. were burned by Teixeira and the Yankees this winter.

They met with Teixeira and Boras in Texas, they pulled out every stop they could formulate and they entirely put their best foot forward to nab a dynamic bat that could adequately replace the Manny Ramirez void in the Sox hitting lineup.

“Every team has revenues now because of the system, which is great, but there aren’t as many great players hitting free agency especially in their primes,” said Epstein in a spring training interview with Comcast SportsNet New England. “It used to be that if you needed to turn your team around you could wait for free agency and you could go find a Vlad Guerrero at age 28 or Miguel Tejada at age 27 – and they were good investments because they were so young.

“But now the great young players are getting wrapped up to long term deals even by the small market teams, and it’s very rare when you find a Mark Teixeira hitting free agency at age 28. Usually players are hitting free agency now when they’re 32 or 33 and the best of the crop – the most talented players and the ones that you really want – are wrapped up and aren’t going to leave because they’re in long term deals. So there’s no way to really build a franchise up except for the ‘right way’ and the ‘legitimate way’ which is to draft and develop your own talent.”

So the Sox put a high value on Teixeira this winter and New York’s eight-year, $180 million offer was enough to finally push Boston’s ownership and baseball operations decision-makers away from the high-stakes table.

That’s a mistake that has come back to haunt a Boston lineup struggling for offense this season. Imagine in your mind a Sox lineup that featured Teixeira at first base, Kevin Youkilis at third base and Mike Lowell at designated hitter – with David Ortiz starting against right-handers and coming off the bench if he survived the roster purge following a Teixeira signing.

That would have given Boston a formidable middle of the order that looked something like this:
1. Ellsbury
2. Pedroia
3. Teixeira
4. Youkilis
5. Bay
6. Drew
7. Lowell
8. Varitek
9. SS flavor of the month

Epstein, during the same spring training interview with Mike Felger, said that walking away from Tex was part of being “disciplined” and avoiding simple baseball temptation akin to a siren song that could crash a baseball team’s ship against the rocks.

“That’s part of the downside, I guess you could say, of being disciplined, but it’s also the upside,” said Epstein. “If you’re going to set a value on a player and maintain discipline, and not be tempted by the shiny lights in the store, then you’re going to lose out more free agents than you sign. But in the long run that’s fine and its part of our system. For us we just focus on our approach, building our roster not just 2009, but for the next 5 or 10 years. We’ll just stay consistent with that approach.”

In hindsight, the Good Ship Red Sox was heading toward the rocks after a healthy amount of injuries and adversity anyway, and outspending the Yanks this once would have accomplished one of two goals: it would have ultimately landed the Sox Teixeira for a few more dollars or it would have caused Yanks GM Brian Cashman to shell out even more dollars for the rare big ticket slugging free-agent.

So “the system” called for the Sox decision-makers to avoid every instinct screaming at them about the warning signs of decline David Ortiz, Mike Lowell, and Jason Varitek exhibited last season.

It was a clear fact that the Sox weren’t getting any younger at some key spots in the lineup, and that has proven true this season with a lineup that no longer scares pitchers the way it once did. In essence, the offense isn’t functional anymore without that big game-changing hitter in the middle of the lineup.

A potential bidding war with the Yankees was avoided when the Sox dropped out of the free agency sweepstakes, and Leigh Teixeira became the unlikely villain just days later when the first baseman’s goopy love affair with the Yankees began in earnest.

The “system” has given the Yankees seven regular members of their lineup with an OPS greater than .850 this season while the Sox have only two hitters with an OPS of .850 or better: Kevin Youkilis and Jason Bay. The “system” has left Boston without any reliable, playoff-worthy starting pitchers behind Josh Beckett and Jon Lester since the All-Star break, and it’s kept Boston from nailing down a game-changing bat for the middle of the lineup.

The Sox tried to address the situation at the trading deadline with “aggressive” offers for San Diego first baseman Adrian Gonzalez as well as Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez, but those are pie-in-the-sky beautiful baseball dreams. The Sox offered nearly everything in their vaunted minor league cupboard, and were still turned away by teams that would have been crazy to deal in-their-prime superstars.

When a minor league system like Boston proves itself incapable of producing offensive power bats at the corner outfield spots – as it has over the last seven seasons while seemingly churning out pitching prospects at every corner – then a team has to temporarily eschew the “system” when those rare power bats become available via free agency or trade.

It could be that Epstein took a pass on Teixeira when the bidding numbers got too high, or it could be that Sox ownership made the ultimate call while paring payroll from $140 million to $120 million over the last two seasons. That ultimate truth might never be known.

Either way, the “system” let the Sox down last winter and now they have some overhaul work to do after this season’s conclusion while giving the Sox offense an extreme makeover it badly requires. It’s going to cost the team an armada of prospects, or it’s going to cost Teixeira money to bring in that kind of skill, so the “system” may have to take a knee for a few months this winter.