Can Theo Epstein be any more blatant, any more predictable? Has anyone ever exposed himself more as a liar than Epstein has?

Epstein is the president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs. In that position, he controlled the future of the team’s No. 1 prospect, Kris Bryant. By controlling Bryant’s future, he also, to an extent, controlled the future of the Cubs, whose masochistic fans apparently suffer from too many years of brainwashing to know it would have been appropriate for them to storm the Wrigley Field gates in the past two weeks and demand that Epstein call up Bryant immediately and stop this silly game of manipulating Bryant’s major league service time.

That’s what this whole thing is about, no matter what Epstein and his colleagues say – service time. The Epsteins of the baseball world won’t admit it; they’d rather lie.

On one hand, they will tell you what they do is …

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Commissioner Rob Manfred has said his office is investigating circumstances involving the positive drug tests that resulted in the recent 80-game suspensions of four major league players. Manfred has also said his office will not investigate the recent disclosure of confidential information about the drug and alcohol relapse of Josh Hamilton.

Manfred did not need to say why baseball’s investigators are looking into the circumstances surrounding the steroids suspensions. He might have performed a service for fans had he said why he would not look into comments baseball officials have made about the Hamilton development.

Less than three months into his tenure as commissioner, Manfred has become faced with …

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When Stan Kasten was president of the Atlanta Braves – during 12 of their unparalleled run of 14 consecutive division championships – he was among the hardest of hard-line owners and executives. Along with such owners as Bud Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf, Kasten fought hard for a payroll cap, the issue that triggered the players’ 234-day strike and led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

Today Kasten presides over the costliest collection of baseball talent ever assembled in a major league clubhouse. According to Ron Blum of the Associated Press, who has established credibility with his years of reporting salaries, the Los Angeles Dodgers opened the season with a payroll of $272.8 million. George Steinbrenner, whom other owners often accused of singlehandedly inflating salaries, would never have dreamed of a number like that.

The amount is also more than Kasten’s chief baseball executive, Andrew Friedman, spent in …

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