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The Mass Media

The Mass Media

Opinions On The Recently Completed Red Sox Managerial Search

Image+courtesy+of+Keith+Allison+on+Flickr%0A

Image courtesy of Keith Allison on Flickr

 

 

The Patriots are sitting tight with a 5-3 record, the Celtics are gearing up for the regular season, and most Bruins players are in Scandinavia playing hockey.  But the brass over on Yawkey Way chose this time to trade Mike Aviles to Toronto in order to bring former Sox pitching coach John Farrell in as the new manager. 

Larry Lucchino said it was Cherrington’s search, but we’re adults here, and we all know that’s not true.  With a dozen legitimate candidates in the air, why doesn’t the brass just look at the trends around the league and follow the model? It might just work. They need a catcher behind the desk.

With the new playoff format, we have ten teams between the two leagues.  Six of those ten teams have former catchers as managers.  Fredi Gonzalez in Atlanta, Bob Melvin in Oakland, Jim Leyland in Detroit, Joe Girardi for New York, Bruce Bochy for San Francisco, and Mike Matheny in St Louis. Leyland and Bochy faced off in the World Series, and in the past decade there have only been four World Series that didn’t have a manager who had played as a catcher.  Currently ten teams in the league have managers who were catchers in their playing days. Being on the field and knowing what works is different from being in the front office and knowing what works. 

We need a clubhouse guy, a guy who has the ability to manage different personalities.  Come on, catchers do that during their careers.  They have to handle a different starting pitcher every day and at least two different pitchers per game.  The catchers are the tough guys of the team. They know how to handle themselves and everyone else in the locker room. 

However, it doesn’t matter that the Red Sox hired Farrell.  He’ll get two, maybe three, years on his contract.  The brass already have their manager, not Cherrington’s, in line.  He’s special assistant Jason Varitek, who is going to work next to Cherrington when it comes to drafting, trading, development, and all other player personnel topics. Varitek is going to start immediately molding the team for when he takes over.  Once he takes the job as manager he’ll have a leader in Pedroia, on his way out, but a good mentor to the youngsters.  Dustin will show the kids how to play the Red Sox way. In 2014 when the season ends, again without a championship run, you will find Cherrington and Farrell holding hands walking underneath the red illuminated “EXIT” sign.   

 

 

Manoug Mardirrossian

 

It was a year that many Red Sox fans wish they could forget, that saw a fan favorite team turn into the joke of Major League Baseball.  The team had one of the biggest September collapses in MLB history at the end of the 2011 season. New general manager Ben Cherrington, along with owners John Henry and Larry Luchhino, hired Bobby Valentine as the new manager. Many hoped it would be the start of something new, and Red Sox fans were optimistic that the team could make their way back into the postseason. 

Instead, the Sox became a team that no one could root for. At 4 Yawkey Way, the bums acted like they just wanted to collect their paychecks, without any concern for the common goal—winning.  Nothing could be done to save them. They finished with a record of 69-93, an embarrassment to sports fans everywhere. But there is optimism for next season. The contracts of Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez, and Carl Crawford, among others, were traded to open up tons of cap room while getting rid of key underperformers. The future seems bright for this team. 

The day after the season was over the team fired Bobby Valentine in what will go down as one of the worst managerial picks in the history of the organization. They then hired former pitching coach John Farrell. I want a manager who doesn’t care for the media coverage as Valentine did, who is focused on coaching and having everyone on the same page. The Sox fan in me is happy to see John Farrell come back—he is that guy.