BCsMightyJoeYoung said:
Where is this "Farrell can't work with or develop young players" coming from? A cursory view would suggest Betts,Bogaerts, Swihart, Rodriguez, Vazquez, Owens, Shaw and Bradley have developed just fine thank you very much. The idea that he favours vets over kids is also pretty hard to justify. He was given Napoli and Ramirez and Victorino and Masterson as regulars .. What are you going to do? Not play them? Besides .. That's as much a FO decision as the Managers.
There have been struggles of course .. Bradley and Bogaets last year being prominent. But that happens all the time and you just have to give young players time.
Now, I'm not suggesting that JF is good at developing players .. I'm just saying there's no evidence to suggest he's bad at it. On the contrary the evidence would suggest just the opposite.
Not sure Bogaerts, Owens, JBJ, Shaw are any thanks to Farrell.
Farrell has stuck with underperforming vets for a long time, even when there way credible (but young/MLB-unproven) alternatives in AAA. A vet under Farrell is pretty much guaranteed playing time from the beginning of the season at least through the trade deadline. Deep depth. Preserving trade value. You don't lose your spot to injury. They have a track record the young guys don't have. And so on, and so on. There's always a justification, but the bottom line is always the same: not playing the better player at any given point in time, and a lesser team. And when they brought up a young guy, kid better perform.
-Bogaerts struggled for a bit at shortstop; he was quickly moved out of there to Bring Drew. Sitting X against lefties for Drew.
-Continuously playing Gomes while Nava was on the bench.
-JBJ was up for a few games against Sale, Felix and Sonny Gray. Kid struck out a bunch of time, people were just about ready to trade him for a bag of balls. Three or four games (!!), and he was sent down, never to be seen again, while Farrell pushed Victorino, Napoli, De Aza, and others out there. You could just sense the disdain dripping from Farrell when he talked about JBJ. No wonder the kid thrived a bit with Farrell not there. (In fairness to Farrell, the disdain for JBJ was fairly well distributed, from the press to talk radio to this board).
-Castillo, I don't even know. He was a AAA for what seemed like forever while the team floundered with vets. Then continuously pushing De Aza out there while Castillo or Bradley rotted on the bench.
Now, you can say he did that because the FO made him do it, but I think that's a cop-out. If everything is on the FO, why is Farrell there then? His job is still to put the best line-up on the field.
This team will be young. more young players will come be coming in, some will struggle. For the sake of the team, I think they'll need somebody who can keep them involved, motivated, focused during the lows, somebody who at least seems to believe in them. I can see a scenario where the Sox bring back a De Aza (or Victorino..) as a fourth outfielder, and Farrell plays them out of spring training, or sends a Shaw/JBJ/Castillo down at the first sign of struggle. Though there's a new FO, so who knows.
I just don't trust Farrell with the kids, but I guess we can disagree. And I'm not saying Lovullo is the guy, I don't know. Just don't think Farrell is.
