I agree with your base running comments. Just curious how many games you think the base running cost The Red Sox?Let me be clear. I'm not defending Farrell. I'm just arguing that DD is skating, and shouldn't be. Farrell had to go, and nobody on Earth railed against the baserunning bullshit more than I did this year. I help coach one of my 9 year old's little league teams, and they wouldn't run into the outs the Sox ran into all season. I simply do not understand how Butterball was still coaching 3rd at the end of the season. I'm ok with statistical arguments, but I simply refuse to believe that the number of outs they ran into was offset by the extra bases they took. I just didn't see it. But I digress...
Farrell went into the playoffs against a 100 win team with Doug freaking Fister as his 3rd starter. He had a lineup with two guys who had an .800+ OPS and one of them was a rookie (Devers, who was the highest at .819). Only Betts (108), Benintendi (103), Pedroia (101) and Devers (112) had an OPS+ higher than 99.
We can say that Farrell grinded his players, and should have given them time off, etc., but they only won the division by one game. If he gives Mookie or Xander or whoever time off, whose to say they even make the playoffs? I think the Sox won the East via smoke and mirrors, and the Yankees going through a couple of prolonged slumps as a team, but when the lights were on, and the Sox had to play a team like Houston, those flaws were clear to anyone watching, and I just have a hard time pinning all of that on Farrell. Like I said, he had to go. I was certainly not a fan, but I'm also not very optimistic about this team's future with DD at the helm. Hopefully, I'm proven wrong, but I don't think his track record is nearly as positive as some others do. The gutting of the farm system, which most of us certainly expected when he came in, is something we haven't felt yet, and I'll just never forgive him for allowing an entire season to play out with a Red Sox team in which not one guy hit 25 homers. It's 2017. Everyone hits 25 homers, and he couldn't find one to pick up the slack when Papi retired?
He's got one more year as far as I'm concerned. And then he can follow Farrell off into the sunset.
As far as the playoffs, the point isn’t the winning as the issue, it’s how the sox lost. Farrell imo has a history and criticism of grinding players/keeping pitchers in for too long. Keeping Sale in is an extension of the type of manager he was.
As far as the division, imo last year and this year they faded near the end because he grinded his players. Xander should have rested after this year after the July injury. If for example Farrell would have managed Sale properly, he would have restricted the number of his pitches along with having him skip a start. Once it was known that his slider had flattened consistently, Farrell didn’t show any signs of slowing Sale down. Most importantly, even when he was getting bombed. You are right, I can’t know for certain that we wouldn’t have gone down in 3 or 4 anyways. But the fact remains; he remained oblivious in protecting Sale while doing what he does too frequently; over-extending his players/pitchers.
For example, on 8/20 the Sox had a 5 game lead on the Yanks. Each prior month Sale was fading a bit. Why not give him a rest just for 1 start? You KNOW he is slipping and will slip. The Sox were AHEAD 5 games. One skipped start in August and managing him a bit more cautiously instead of keeping him for that 300th strikeout was really going to cause the Sox to lose the division? You see he was slipping.
While you say “we only won by one game”—I say a rested Sale doesn’t get wiped for example vs Toronto, instead beats them. Then Pomeranz doesn’t have to pitch vs Houston 2nd to last game of the season in which Houston gets a good look at him and while Pomeranz seemed to be fading. Thus it possible the Sox would have gone into Houston in games 1 and 2 with much better prepared and rested starters if Farrell wasn’t such a grinder. The stats tell us Sal fades. Yet did you see at any point other than last game of the season John did anything to account for this? Even in game 1 vs Houston. And even in the last game 4.
As far as Xander—when he got that injury – there is no way I agree with what you’re saying that maybe we would have lost the division. Xander had an injury that caused him to be downright awful.
And as for this year’s Sox. With all the injuries and worn down players, we had a 3-2 lead in the 8th inning, set up by a pen that was solid in which they had roles all year. Instead John decided to run away from 8th inning Addison Reed while what I heard from Lou Merloni (and later the Houston mgr) that Sale was tiring/losing location. IMO that’s not the GM. That’s on the manager. We hit enough home runs to take that 3-2 lead in game 4.
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