John Farrell & Dave Dombrowski Press Conference (10/11/16)
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Since you're telepathic, I'd like to ask what special information you have that definitively proves this was just random suck?
"Definitively?" None. Zero. Just guessing. Which I think is about the same amount of information as there is to support "unprepared."
But if the two possibilities are "random suck" (which happens a lot in baseball over 3 games) and "the players were 'unprepared'", I'm going with random suck. Again, what does unprepared mean? I know that Kevin Kennedy and Grady Little were famous (ex post facto) for ignoring scouting reports. Is that what you mean by unprepared? Does unpreparedness require information to prove its existence? Or is that only a requirement for an accusation of random suck?
What frustrates me is that they looked flat and unprepared - it really strikes me as a 'hangover' of sorts - they win 11 straight games and then lose 8 of their next 9 (including 3 playoff games).
In addition to that - they finished 2 games off of a bye - if they hadn't looked so terrible the last week of the season, they probably wouldn't even have had to play this week - and its doubly frustrating in the context of all the "it's a marathon, not a sprint" and "it's only june" type comments over the season in response to Farrel losing winnable games with questionable moves (or non-moves).
In addition to that - they finished 2 games off of a bye - if they hadn't looked so terrible the last week of the season, they probably wouldn't even have had to play this week - and its doubly frustrating in the context of all the "it's a marathon, not a sprint" and "it's only june" type comments over the season in response to Farrel losing winnable games with questionable moves (or non-moves).
Can you explain this to those of us who 1)Can spell the manager's name correctly, and 2)didn't know that there were byes in the baseball playoffs
TIA
In addition to the above, how does the Red Sox manager's "losing winnable games" record ("LWG"?) compare to that of other managers.
No, I can't explain it. Mental lapse.
We've had probably 100 pages of threads about this. I'm not going to rehash it here.
Mental lapse or unprepared.
Actually, I don't recall seeing any comparisons to the number of winnable games other managers lost. But I may have missed it, so I'll drop it.
100 pages of people dodging these questions. Congrats on your par.
Additionally, people are aware that Lovullo is literally the #1 person JF confers on his moves with, right? TL is either a) in agreement/suggesting these moves or b) too scared for years to push back at JF on these "indefensible" moves, in which case I'd prefer someone with that little spine not be in charge.
c) gave JF horrible advice so he would be fired and Lovullo would get the #1 job.
Spit balling a bit here, but now that Lovullo is available to interview as a manger there's at least a chance he gets hired elsewhere.
Should that happen, I wonder if - now that he's had a few years off - Varitek is ready for the grind again and ends up as the bench coach. It would be a great way to break him in because he has future manager written all over him, has remained around the team a lot and in the dugout a bit. And obviously has the relationship with Farrell already.
Should that happen, I wonder if - now that he's had a few years off - Varitek is ready for the grind again and ends up as the bench coach. It would be a great way to break him in because he has future manager written all over him, has remained around the team a lot and in the dugout a bit. And obviously has the relationship with Farrell already.
To me, there were two big decisions that should be 100% up to the manager and that Farrell got completely wrong
1) Blake Swihart should have been the starting catcher from day 1 of the season, which would have preempted the fateful move to LF. Given that there was no hit to organizational depth regardless of where Vazquez and Swihart played this season, the manager should have the final say here. Farrell chose the wrong guy. Leon had a great 5 weeks and almost bailed him out, but he turned into a pumpkin for the playoffs, when it mattered most. If Swihart had hit to his second half BABip-adjusted numbers this season, that would have been steady production out of the bottom of the lineup, instead of the 5 weeks of great production and 31 weeks of black hole.
2. Joe Kelly pitched more innings in relief for Pawtucket than he did for the Red Sox. I do not think the organization had veto power over whether Kelly was a starter or a reliever. We now know his future is as a relief pitcher. Farrell should have known this in March, and acted accordingly. Failing that, he should have known that by August 1st, but it appears that Farrell thought Barnes (who had options) and Hembree (who had options) were superior to Kelly. He was wrong, and admitted as much with his ALDS usage.
Earlier deployment of Kelly to the bullpen or consistent usage of Swihart at C easily could have been the 2 games needed to get home field in round 1. And who knows from there.
1) Blake Swihart should have been the starting catcher from day 1 of the season, which would have preempted the fateful move to LF. Given that there was no hit to organizational depth regardless of where Vazquez and Swihart played this season, the manager should have the final say here. Farrell chose the wrong guy. Leon had a great 5 weeks and almost bailed him out, but he turned into a pumpkin for the playoffs, when it mattered most. If Swihart had hit to his second half BABip-adjusted numbers this season, that would have been steady production out of the bottom of the lineup, instead of the 5 weeks of great production and 31 weeks of black hole.
2. Joe Kelly pitched more innings in relief for Pawtucket than he did for the Red Sox. I do not think the organization had veto power over whether Kelly was a starter or a reliever. We now know his future is as a relief pitcher. Farrell should have known this in March, and acted accordingly. Failing that, he should have known that by August 1st, but it appears that Farrell thought Barnes (who had options) and Hembree (who had options) were superior to Kelly. He was wrong, and admitted as much with his ALDS usage.
Earlier deployment of Kelly to the bullpen or consistent usage of Swihart at C easily could have been the 2 games needed to get home field in round 1. And who knows from there.
Offtopic, and I guess threadworthy if this would actually generate any debate, but I suspect there wouldn't be much.
5 full years in the majors. Depending how the vote goes this year finished top 2 in MVP in each of those years (arguably should have been MVP in all 5).
47.7 career WAR at age 25.
He's already in.
I was going to say that as well; he's basically already achieved the Koufax exemption of 5 otherworldly years in a row. Kirby Puckett played 12 years, 8 of which were All-Star caliber and not even the best was as good as Trout's worst to date. Trout will be past him in short order as well.
Koufax played 12 years, though. The less-than-10-years exemption club begins and ends with Addie Joss
Defensively, Swihart has not performed like a MLB ready catcher though. His caught stealing % overall has been low, although not alarming, passed balls very high and he has problems catching popups behind the plate. I hope he can fix these because he should be easily the best hitting catcher in the organization.
I don't know how this is weighted either, but don't you have to assume just about every pitcher on the staff wanted to throw to Vazquez excluding maybe the young guys who knew him from the minors? Back when Salty was around, I don't think it was factored, but catcher defensive metrics are better now.
I would think it figured in a bit to how he was evaluated. The Cubs kept three catchers all year because of that fact since Contreras and Montero were clearly much better offensive players than David Ross.
Rightly or wrongly, Farrell (understandably as a former pitcher) appears to place a very high priority on having a strong defensive catcher. We saw him bench Salty in the WS because of this (and that may well have played a part in the Sox' disinterest in resigning him to a new deal), and it should hardly be a surprise that he'd prefer Vazquez over Swihart behind the plate as Vazquez' defensive reputation is extremely high.
A bit off topic, but Saltalamacchia's stats since the Sox declined to resign him: 0.206/0.306/0.375/0.681.
Back on topic, if Swihart can play both OF and catch, then he's a reasonably valuable player to have on the team.
Back on topic, if Swihart can play both OF and catch, then he's a reasonably valuable player to have on the team.
Good point. How do we feel about Sandy Leon? Farrell made it a point to give some credit to Leon during the press conference for the pitching turn around during the 2nd half.
1) Wasn't Swihart the catcher early in the year? He was sent down because he wasn't hitting while his defense behind the plate was awful and not trustworthy. This is coming from someone who has always been pro-Blake but you couldn't keep him back there the way he was performing.
2) What if Kelly was handled perfectly this season by Farrell to be able to make the playoff roster? After failing as a starter and sent down he returned only to have no command whatsoever. Upon being sent down again he found his comfort zone and as a mop-up guy in September regained his confidence in getting big league hitters out. It worked out about as well as it could based on his performance in two prior stints in Boston.
If only Farrell had done that.
Swihart didn't particularly prove himself in the field or at the plate in April (SSS caveat). They had the chance to bring in Vazquez, who is better defensively and seen as a team leader, while sending Swihart down to get more reps (yes, eventually in OF). Seems like a far cry from completely wrong.
And the Swihart in LF experiment was starting to work pretty well until his freak injury. Note to the Farrell-haters: injuries happen in sports. Managers cannot manage solely to avoid injury to their players.
Yes Farrell allowed a sample size of 6 games in April to overturn a sample size of 80 games in 2015. That pretty much sums up Farrell's weakness right there.
Or, he got feedback from his pitchers about Swihart's catching abilities. We don't know for sure the reasons for his being sent down, and neither do you.
I'm not sure it's really on Farrell entirely, it seems more organizational, but I'm fascinated that people seem so fixated on Steven Wright's pinch running appearance and the handling of Swihart is a shrug of the shoulders. His entire development path last year was a mess, and while I don't think there's any blame outside bad luck for the injury, that to me as well was the big organizational fuck up of 2016. Doubly so if they weren't bailed out by Leon's miracle two month stretch.
In Swiharts six starts before being sent down, he caught Price twice, Buchholz twice, and Porcello and Wright once. Kelly threw to Hanigan, whom he had good success with in 2015. Swihart had caught Porcello and Wright multiple times in 2015 (with success) while having never worked a regular season game with Price or Buchholz prior to their two starts.
Unless we want to believe that Buchholz and Price's opinion carried more sway with Farrell than the others, I don't think it was a matter of the pitchers rejecting Swihart at all.
Unless we want to believe that Buchholz and Price's opinion carried more sway with Farrell than the others, I don't think it was a matter of the pitchers rejecting Swihart at all.
And even if the putchers wanted to throw to Vazquez, his offense was so predictably awful even without the added rustiness from injury, that it more than negated any perceived advantage. It's just the typical wildly overrating of defense by a marginal major leaguer turned manager.
FWIW: a friend of mine who's close to the Sox heard from some higher-ups that ownership wanted to can Farrell but DD insisted on saving him.
This doesn't make sense to me. If ownership wants a guy gone, and you as the GM back him....you're essentially tying your job to his the moment you do that. Now, I'm sure some managers have earned that. Or perhaps there is some long term loyalty that might engender that. I don't see why DD (who has no real tie to JF), would do something like this.
Hell if anything, I could see the opposite happening. It's the sox ownership that has won a title with him and gone through the cancer business.
I don't know any more than any other fan but, to me, this doesn't pass the smell test.
I think people are overthinking the early Swihart demotion. I think its pretty obvious that the organization -- not just the manager -- thought that Vazquez's defense was so good that it would both outweigh his offense, and help the pitching staff. And that they just wanted to be sure that post-surgery Vazquez could play #1 innings. So he caught at AAA for a week, showed his health and got recalled. As it turned out, they were wrong about a couple of things....his hitting was probably worse than they expected, and his overall defense had regressed.
The rest of the analysis here is either "I know more about player development than they do so I say it was obvious they;d be wrong"; or "Farrell sucks so therefore the fact that it went wrong had to be his fault."
The rest of the analysis here is either "I know more about player development than they do so I say it was obvious they;d be wrong"; or "Farrell sucks so therefore the fact that it went wrong had to be his fault."
Re: Varitek...Schilling recently said: (WEEI)
As for Jason Varitek, Schilling said his former batterymate might not be the best fit running a team.
“I think he’s a coach. I never looked at Tek as a manager,” Schilling said. “From an IQ perspective, baseball, yeah, absolutely. But I don’t know that his personality is a managing personality. He’s not a guy that wants to stand up in the middle of a room and lecture. He’s very much I think like what Cal Ripken was for me in the sense that he wants to go out and play, and he wants you to play as hard as he plays. He doesn’t want to have to tell you to do it.”
I also wondered, if someone here might have some insight, why Varitek was allowed in uniform in the dugout occasionally throughout the year, since there is the rule about number of uniformed coaches allowed.
Why would Jason be allowed but not Bannister? Anyone hear this discussed?
There is a limit on the number of uniformed coaches/non-players in the dugout. My guess is that they have an extra slot in that allotment that rotates among a few guys, Varitek included. Could be that Bannister could use that spot when it's available, but otherwise he's one too many.
That's some good stuff. Hadn't heard that. I can totally see that he was more of a lead by example type when he was here.
Right. As I said, there is a rule about number of coaches in uniform allowed in the dugout. I thought that number was SEVEN. Farrell, Torey, Willis, Butter, Chilli, Victor & Amaro. So it must be expandable to 8 at times to allow for Varitek. I guess I'm puzzled that we never saw Bannister, especially with the progress made by the pitching staff in the 2nd half.
I totally buy that and now I'm seriously doubting they pick up his 2018 option. Sigh. More turnover. More circus candidates.
I believe there's a "courtesy" list of inactive players & extra coaches that the teams playing in each series agree can be in the dugout. Pesky was one of those extra guys for many seasons until another team didn't want to sign off on him being there.
The only way I can see it making sense is that if the team regresses next year, Farrell will take the heat instead of DD, and they can fire Farrell. If DD canned Farrell now and put his own guy in and the team still regressed, then the heat is on DD (i.e. "this new manager is YOUR guy, why isn't the team doing better?"). That being said, if ownership REALLY wanted Farrell gone, surely they can overrule DD?
DD is the President of Baseball Ops (not the GM as PTC mentioned above) and in his first year at the helm. Usually you have the most amount of leeway during this time. This ownership wasn't going to hand over the reigns and immediately start to dictate policy. I mean, they could have, but I don't think DD would have taken the job if he sensed he was going to be working for an Arte Moreno type.
DD may not have lifetime tenure in Boston, but he's close to it with JWH. He's not going to be sweating too much over disappointing results in his second full season running the club.
Edit: Already noted.
Edit2: The phrase "ownership" is always nebulous. Maybe one of the main owners (e.g., Werner) isn't a JF fan, or maybe it's a limited partner or two. There's probably never 100% support for the manager from the ownership, regardless of who is the manager.
I'd like to hear your examples of being unprepared. As you know, Farrell delegates a ton of responsibility, so which coaches are your holding responsible for the negligence?
At this point, I'd keep the young stud OF of JBJ, MVP Mookie and Beintndi in tact. Would not trade any1 of them. Let Chili work his magic on JBJ.
Lovullo most likely is gone. I could not think of a better option than 'tek as Bench Coach. Awesome option. I would hope that Pedro continues to work with the pitchers and that they listen to him and somehow can replicate partially some of Pedro's greatness.
Nothing against Chili but maybe too soon to consider Papi as hitting coach?
I would say Chili Davis' job is as safe as any hitting coach in baseball and there is no way Papi is going to be with the team every day the year after his retirement when he has specifically said he wants to spend time with the family and do some traveling.