Yes. But the ones that are struggling the most are not rookies. They are vets. They should be able to adjust without someone telling them to.
They SHOULD, but they're obviously not. A manager needs to do more than make up a lineup card.
It's not for nothing. It's an attempt to shake the team out of its malaise, to create some energy. I guess baseball managers don't do this very much anymore, but Cora certainly played in an era where this was standard operating procedure for some of the game's most successful managers.
I agree with this mostly. But more than just making a show for the players, the reason to go out and slow the game down and find out what’s going on with West isn’t to shovel dirt on his shoes, but just to slow the game down and give a chance for something else to happen. Like a conversation with the other umpires. Or an explanation from Vazquez. If that leads to him getting thrown out, so be it. But it’s not entirely baseball theater. Especially if the play is not reviewable then he should ask what’s going on and why the call.
A good manager would have known to use Richards Saturday and Hernandez Sunday. I'm sure with enough simulations you could "prove" this
So, the team is roughly where you thought it would be at the start of the season but because of the route the team has taken to get there, including a regression you saw coming, the manager has to go because a "good" manager would have been able to stop the inevitable from happening? That's some...logic...you've got working there.
I don't think it faulty logic....
Cora is really starting to remind me of Doc Rivers - he can be a great coach on a team that is itself already very good and that has a lot of veteran leadership, established roles, etc.
Perhaps he meant it when pre game he seemed to be downplaying things about it being just another game. One of 162. The visible lack of passion/intensity/fire in certain instances is really is hard to watch at times.
Sorry, but what you're describing as "stopping the bleeding" is asking him to be a magician. They "lucked out a shitton in the first half" (which I can't disagree with) but somehow when that luck ran out, he was supposed to push all the right buttons to turn a lucky but flawed team into a good team that didn't need luck to remain on a 100+ win pace (.628 winning percentage on July 5 when they last had a 4.5 game lead in the division = 101.7 win pace)? Is there a manager you think could have done it? I don't.
I think the problem is that there are a number of every day players who really are not MLB every day players. X, Devers, JD and maybe Schwarber (he's a close call) make up the group of every day players.
Yeah, certainly no question that roster depth (pitching and hitting) is the larger issue. And I would say that “falls” on Bloom, but I’m not sure it really “falls” on anyone given the hole they had to dig themselves out of beginning in 2019.
All of these played some role in the sweep, but in my opinion, pitching depth was the story of the series. When the Yankees drew up their season, I doubt it included using any of the guys they leaned on in their bullpen beyond Chapman and Green. But they were able to get good performances out of Holmes, King, Rodriguez, Severino, etc. This is without Loaisiga, who had been their best reliever for most the year (let alone Britton, who hasn't been consistently available to them all year). Boston, on the other hand, couldn't go to Taylor or Whitlock all series due to injury. Barnes had been brutal and then out with COVID, which limited his chances to get back on track. The guys they called on to replace those pitchers were simply not good enough.
Oh Cora deserves a ton of blame, particularly for having a team whose baseball IQ is about as wretched as it gets. Which is a shock considering how Cora was such a high baseball IQ player himself.
Why is there a good chance he gets Gallo? Gallo reached on a HBP vs Ottavino that inning and Ottavino is bad vs lefties generally.
I agree entirely with this post. It was hard to either watch or read about the NYY being patient, hitting oppo, etc. and the Sox making out after out. I thought they were supposed to have learned patience from observing Schwarber. (O'Brien's frequently repeated point). What ever happened to that?
Boston's bullpen had been Lights Out for a few weeks, and then shit the bed, one and all. Not much a manager can do in that situation
But mostly this. I'm sure Cora just ignored all the sabermetrically saturated and laminated scouting reports, skipped meetings, ran out of darts and gut feelings and went to his hunches.
I agree with you to the extent I don’t think every team failing or losing streak is necessarily the fault of the manager.
Yeah and they put up 9 runs total in the series and the third run yesterday was due to the Yankees misplaying 2 popups, Some perfect storm of slumps, bad luck, some hitters pressing and good Yankee pitching.
I don't think a manager is blame-free and can't be taken to task for decisions he makes, but it has to go beyond "that didn't work out so he must have fucked it up". There's also a difference between he made an irrefutably dumb decision (like Grady leaving in Pedro) and he made a defensible decision that didn't end the way we wanted (say, bringing in a lefty to face a lefty with two outs and a slim lead). With the latter, a healthy discussion/debate can be had about possible alternatives. That doesn't often seem to be the case, though.
In a one-game sample I completely agree, and this is why I was a pretty staunch Cora defender earlier in the season when their slide began. But there have easily been at last 6-7 games now where Cora's bullpen decisions have been baffling, and not just in hindsight. That matters when the Sox are likely to make or miss the playoffs by a game or two, even though It's not even close to the biggest issue this team is currently facing/
again though, there was that period a few months ago where literally every starter was unable to go 5 innings.... When something like that happens constantly its going to burn out your BP and no manager would prevent that
The Sox are 5th in bullpen era in the AL, 4th in holds, tied for 11th in blown saves (they have the 3rd most save chances in the AL so in context 11th doesn't seem terrible).
I think the second sentence is the key. But as to the first, "Save chances" and "blown saves" are so terribly misleading because a 1 run lead in the 6th is a save chance, getting a run-scoring DP with the bases loaded and none out in that 6th inning is a blown save, and "blown saves" dont always end up in "losses." Nothing goes into the positive side of the saves column for the guy who gets out of that 6th inning jam with no runs. It's not until the 8th or (usually) the 9th that its really a save chance. Otherwise It's only a save chance if it's blown. Obviously all teams are measured the same way, so it's not totally useless, but one team's "chances" might be a lot different from another's.
To the bolded, that guy usually gets credited with a hold. I think the context in which scotty posted those stats was to point out that the bullpen, by and large, has been fairly good (roughly top 1/3 in the league) at holding leads. Blown save = blown lead. Holds + saves = held leads.
I'm referring to anything other than in game stuff that we can observe.
I agree the bullpen has been mostly solid and think that Coras done a good job of managing its tattered remains since mid July.
How is that Cora’s fault? We have like 1 SP in our rotation that can constantly give the Sox 6 innings a start.
It displays a lack of focus and concentration and it yet another sign that they don’t pay attention to fundamentals.
They got set down on 12 pitches over 2 innings by guys wearing numbers in the 80s for the worst team in baseball.
