The Red Sox just announced the dismissal of pitching coach Juan Nieves.
https://twitter.com/brianmacp/status/596351520842522624
https://twitter.com/brianmacp/status/596351520842522624
Many observers thought every single member of the pitching staff would be heavily underperforming their career/3 year/2014 numbers?MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:considering so many observers thought this starting rotation would be just as bad as it is
MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:Wow. It's always hard to know how much blame to place at the feet of the pitching coach, but considering so many observers thought this starting rotation would be just as bad as it is, it really seems like Nieves is taking the fall for Ben's bad offseason.
rembrat said:I thought this regime was above shit like this. A bit disappointed here.
TheoShmeo said:The immediate, knee jerk reaction -- "they're making him the fall guy/scape-goat" -- ignores that JF might actually think that Nieves isn't a good communicator or teaches pitching in a sub-optimal way. Said differently, the explanation may well go beyond PR or mollifying fans and other critics.
yecul said:This is about a leadership and communication thing, not performance. If Farrell is feeling like he has to step in to address issues, then what does that say about 1. Nieves' ability or initative to do so himself and 2. Farrell's / the team's confidence that he can do so? I think it says that they don't see Nieves as the guy.
Taking the blame implies that they are making a gesture. This is a forward looking move in where the pitchers need to get. Nieves clearly wasn't the guy.
soxhop411 said:https://twitter.com/RyanHannable/status/594982993917251584
TheoShmeo said:Rembrat, sometimes employers and direct supervisors have high hopes and good reason to believe that a prospective hire is dead solid perfect for a particular job and, sadly, a year or two later the actual experience of working with him leads them to revise those expectations or need to dismiss the employee.
This could be one of those situations.
Red(s)HawksFan said:Weren't we asking, on this very board, just a week ago if there was an issue with Nieves because Farrell called that meeting of the pitching staff to address the issue of predictability and lack of aggression? People were questioning why it took Farrell pointing this out when it should have been something addressed by the pitching coach. I know I tried to pass it off as something that might have only jumped out to an observer who wasn't on the inside of every meeting and strategy session, but clearly that was a vote of no confidence in the pitching coach. Now a week later, that pitching coach is out. How is this a surprise or "scapegoating"?
drbretto said:
This is why I don't get why people are jumping on the scapegoat bandwagon here. It sounds like Farrell and Nieves have differences of opinion on how to handle the pitching staff, so they let him go. This isn't a regular 9-5 job. Coaches are fired and re-hired all the time. When things aren't working out one way, you try another approach. I don't see any problem here at all. Every pitcher on the team is underperforming and Farrell has had to step in to do his job. So, they try another approach. That's baseball.
This is about the most insight we're gonna get. I can't believe the Sox would do this if the role of pitching coach were being carried out properly. The fact that the manager has to or wants to intervene suggests maybe the arrangement wasn't ideal. If Farrell wants to be a Belichick-like de facto D Coordinator, then they need someone to act more like, I dunno, an assistant pitching coach? But more likely Farrell was intervening because he felt Nieves wasn't making it work.soxhop411 said:Quote from earlier this week that I posted in the SP thread
Ryan Hannable @RyanHannable 10m10 minutes ago
Farrell indicated he's maybe done more 1-on-1 work with the pitchers than he's done in the past given the early season struggles.
So perhaps communication or clubhouse issuers
Rudy Pemberton said:I get the point that isn't not Nieves, but what was he doing to turn things around? He wasn't able to do much with last year's staff, either, and once Farrell starting getting involved, the writing was on the wall.
czar said:
Yes, and the idea of how much a pitching coach matters also cuts multiple ways.
Many of those up in arms over Nieves' dismissal are essentially using the argument "the players are the ones who actually play baseball, they are veterans and the coach isn't that important to their success."
If that's the case, it makes the argument of coaches being fungible assets more strongly. If Nieves isn't the reason the SP are sucking, outside of feeling empathetic for the guy, why should we get worked up over the fact that he was dismissed?
Exactly, an aceless staff leads a leader, clearly that wasn't Nieves.Rudy Pemberton said:I get the point that isn't not Nieves, but what was he doing to turn things around? He wasn't able to do much with last year's staff, either, and once Farrell starting getting involved, the writing was on the wall.
Just because they're veterans and should know how to adapt doesn't mean they aren't going into games with less than ideal game plans that originated from Nieves.bankshot1 said:These guys aren't rookie pitchers. They should know how to adapt to difficult and evolving situations using mostly their own abilities and experience.
I'm not saying that a pitching coach is irrelevant but that this smells like a PR message to the fans..
IMO Nieves=scapegoat
Snoop Soxy Dogg said:
I'd say the ire in this scenario is directed at what would be FO incompetence, not so much Nieves per se, sympathy and all that. If pitching coaches do not matter, then whoever comes next will make little difference. The pitchers are just terrible, that's what I'm worked up about. Unless Breslow, Masterson, Miley, relying on Buchholz, all that was done because Nieves is the one who pushed it. Firing Nieves is easy; the fear here is that it really doesn't solve anything because the real issues are elsewhere, i.e. the available talent.
This is all correct. Call him the fall guy if you want, but he put himself in a position that made it easy to fall.Rovin Romine said:
If pitching coaches do matter, Nieves clearly wasn't delivering. If they don't matter, there's no loss in firing the guy after paying him for two years to do essentially nothing.
If it's somewhere in between, the pitchers will get a new face and a new voice to interact with - it may make them think about their routine, pitch selection, execution, and overall strategy in a new light. May help, unlikely to hurt.
Also, it's clearly a sign from management (between Mujica and Nieves) that it's not safe to "coast" on the team and hope things get better in August.