Same. Sox need a new POBO before the month is over, and whoever it is needs to draw the line with Cora somewhere. There's no particular reason he should go to bat for a bunch of assistant coaches when he's going to be a lame duck manager anyway. Chance are they're all going to be replaced next season regardless.
I think that chances are very good that he will not be a lame duck manager and will get an extension.
Which further shows this ownership group has absolutely zero plan. The fact they refuse to fire him or hold him responsible for the failures is malpractice.
Agreed. And the entire staff will return after two horrid seasons where nothing improved.
This makes me a bit cross. Need to start with the best group of hitters, pitchers and fielders you can afford / bring on board; but also the coaches need to be able to improve the results; otherwise why have them at all?
Sure, different players respond differently and some will improve, while others will regress regardless of input from coaching. In my opinion (and for the record, while I have been vocal about this, I recognize that I am no expert... but are any of us, really?), the issue under Cora is that the problems have been systemic. It's up and down the roster, and it's over and over and over. The team is simply non-cohesive on the defensive side of the ball.
No, we really have no idea.
I hear all of this. I’ll just ask again though: are the systemic problems because the coaching stinks, or because we keep bringing in players who aren’t good defensively?
I think coaching could make Devers better…. Good, no. But better, yes. Devers especially since it seems like it’s a mental thing with him. He could use the reps before games, the fielding drills.
Quite possibly. I just have no idea what their rep level looks like. Maybe it’s embarrassingly low compared to more fundamentally sound teams. I just don’t know.
Different players have different skill levels and different abilities. Some of that can be enhanced and some of it can't. Much of that depends on the player. That said, there are certain fundamentals that most players should be able to hone via repetition. I'm guessing that most of us can think of specific skills in our own professions that required repetition for us to become more proficient in what we do. There are other situations that we encounter less frequently and yet we still have certain drills/exercises/reviews that we do so that we recall the proper procedures when these situations occur. Many of us have expressed concerns regarding the focus, awareness, preparedness and execution of what we refer to as situational baseball over the course of the past couple of seasons. Now Cora himself seems to confirm the deficiencies that we've been talking about with his announcement that the team will be placing an emphasis on this beginning in spring training. Like @8slim says some of this is systematic and that is what I find worrisome about the return of Cora and his staff. We as fans don't know all of the details of what goes on inside of the teams that we follow, but some things do appear to be painfully obvious. I'm finding it difficult to understand the vote of confidence here given the organization's signal for needing new direction when the manager basically admits to what we've all been witnessing and questioning.
It certainly seems that a sports psychologist could be an option. Devers has decent range, his defensive issues seem to mostly be with his throwing and part of that is a failure to hold on to the ball in certain situations or with rushing some of his throws. We often see Raffy go into these pronged batting slumps where he seems to be trying too hard. I wonder if part of his defensive issues stem from the same thing. He knows that he struggles with certain things. Is he trying too hard to right those wrongs? Is he pressing too hard, trying to make some of these throws and just compounding things by doing so?
How about a good old fashioned country infield coach, like Brian Butterfield (from Bangor Maine). New GM or director of personnel development, get on it.
I'm more than fine with Brian Butterfield (now that covid is not front and center at least), but as a fellow product of the Orono schools he's from Orono and played for Orono High. Bangor was the big city to our south, had an Orange Julius in the Mall and everything.
Agree.
Ross is very tight with Aaron Boone and would seem to be a great fit for NY's now open bench coach slot. Boone evidently really helped Ross when he was going after the CHC job and since:
Not competing is not an option for the Red Sox this year. If it were, Bloom would still be around.
