The Official 2012 Boston Red Sox Thread

Usually teams let their coaches interview with other teams if they're going to my promoted in position, but not for lateral moves.

Regarding Farrell, I honestly have no clue if he's a good manager or not. I've heard both pros and cons to him but without seeing him day in and day out I'd have no clue. I know the Sox really respect him and he's a smart baseball guy, so he has that going for him.

I agree with you about Torre. He wasn't a great in game manager but he was great with the media and clubhouse and that's half the battle right there, especially in big markets like Boston and New York.

I do like how the Sox are thinking outside of the box with interviewing guys like Pena, Wallach, Ausmus, Hale etc. It seems like they have a better plan of attack this year instead of last and again it seems like they want to get this over with sooner than later. Whether it works out remains to be seem.

 

Not only that but the players liked, respected and played hard for him. Especially in the later years when he had all of those big egos to deal with. Really, thinking back the only thing Torre did poorly as far as the clubhouse goes was dealing with Arod, I think he could have handled him a little better.

 

Again we have no idea how someone is going to be until he's sitting in that seat but with that being said I really don't get that one. Does Giambi have the rep for being a smart baseball guy? Plus I think he's much too close with the players on that team, its hard to be buddies with people and also have to be their boss, which is one of the reasons why I've been saying no to Varitek as Sox manager. But hey it's the Rockies, that franchise has almost zero clue what to do with anything.

 

Torre even admitted he handed that poorly, he didn't even sit Arod down to tell him. But I'm talking about him defending Arod in public or asking Jeter to say something to help him out. I think he could have helped ease the pressure off of Arod a bit but just never did.

 

Good article by Pete Abraham:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2012/10/opportunity_for.html

Although I worry FinYank might run into incoming traffic after reading it.

 

Interesting, Speier is the best in the business so if he says something might be happening I'd tend to agree with him. Either way I'm hoping that have a manager in place by Monday.

 

Gammons is reporting the next manager is between John Farrell and Brad Ausmus.

 

John Farrell and a player for Mike Aviles? Sounds good. Hopefully John can right the ship. It remains to be seen if he's a good MLB manager or not but I guess we'll see. Hopefully he comes in on Day 1 and cleans things up a bit, I have a feeling he will just because he's so respected in that clubhouse.

Farrell is getting a 3 year deal.

 

A name to keep an eye on in the next few days is 18 year old Japanese pitcher Shohei Otani. He apparently throws 97 mph and has already talked to the Sox, Seattle and Texas. He has come out and said he's skipping the Japanese draft and will sign with a MLB team ala Junchini Tawaza. He would be a pretty interesting signing. Hopefully the Sox can make it happen.

 

Not that it was complete but done in a timely fashion (it took 2 months last year) and shows this was a Cherington hire and he has finally gotten power in the GM chair. Let's stop fooling each other, Valentine was all Lucchino. It's also nice seeing players (current and former) coming out and talking about how its a positive hire, unlike the Valentine one where they all hated it.

Next steps are to resign Ortiz and possibly Ross and go from there. We still have holes at 1B, SS and COF and obviously getting some arms but I think with a few moves whether it be FA signing or trade this team can contend next year with some better luck and health and of course the star players playing up to their talent level.

The offseason has started on a positive note for sure.

 

That's probably what's going to happen in the end but it doesn't hurt to kick the tires and see if Andrus or someone else is available.

 

For the first time in what 13 months today is a good day to be a Sox fan. Heard a lot of positive things out of the press conference. Good to see Farrell has already pointed out bad habits he saw from Lester and Buchholz and that he's already spoke to Ortiz etc. Also good seeing Cherington with a plan of attack for the offseason. Of course they need to walk the walk as well but this gives me some hope things are changing.

 

Like I always said we won't know whether the manager will be good/bad until he's actually managing. I don't get too worked up over articles like that though. At the end of the day and it's what Farrell said in the press conference, it all depends on the quality of the players and how they play. Even a bad manager can win with a good team and a good manager can lose on a bad team.

Again there were similar articles written about Francona to Torre to Pinella to LaRussa to Girardi to whoever. We'll just have to sit back and wait and see.

Bottom line is the franchise is in a better place today then they were at this time last year or at any point in the past 13 or 14 months. Moving forward.

 

According to Gordon Edes the Sox are close to signing David Ortiz to a 2 year 22-25M extension.

Also people expect Torey Lovullo to be a possible coach, perhaps the bench coach. Although Gammons is saying the Sox are trying to get Brad Ausmus to take that position.

 

Team was 60 and 66 at the time Ortiz was shut down, which happened to be at the time of the "Punto Trade" so I'm not sure what race Valentine was thinking he was in. Also I think it shows you more of the character of Bobby Valentine to throw a player who at least publicly had his back under the bus. Also I think it was obvious for anyone that actually watched that game Ortiz came back he still wasn't at 100%.

Oh well Valentine got his 5 minutes of spotlight back, now it's time for him to go away again and hope someone is dumb enough to call him up for a job. The best thing about Valentine is that when he talks now people realize he's 98% full of it and just ignore him.

I think the rest of the article sums it up pretty good though. This will be a non story by tomorrow.

 

Good article by Rob Bradford of WEEI picking apart Valentine's interview last night:

http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/b...24/bobby-valentine-might-want-check-his-facts

Basically the more Valentine talks the worse he looks but it's like the guy just has a disease and can't help himself. So sad.

 

Read that article I linked to in the post above yours if you haven't already.

It's not a non-story that the media built up, the media had to cover it for at least one day. They had to write about it because Valentine said Ortiz quit on the team meaning he was dogging his injury. That's a news story whether he's right or wrong. The rest of the interview was Bobby being Bobby and in the article I linked a writer basically called Bobby out by being full of crap.

And it wasn't like Ortiz simply shut it down after the trade, he tried rehabing it and even getting injections for treatments. So unless Bobby is implying Ortiz did all of that for show then Valentine is frankly caught in yet another one of his lies.

I do appreciate that he, as the suppose leader, finally took blame for the failures this year and do agree that it's more on the players that didn't perform fault more than his, it's clear he was a major problem in that clubhouse.

I think more than anything it's a Bobby Valentine is simply a pathetic attention seeker than anything else. I mean who claims he left notes for the next manager of the team about who was to blame etc.? He just comes off looking silly.

Like I said, it was a story for the first 10 or 15 minutes after it was said then everyone else heard the rest of his interview and got over it. I'd be surprised if this is still being discussed tomorrow.

Everyone is moving on but Bobby.

 

Still can happen between now and then though.

 

It's my understanding and perhaps I'm wrong, good chance of that, but MLB teams don't have to wait until March to sign him. Of course the Japanese leagues would flip out since there is a "gentlemen's agreement" that the two leagues (MLB and Japan) won't try to sign drafted players, so there could be a posting fee type deal to get the rights for him like there was with Matsuzaka and Darvish for example. I'm sure we'll read much more in the coming days.

EDIT: According to rotoworld.com teams can't sign him until April.

 

You know what? This whole thing is pretty confusing, haha. I'm just going to sit back and just wait and see what's going to happen. Let me know when/if he signs with anyone.