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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, July 13, 2012
Have you heard there may be interpersonal conflicts among the Boston Red Sox? This is a story about that! Halfway through Bobby Valentine’s first season as manager of the Boston Red Sox, signs of disconnects are everywhere, regardless of how much he and others try to downplay them publicly.
Valentine has voiced frustration to associates over his lack of communication with members of his coaching staff, especially pitching coach Bob McClure, but also bullpen coach Gary Tuck and bench coach Tim Bogar. McClure said Thursday such reports “are overblown,” noting that he and Valentine spent considerable time before Thursday’s workout discussing the team’s pitching plans in the second half.
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David Ortiz publicly stated his support recently for the manager, but another respected player on the team said privately that it was all for show. That same player has gone weeks without speaking to Valentine and said that the manager does not have the support of “anyone” in the clubhouse. That is likely an exaggeration—another veteran told a friend he has come around on the manager after initially being shocked at his hire—but Valentine told associates that he knows he is being bad-mouthed in the clubhouse and is at a loss to understand why.
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1. Matt Clement of Alexandria Posted: July 13, 2012 at 09:24 AM (#4181620)Any of the pitchers, but probably Josh Beckett, would be the second choice.
Well there is this:
If the Sox do not make the postseason, what are the chances Valentine doesn't return next year?
The next manager might have an even harder job than Valentine, did, though.
Or the Sox could start winning games - they have 90+ win talent - and everything will work itself out.
All you do by firing Valentine is validate the bad behavior. You might as well bring in a personal chef to fry up the chicken and have Sam Adams set up a brewhouse in the locker room.
Maybe Tito had just enough say, and Valentine didn't have quite enough. But I think the manager's job is to work with the coaches (and the coaches' job is to work with the manager), and it sounds like there's been failure enough to go around.
And of course, it might stack up for Boston that they get to pitch Lester while the the other team is using their #3 or #4. I'm of the opinion that the Red Sox don't even make it to the one-game playoff for the WC spot, but I don't think you can say they are any kind of bad bet if they do. The sample size is just too small.
What bad behavior? Supposedly Valentine got rid of this stuff and I have read nothing that says that it's back. The "bad behavior" so far is "playing like crap."
It probably depends on the team. I remember often reading that he assists the manager with game management. ("You can't get Anderson up, he's pitched the last 3 nights, remember? We probably shouldn't hit and run here, there's 2 outs.") On the Rockies, I think their bench coach (Tom Runnells) has a lot of coaching duties with players--they made him the bench coach because he'd been managing the Rockies AA and AAA teams for a while and got to know a lot of the players on their way up.
Valentine is the hard ass. I don't understand how an even harder ass is somehow going to be beloved by everybody. Hardasses tend to piss people off. That's their kind of their thing.
I don't really care about players gripes or whatever - I'm pretty sure Earl Weaver wasn't everyone's cup of tea either - but what does concern me is the injury stuff. The Red Sox have a history of lots of injured players who seem to spend play poorly due to injury and spend longer on the DL than other teams, as far as I can tell. How they handle that issue really does seem like it needs a change of organization-wide philosophy.
Jim Palmer loved him. (And that wasn't tea in the cup.)
What I was saying, all, is that the Theo model of building a team to win 88+ games was good when there was one wild card. It wasn't such a good model pre-69, when you needed to win 95+ to get a pennant ('67 & other rare events excluded). It ain't such a good model when there is a reward for winning the division and you happen to play in a division that will likely need 93+ wins to get it; especially when your team without an ace the caliber of other good team's aces may only project to win the one-game WS playoff 40%-45% of the time.
The Red Sox, should they win the WC, have about a 10% of getting to the Big Dance, and 5% prob of bringin home the trophy, IMHO. Other years I would guess the odds would be better. If I were choosing, I would favor staying under the salary cap to re-set that, rather than playing for the 2012 flag and paying the piper, if finances come into it.
Career ERA+
Verlander 126
Sabathia 125
Lester 124
Hamels 125
Weaver 131
Lester may be down this year, but career ERA-wise, he holds up to any other #1 starter.
There's some logic to this. You don't want a staff made up of guys the manager likes to drink with (as has happened more than a few times) --or at least you don't want that to be the sole reason for the hire.
Interestingly Tom House wasn't a Valentine hire. Tough to say that worked out well, and the fact that House was an unconventional coach and Valentine wasn't fully supportive probably didn't help.
Grrr!!
Really? Valentine went on record saying he told associates this? This is a fact?
Of course not. At best, "according to associates Valentine is being bad-mouthed...."
The "Theo model" was consistently stated as building a team to win 95 games. Not sure where you are getting 88 wins from.
And very few people would argue that Verlander v Weaver v Lester in a playoff game should be judged much by career ERA+
It was my expectation those years. The Sox reached that level in 6 of his first 7 years and I think in both 2010 and 2011 had clubs that easily could have reached that level.
Of course Jon Lester isn't as good as Justin Verlander or Jered Weaver. The point is that he's still a top 10 pitcher in the AL, which gives the Red Sox a good shot against even opponents who can start a Cy Young candidate like Verlander.
Take the other AL contenders. Lester is clearly at a disadvantage against Weaver, Verlander, or Sabathia. He's evenly matched against Price, Harrison, or Peavy, and I'd take him over Hammel.
Sure, but failing to be one of the top 2 pitchers in the league doesn't make him a #2 starter. On most teams, I think Lester would be the best starting pitcher, in terms of established value at this point in his career. His off-year also seems to be mostly due to a poor BABIP. Compared with last year, his home-run rate is the same, his walk and strikeout rates are down by about one per nine innings, and his hits against are up by 2 per nine innings. Nothing really looks like a cause for major long-term concern. I'd expect him to bounce back.
95, 98, 95, 88, 96, 95, 95
They had injury problems in 2010, and then 2011-2012 have been the crisis years. After two years under 95 wins, Theo quite and Tito was fired. It seems pretty clear that they shot for 95 wins and they usually hit their target until the end. Once they didn't hit their target, things got shaken up (though perhaps not for the better).
If you're basing it entirely off fielding independent stats, then yeah, Peavy and Price are marginally better than Lester. Having an ERA that is actually better than league average should count for a little bit, though.
EDIT: Also, the Sox might end up using Sale in a game 1 over Peavy, and he also beats Lester solidly in K, BB, and HR. ERA+ difference is pushing 100.
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