Well, problem solved.
BOSTON—The Red Sox are on to their third pitching coach in two seasons.
In the midst of a subpar year that’s included discord within the coaching staff, Bob McClure was relieved of his duties Monday in favor of Randy Niemann, previously the team’s assistant pitching coach.
Niemann, 56, is one of the few coaches whom manager Bobby Valentine is believed to have handpicked. Niemann was in the Mets’ organization and on the Major League coaching staff when Valentine was the Mets’ manager from 1996 to 2002.
The decision came on an off-day, with the Red Sox four games below .500 at 59-63 and carrying the eighth-worst ERA in baseball (4.30).
“This was a performance-based decision,” general manager Ben Cherington said on a conference call. “As I said yesterday and as I think Bobby has said, I think there’s been a real good effort on the part of the staff to work together and iron out any communication issues that may have existed previously. We simply felt like we needed to make a change to put our pitchers in the best position to do what they needed to do the next six weeks.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Mayor Blomberg Posted: August 21, 2012 at 01:51 AM (#4213407)So the solution seems pretty simple - fire them all.
They blew that opportunity last year, when they named Colonel Sanders part of the problem.
Niemann!!!!!!
well, if you have coaching talent that you believe in and want to keep around, what is your option here? Presumably Valentine agreed to work with these guys and didn't issue any ultimatum to the contrary.
Exactly. You could just as easily ask why an experienced manager would take a job if he couldn't hire his own coaches. The answer to both questions is the same, the parties involved thought it would work. That it hasn't is a failure on all of them.
Mikael's simple solution remains the obvious one - fire them all. Of course, my preventive suggestion - for god's sake don't hire Bobby Valentine - would have been better still.
It's not that every coach should have been replaced, it's just that the way they went about it had no coherent internal logic. (It had the incoherent logic of many competing interests working together poorly, which has generally been the logic of the Red Sox the last few years.)
EDIT: And to hop on SoSH's point, while I don't think they necessarily had to clean house after 2011, I think they absolutely must do so after this season. The unprofessionalism is wholly unacceptable. It's not hard to see why the players might be a mess if the coaches are behaving like a buncha ######' children.
You won't talk to each other? Seriously? You're middle-aged professionals in a highly competitive field, the essential job you fulfill is to work together to prepare a ballclub to play well on the field, but instead you're in such a collective snit, because someone said something mean, that the players have to ferry messages between you like kids with divorcing parents? You actively and spitefully refuse to even say hi to each other in the clubhouse? The general manager has to come down to the clubhouse and cajole you to do your ####### jobs like ####### adults? This is clownier than the clowniest clownshow I had imagined. All of these guys should be fired so hard they can't get jobs in the Italian league.
I didn't know this. It would be like appointing a new Secretary of State in mid-2008 to a five-year term.
I found it especially interesting that Valentine was the manager that got Tim Bogar cut/traded by the Mets in 1997. For a team that prides itself in its consideration of all possibilities (eg the near-creepy background checking they did on Carl Crawford), it's REALLY odd that the Sox management thought forcing a manager with terrible people skills to work with a coach that might be predisposed to dislike him was a good idea.
"First, I ignored all of the rules to get my friend the steel-driving man ownership in a big-market team. Then I appointed a Red Sox co-owner to look into non-Boston steroid abuse so he wouldn't taint the Boston Championship. After the unimaginable horror of the 2011 team missing the playoffs, I changed the rules of the baseball playoff system so they could finish in third place and make the playoffs. And still they can't do it!"
*EDIT*
I quibble with "out-of-the-blue", but admit that it wasn't the most organic conversational fit.
Sorry, Mikael, that I should have said I read the Wiki page and then had that question. My bad; & thanks for linking.
Re-assign them within the organization. AAA, roving instructors, etc.
From 2003-2011, the Red Sox won the Wild Card five times and finished in the wild card runner-up spot twice. Going to seven one-game playoffs would have been a significantly worse outcome than what occured.
If you want to have a discussion about the impact to the bottom line of Fox and Friends you'll get no argument from me about the impact of the Sox (and Phillies) missing the playoffs. There is a very real chance that the playoffs will be without several big markets represented and the idea that year one of the Wild Card Playoff game would be Pittsburgh at Atlanta and Baltimore at Oakland is pretty freakin' funny.
Edited for clarity.
Actually, they choose to be.
The Yankees are not spending even close to the limits of their resources. At ~$200M payroll, the Sox could match them if they chose. They just rather stay in Selig's good graces and make an extra $25M a year.
I don't think anyone disputes that the business of baseball in the short term is probably better off if the Red Sox are successful rather than Oakland. However, in the long haul the best thing that can happen is widespread success. I think it's probably good to have the Yankees out there as an evil empire and there needs to be a foil even if that rotates (Sox 2003-2009, Rangers 2010-???, Angels coming...).
In some respect perhaps it's for the best for MLB if the Sox are a bit less successful. Even in their down years the Sox have historically done well in attendance and ratings while teams like Oakland or Cleveland probably benefit more than the Sox from having a great season. TV ratings is a different story and MLB probably prefers the tv ratings and money that comes with it.
If we're talking about the actual choices made by ownership, then the Red Sox are underdogs to the Yankees. If we're talking about the possible choices open to ownership, based on revenue and revenue-capacity, then the Red Sox are underdogs to the Yankees.
If the Red Sox did choose to spend more heavily, I am confident the Yankees would respond in kind. Because they have way more revenue and can do that.
If the Red Sox decided to spend up to the limit of their resources, as you suggest, the Yankees would still be able to spend a little bit more. So yes, at whatever level the Sox choose to spend, they will always be slight to moderate underdogs against the Yanks (and massive overdogs against most of the rest of the league). I've never understood this fixation with the Red Sox's self-imposed cap when pretty much every team in the league could spend more, if they really wanted to.
Edit: Coke to Mikael, not surprisingly.
Would the Yankees continue to stay at $200 million if the Sox were matching them? I would argue that at the very least the Yankees make more than the Sox so they should always be the slight favorite though at some point you probably run into diminishing returns.
Krusty's Kola-like beverage to MC and SoSH
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main