What going on down Jersey St?

In the past two days, things seem to have gotten a bit weird.  The managerial search had been progressing in its normal, boring way.  Cherington had interviewed normal, boring candidates like Dale Sveum and Pete Mackanin and Torey Lovullo.  They were looking for a Francona clone, a good company man who will carry out the directives of management, handle the media well, and keep the players happy. 

Now it’s reported that Bobby Valentine is a leading candidate.  There are conflicting reports as to whether Valentine has met only with ownership, or whether he also met with Cherington and the meeting went unreported for some reason.  It’s possible to square the interest in Valentine with a narrative of front office cohesion on Jersey St - as an aside, I see no reason to honor the malignant Tom Yawkey with a street name, let alone one synecdochal for the Red Sox.  Anyway, it’s possible that Valentine had been on the list from the beginning, but it’s unlikely that could have been kept from the press by the leaky Sox front office, and it’s odd that there would be one Valentine on the original list along with a half-dozen Francona clones.  None of the other managerial candidates who’ve been reported resemble Valentine in resume, profile, or in expected demands of authority.  The simplest explanation does appear to be that Cherington was overruled. 

It’s not exactly world-historical news that a young manager was overruled by his bosses.  And I don’t mean to suggest that this is necessarily bad in baseball terms - the last two years of front office harmony haven’t exactly produced results in which anyone takes pride.  Hell, I think Bobby Valentine’s managerial resume is very impressive, and I’m excited about the possibility of his taking the reins in Fenway.  I do think it’s fair to suggest that the front office harmony of the last several years was an aberration, and we’re heading back to a more complex and messy arrangement of power between management and ownership.  We can expect more drama, more leaks, more silliness. 

I originally had a way to tie this post to Craig Shipley’s dismissal, but I seem to have forgotten what it was.  Anyway, the other front office news is that Craig Shipley, who has overseen the Sox underperforming international scouting and development system for the last several years, is going to be fired.  Theo said in the post-collapse press conference that he wanted to run a full review of the entire organization to figure out what needed to be fixed.  This seems like the sort of move that would arise from a full review – Shipley’s division has underperformed, so they’re looking for someone new.  This dismissal doesn’t really fit with the “complex arrangement of power” narrative of the first three paragraphs, though.  Shipley’s dismissal seems like exactly the sort of action we’d expect the new GM to take.