Terry Francona: HOF

Indians will be basically tied for first place in the AL Central after Corey Kluber shuts down the White Sox today.

Once they beat the Cubs in win the World Series, Francona will have led two of the most snakebitten MLB franchises to World Series titles. He'll have two with Boston and one with Cleveland. He'll be royalty in both towns.

His current career winning percentage is .530. That's right in line with Whitey Herzog (.532), Tony La Russa (.536), Tommy Lasorda (.526), and I'm sure several other HOF managers.

He's great with the media so will face no backlash from the writers when voting occurs.

I think Francona to the HOF is a no-brainer after the Indians win the World Series this year. What say you, SJ?

 

Every manager that has won 4 pennants is in the Hall of Fame, except Bochy. Charlie Grimm, Leland And Houlk are the only Managers post 1900 to have won 3 pennants and not be in the Hall of Fame.

 

And Leland is going to get in once he gets put on the Expansion Era ballot, perhaps as soon as this fall.

 

No brainer and he doesn't need to win another World Series in Cleveland to get there. He's been one of, if not the best managers in baseball for more than a decade. Assuming his record doesn't tank in his last seasons as a manager (whenever that may occur), he's good to go.

 

Every Hall needs a Tito.

 

This is going to sound nit-picky, but Francona sucked when he was managing the Phillies, so fuck him.

Yes, he won two World Series with the douchiest teams in baseball history, but his teams also missed the postseason in 10 of his 15 seasons.

In his three non-WS playoff seasons, the Red Sox got swept in the wild-card round twice.

If he wasn't the manager who broke the curse, he wouldn't be revered nearly as much. Kind of like how Tony Dungy wouldn't be a HOFer if he was just another honky who won a Super Bowl.

 

I hope his former Red Sox bosses handle the introduction. They'll air the rest of his secrets.

 

You just gave The Undefeated a story idea.

 

Phillies were a hopeless situation for Francona. He did a good job with the Red Sox, very good. When the front office spent big on stars who didn't produce, they used him as the fall guy. With Cleveland, he's been a little above average, which I think is pretty close to his actual status. I mean, yeah they broke the curse, but damn, the 2004 Sox were LOADED. So was the 2007 team.

 

To clarify: Francona did an outstanding job in 2004, then reverted to a little above average the rest of his Boston tenure. The '04 team may have been loaded, but it was hardly low maintenance.

 

The 2004 team as Mr. Gee said had a boatload of egos: Ortiz, Schilling, Pedro, Millar, Damon, Nomar (at first) -- just for starters. Getting those guys to get in line was a massive achievement.

 

Except when he had Pedro come into pitch in relief in game seven of the ALCS, energizing a then-dead Yankee Stadium crowd with "Who's your daddy?" chants. I'm a Sox fan and I never thought Tito was that terrific of a manager. He was a players manager, for sure, and it's not like he took some rag tag group of replacement level players to the promised land. The Sox had made the ALCS the year before he arrived. He basically pulled a Gruden and took the same team -- with the addition, no less, of Curt Schilling -- to the World Series title, helped greatly by the deadline deal dumping Nomar and picking up Cabrera, Doug M and later Dave Roberts.

Theo Epstein is the guy who will be going to Cooperstown IF the Cubs win a title