Francona out as Boston Manager

It's a complete fucking joke that Theo Epstein is still employed and Terry Francona is not. The good thing is now people will see who is really at fault for this rotten-at-the-core collection of misfits. Of course when the owner is your boy, you get a lot more rope.

 

He may or may not be.

 

He's going to the Cubs. It's just too perfect. He's lost the golden-boy reputation, he's made some horrible decisions lately, his team just finished a humongous collapse. He couldn't be a better fit.

 

While I recognize this is in jest, Theo would never leave Boston. Then he's just another guy without a boss who thinks he invented baseball and without a mostly worshipful press corps that won't give a shit he grew up down the block from Fenway.

 

Had no idea Joe McEwing was serious managerial timber. His name is being thrown around a bit.

Lot of shockingly reasonable chatter about this whole fiasco over at SoSH.

The elephant in the room might be that Beckett is the biggest clubhouse cancer of them all.

 

McEwing's the real deal. But I don't think anyone's first job should be in Boston. Plus he's still young enough that he probably needs to get "weathered," to use a Francona phrase from tonight, before he takes on the most difficult job of all.

 

Whomever takes over the Sox won't last two seasons.

 

Listening to Francona's press conference, geez, he sure didn't sound like he had any desire to stay. Even in pre-September press conferences, he sounded tired, and he's had some health problems over the years. If he wants to not come back, as opposed to being carried out on his shield, I think that's fine. I also do think there is a shelf life with most managers, and Francona is probably at or near the end of his with the Red Sox. (I'd say the same things about the Cardinals and La Russa, who's team didn't play that great in a weak NL Central, and got in thanks to the Braves, even more than the Rays got in thanks to the Red Sox.) As far as who the next manager is, I don't think they'll go to someone with no managing experience, but I think they go out of the organization to get a guy with a fresh perspective to evaluate the holdovers on the roster.

I'm torn on Epstein. According to some sources, he didn't want to do the Lackey or Crawford deals - they were directives from ownership in order to make sure fans were psyched for the upcoming season and that TV ratings were still strong. But the thing about Red Sox coverage is that every reporter is accused of having an agenda, or being in the pocket of some faction of the team. It seems like a horrible beat to have, between the corporate nature of the ownership to the downright batshit insane behavior of the fans. So, I'm fine with them keeping Theo - The Sox have drafted well, and his free agent signings have been bad, but pretty much any team that goes to the free agent well is 50/50 at best.

I think the issue with the Red Sox, Yankees and other high revenue teams is that they simply try to buy their way past rebuilding phases. It can work - The Yankees had one year out of the playoffs, but between Teixera, Montero, Cano and a few others, it looks like they have enough to be a contender for the next three to five years, even as they deal with the decline phase of A-Rod and Jeter. The AL East is also still the roughest division in baseball, since you have three legitimate contenders, a spunky contender (Toronto) and a manager that will do everything he can to eff over the other four teams (Baltimore).

 

I don't think Epstein has to deal with a lot of interference from above. Henry thinks Theo invented the game and there was a pretty clear delineation between church and state when Theo came back from his timeout after 2005. Maybe Crawford was encouraged by ownership, but Lackey? The ugliest man in the world and a rotten pitcher at Fenway? Who would ever correlate him with rising ratings?

Even if you dismiss the FA signings as being ordered from above, the fact is Theo's super duper drafts yielded almost nothing in the way of reinforcements this year. They got a good last week out of Lavarnway and a good first couple weeks out of Lowrie. And that was IT. (I count Bard as a core guy now) They traded for Conor Jackson for bench help and Erik Bedard for rotation help. How could the Sox not find better options internally than THAT? All on Theo.

Francona has looked like hell for years. He looked really awful this year. Between the pressures of the job, the pressures of everyone around him thinking they know so much more than him and the stress of having a son fighting overseas, I don't see him jumping right back into the game. Guy deserves a year off.

 

I could see Francona going to the White Sox if he's pissed about how he left Boston. If he's not pissed, but relieved (either would be appropriate), he probably would take a year of rest and wait for something better to open up. It always does.

 

I would love to see him manage the Cubs. If any manager knows how to overcome the psychological burden that a long championship drought (and the history of epic chokes since then) places on a franchise, it's Francona.