How bad have the Red Sox been this season? One night provides the stunning answer. On Tuesday night, the Seattle Mariners passed the Red Sox in the American League wild-card standings.
This would be funny if it weren’t so sad for a team that could afford to fire a manager who led them to two World Series championships and replace him with one of the all-time greats – great frauds, that is – and a team that will miss the playoffs for the third successive season – its most extended post-season drought in 10 years – and a team with the third highest payroll in the majors (more than twice the Mariners’ payroll) and that has squandered $518 million in payroll in its three failed seasons.
It’s time for John Henry, the principal owner, to write another e-mail and issue another statement. Acting more and more like a refined George Steinbrenner with each act, Henry sent e-mail statements to Red Sox reporters twice in 10 days in the first half of this month supporting, defending, explaining the Red Sox ills. How does he defend and explain this development?
After games of July 19, the Red Sox were two games from the top of the wild-card standings and one game from the new second wild-card spot. They were tied with Tampa Bay, 8 ½ games ahead of what at the time seemed like the woeful Mariners. Since then, through Tuesday’s games, the Red Sox have had an 11-19 record and the Rays and the Mariners 20-10, best in the league.
Henry can complain all day long about the reaction of the news media to manager Bobby Valentine and the team’s miserable season. However, he has only himself and his top executive, Larry Lucchino, to blame. They made the questionable decision to fire Terry Francona and then the even more questionable decision to replace him with Valentine.
In the Red Sox media guide, Henry’s biography quotes him as saying, “Larry Lucchino is my role model when it comes to baseball executives.” Maybe Henry should choose a different role model. Lucchino hasn’t had too much success the past few years, certainly not this year in overseeing a rookie general manager, Ben Cherington, and overruling him on his choice to replace Francona.
Put aside anyone’s personal view of Valentine (including mine); if you don’t think Valentine is to blame for the Red Sox disastrous season, fine; you are entitled to your opinion. But look at these newspaper and Internet headlines and honestly answer one question: would Francona or anyone else who had been hired to replace him have generated these headlines, all having appeared this month alone? These are only a random sample of the headlines that have appeared in print or on Web sites in the past few weeks:
Players critical of Bobby Valentine
Red Sox players take Valentine gripes to ownership
Red Sox stars blast manager Bobby Valentine in heated July meeting with ownership
Dustin Pedroia denies Bobby V report
Dustin Pedroia on controversy: ‘I don’t think Bobby should be fired’
Henry: Players blamed themselves
Bobby Valentine isn’t the problem, Red Sox players are
In the latest Sox soap opera, blame is widespread
Red Sox are hard to believe
Adrian Gonzalez off the hook as NY Mets’ Kelly Shoppach takes fall for Boston’s text mutiny
Red Sox fire Bob McClure
Communication lacking for Red Sox
Little wonder that the Red Sox are sinking in the standings faster than a block of cement. In a pre-season column a few years ago I cautioned Red Sox fans that with the improvement of the Rays and the strength of the Yankees, their team faced the very real possibility of being shut out of the playoffs. That was when each league had one wild-card spot. Now, for the first time, each league has two wild cards, but still the Red Sox face the almost certain humiliation of not tasting the post-season, not even getting a one-game taste.
Several years ago Lucchino called the Yankees the evil empire after they beat the Red Sox to a free-agent Cuban pitcher, Jose Contreras. Perhaps the Red Sox have usurped the designation, though they don’t seem to be beating anyone to anything, at least nothing positive.
The Red Sox have played poorly for a variety of reasons but largely because of all of the distractions that emerged from the stories that created those headlines. You will find Valentine in the middle of most of those stories, which is only par for Valentine’s course. They are his style, his modus operandi. Lucchino ignored Valentine’s well known history when he hired him, and what the Red Sox have received has been nothing unexpected by those who have followed the history.
Valentine has even followed his history with reporters who cover the team he manages. He initiated his practice way back in Texas, his first managerial stop. Valentine determines which reporters are friendly and which are not, or even neutral. Neutral is not good enough for Valentine. Members of what I call his society of sycophants are favored by leaks from Valentine.
In Boston, the Globe’s Peter Abraham, who covered Valentine in his last year as the New York Mets’ manager in 2002, seems to have assumed command of Valentine’s Society of Sycophants. He has written recent pieces absolving Valentine of all blame for the team’s poor season and placing it elsewhere. Even in his most recent article, which seems to adopt a different view, he manages to find fault with others.
Josh Beckett recently wasn’t ready to pitch, Abraham wrote, “But somehow Valentine did not know, or wasn’t properly informed, about the readiness of one of his most important players.”
That was the fault presumably of Bob McClure, the pitching coach, whom the manager didn’t like – he inherited him – and was fired the other day. I’ve always thought it was the manager’s responsibility to know everything.
Valentine also didn’t like two other coaches who were retained after he was hired.
“Until recent weeks,” Abraham wrote, “after all sides agreed to try harder to make it work, Valentine’s conversations with McClure were dominated by one- or two-word sentences. Bench coach Tim Bogar and bullpen coach Gary Tuck spoke to the manager even less at times.”
So again it was the coaches’ fault.
“The discord filtered into the clubhouse, leaving the players wedged in the middle or forced to take sides,” Abraham wrote, not once mentioning that the manager has a responsibility to make things work.
Red Sox officials, of course, could have made life easier for everyone had they allowed Valentine to have a say in other coaching positions. Like many other clubs, though, the Red Sox wanted to have more control over coaches’ hiring as well as not firing coaches with time and money left on their contracts.
Abraham also wrote, “Players take their concerns directly to general manager Ben Cherington or even owner John Henry, bypassing baseball’s usual chain of command at several levels.”
That might also have been written in Valentine’s defense, but Abraham is right in questioning the practice. It’s a bad one.
In his second e-mail to reporters, sent Aug. 15, Henry wrote, “I understand that when the team isn’t playing up to our standards that issues are going to be sensationalized. But what is important for Red Sox fans to know is that ownership, players and all staff especially Bobby Valentine are determined to turn around what has thus far been an unacceptable, failed season. We are all on the same page in that regard and will not waver.”
Their collective determination hasn’t meant much. The Red Sox went into Wednesday’s game having won two of their six games since Henry’s e-mail.