Red Sox open to talking contract extension with John Farrell

The Royals almost won the World Series with Ned Yost.

As long as a guy has the locker room and isn't managing egregiously horribly, keep him around.

Farrell hasn't acted like a manager who handles young players badly. Such a manager would refuse to give young players chances, bench them for dumb reasons, and bury them at the first sign of struggle.

Farrell gave Bradley, Bogarts, and Middlebrooks chance after chance after chance even when they might not have deserved it.

The key for Farrell will be which young players to give opportunities to. For instance if Brandon Workman ends up in the rotation and is adequate, he can't keep his job over far more talented pitchers.

Yeah, because their salaries are limited, contract extensions for managers basically mean nothing. If they're unhappy with him next year, they'll move on from him whether or not he gets this extension.

That's one way a manager might be bad with young players. It's not the only way.

With Bogaerts, he did keep playing him despite his struggles. Is that a good thing? Bogaerts didn't come out of his slump until he hit the 7-day DL with a concussion. Could be a coincidence, but it makes me question the wisdom of running him out there every single day when ultimately he only recovered after getting some time out of the lineup.

The team clearly reached a place of frustration with Bradley and his willingness to make adjustments by the end of the season. Who's job is to get a young player to make those adjustments when they don't want to?

Then there's the pitchers. There were about a million of them, and the results were mixed to put it kindly. None of them really stepped up and proved that they belong in a major league rotation.

I want to make it clear that I'm not convinced Farrell is bad at working with young players as much as I'm concerned that he might be. Obviously it's a tough thing to be sure of either way, and his track record is fairly limited at this point. But it's something that I think is worth keeping an eye on.

1) Was there any point in which De La Rosa and Workman were both on the roster and Farrell went with the latter? Otherwise, sounds like your point there has to do with the front office and not Farrell.

2) I, for one, don't think it's the manager's job to get results out of a player in a general sense, i.e., to make them play better. This isn't high school junior varsity in which the coach needs to help you learn how to hit a fastball. A manager's job is to make in-game decisions and give his team the best chance to win in day-to-day strategy matters, as well as being in charge of the clubhouse. It's his job to put the players (and coaching staff) in a position to succeed, sure, but the problems you describe aren't the kind I attribute to that office. To give you an example, if, say, it were Farrell's decision to move Bogaerts to third base midseason (rather than one predicated by an acquisition coming from the front office), and then he fell off a cliff, then ok, that's on the manager. If Farrell started using a reliever with heavy splits in incorrect situations, then sure, that's on him. The Nava/Gomes stuff you mention - yup, that's Farrell, fine. But with a player's individual performance, for me, first of all it's on the player, and then after that, it's on some combination of positional coaches and player dev staff depending on the situation. Then the manager may come after that. If you think Farrell should have handled the players differently from a lineup standpoint, then fine, that's managerial. But Brandon Workman not pitching well or Will Middlebrooks not being able to recognize a breaking ball isn't Farrell's fault.

And FWIW, based on some of the guys you name, it sounds like you're blaming Farrell for the players' true talent level (WMB, Workman, for example). Of course, I'd note he also shouldn't get the credit either when players play well. For example, I wouldn't credit Shane Victorino's 2013 to Farrell - Farrell's job was to put him on the lineup card and let him go.

3) While a situation like Doubront's would probably fall into Farrell's job description, you also can't expect the guy to completely re-program a player's attitude. Based on what we've heard in that situation, for all we know this could have blown up a long time ago and Farrell was the reason why it didn't. I'm not saying I even think that's what happened, but with attitude issues, we don't necessarily know the full story and it's tough to make judgments from the outside unless they're obvious, like in the Bobby V. situation.

1) That's fair. There were quotes from Farrell at the time about how De La Rosa needed to work on a few specific things back in the minor leagues. I'll look for the quotes, but it was stuff that, even at the time, seemed like rationalizing sending someone who was playing well. My personal feeling is that Farrell has a lot of say in situations like that, but it's also possible that it was a front office decision and that Farrell was being the good soldier an giving it lip service.

2) I don't know if I agree that it's unfair to attribute player results, at least as a group, to a manager. When players play over their heads for a certain player - Gomes, Victorino an others under Farrell in '13, Yankee pick-ups for years under Torre, young pitchers with Bob Melvin, etc - the manager is often given a share of the credit. So I think that door has to swing both ways. It's hard for me to blame a manager for any one specific player underachieving. You are absolutely correct that Middlebrooks swinging at unhittable curveballs has nothing to do with how Farrell handles him. But I think it's fair when it's a pattern or group of young players missing the mark. If my post looked to be blaming Farrell for individual players struggles then I didn't do a good enough job of stating my case. I don't know if Workman is good. I don't know if Webster is good. I do know that if the Red Sox cycle through a half-dozen talented young arms in 2014 an 2015 and can't make a pitcher out of one of them then that reflects poorly on the manager. If Bogaerts doesn't take a step forward than maybe he's simply not as good as we though. If Bogaerts and Betts and Castillo all falter, then I think it's fair to question Farrell.

3) At some level I'm playing devil's advocate. I don't actually think that Farrell is bad at developing young players. But I certainly do think that is possible for a manager to be bad at it, at a level that goes beyond simply showing the confidence to pencil their name onto the lineup card. For someone like Farrell who is not a great strategist, the broad category of "getting the most out of your players" is what keeps him employed. He was excellent at that in 2013 and not all that good in 2014. There were a lot of things that weren't under his control, certainly. I don't know what is going on in Felix Doubront's world, but he also pitched the best baseball of his life under Farrell. Betts was awesome after he was called up. Webster seemed to show some actual improvement. Christian Vazquez and Jackie Bradley were two of the best defensive players alive - something Farrell deserves credit for nurturing while those players weren't hitting. So the purpose of my post wasn't really to call out that Farrell isn't good at developing young players. But I'm not positive yet, and I know that he'll need to be, given the roster construction we're looking at in 2015. The bar for being a good manager has to be set higher than "he manages the clubhouse better than Bobby Valentine."

Beyond the question of individual and group player development, I think Farrell deserves an extension because the team was clearly playing hard down the stretch last year, which is definitely not true of every team that falls out of contention.

Yeah I don't disagree with much of that except the point you make about managers "getting a share of the credit" when guys play over their heads - my whole point is that they shouldn't get such credit. The exception would be if optimal usage of that player is the reason they play well: for example, Gomes might actually be a case of this if his success was due to when and how he was used. But plugging Victorino into the lineup card every day? No, that's not Farrell. If anyone credits him there, they shouldn't.

And if Bogaerts, Betts, and Castillo all falter, I'd first look at the player dev (first two) and scouting (Castillo) departments, honestly. If the Red Sox can't get a starter out of Workman, De La Rosa, Webster, and Ranaudo, then it's quite possible it's because none of them were going to be MLB starters. But myself, no, I wouldn't put that on the manager. What I would put on the manager is if he had too quick of a hook, or conversely left them in too long, etc., and THAT contributed to their failure.

It's not the manager's job to make sure the player is ready for the major leagues. Sure, it's the manager's job to help with the adjustment somewhat, but again, to me, a lot of that stuff isn't anything we can evaluate without access to the clubhouse and the individuals' heads.