Breaking: Larry Lucchino out as Red Sox CEO

In mid-2008 Tito finally got fed up with all the daily lineup advice that was coming from the analysts and being passed through Zack Scott (not 2007 as per his book with Shaugnessy, BTW). The last straw was a recommendation for Mike Lowell to sit against Chien-Ming Wang, which Tito correctly rejected. That advice must have come from someone else doing matchup analysis (swing paths, I think), because my recommendation for that series mentioned only C and SS and then said "I don't think anyone else will want to sit against the Yankees."

Not as much as an aside as it seems: I actually gave Tito a printout of that e-mail when he was at a book signing at Costco! He apparently always wondered who I was, and the FO didn't want him to meet me. But I would have been on his side in terms of putting player's comfort and mental game ahead of the stats. It's the job of the FO and manager to convince the players to do the sabermetrically correct thing, and some of those things, like asking a guy as proud as Lowell to sit against the Yankees, will never fly and in the long run will be counter-productive. Jed Hoyer was great at conveying these ideas to Tito; Zack, who succeeded him, was less good.

It was Jed, who hadn't been my direct boss since 2005, and not Zack, who called me to tell me that my days giving lineup advice for each series were over. What should I do instead? Jed said, whatever I felt like doing. His phrase was something like "just use your genius" (the last word I certainly remember, of course). And I mention that only because it's a fact about what the Asst. GM would have told the CEO about the quality and potential value of my work.

The next February I learned from Zack that "ownership" had ordered the FO to lay off all their consultants but one (Tom Tippett). I was told that the FO was very pissed about this. And they asked for, and eventually got, six months of pay for me, to do nothing. Which was, BTW, just $9K.

Given that John Henry had hired me personally and that he hired Bill James as the first thing he did, I think it's safe to say that this "ownership" directive came from LL. But I want to make it clear that I don't know that for a fact.

I should also mention that I had told a few years previously that I would do a heck of a lot more for them if they'd pay me more than $1500 a month, that I had more ideas for advanced projects than I could count. This led to a clause in my contract stating that I should write up a set of proposed "New Projects" which would be contracted for separately, after discussion with Bill and the FO. I spent two years on that proposal, and was within a few weeks of finishing it up when I was laid off. Some of those ideas have still not been pursued.

Given all of this, how much value do you think LL placed on analysis?

I don't think the same analysts will be re-hired, but I would certainly think that we might see a greater emphasis on analysis in general.