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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Oct 24, 2017 13:08:44 GMT -5
It's an interesting, if tangential, discussion. In the non-fired category, with Houk: Two post-World War II Red Sox managers were both promoted from the dugout to the head of the front office when Joe Cronin (after 1947) and Mike Higgins (after 1962) became general manager of the team. (Higgins had been fired in July 1959, however, and replaced by Billy Jurges; he served in the Sox' front office from July 1959 until June 1960, when he went back to the dugout as Jurges' permanent successor.) Of course, neither man was a success as general manager; Cronin allowed the mid to late 1950s team to badly deteriorate, and the best thing Higgins did in his three years as GM was not interfere with Neil Mahoney's farm system. I recall reading in Al Hirshberg's mid-1970s book "What's the Matter With the Red Sox?" and in Peter Golenbock's early-1990s "Fenway" that Joe McCarthy was more-or-less fired in June 1950 because of his bouts of drinking, which had gotten more frequent and more severe. McCarthy's resignation was seen as a face-saving gesture.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Oct 24, 2017 9:43:05 GMT -5
Remember this, no Red Sox manager has ever quit. They all got fired at some point. I think Joe McCarthy quit part way thru the 1950 season. I think it came after one of his benders. I don't think the Red Sox fired him. Midway through the 1976 season Darrell Johnson, who was also drinking heavily, was considering quitting, but instead he did get fired. Ralph Houk, then 65, retired as manager at the conclusion of the 1984 season. He never managed again, although he did work in the Twins' front office under Andy MacPhail after he left the Red Sox.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Oct 24, 2017 9:40:34 GMT -5
Febles may be listed as a coach as a result of his spending the end of September 2017 as an extra coach on Farrell's staff. Kevin Boles spent time in the same role earlier in September. The Red Sox in recent years have invited minor league managers and coaches to suit up and work with the MLB staff in September after their seasons are over. I think Rich Gedman also did this in September for a time. That's not to say they wouldn't have Febles in mind as a possible third or first base coach in 2018. I wonder if Cora and the front office are pondering shifting Butterfield to bench coach (and infield instructor). He does want to remain with the Red Sox, and served for two years in Toronto as the bench coach (2008-2009). Apart from a few weeks at Triple-A Columbus in 2002 (the Clippers went only 12-25 and he was fired by the Yankees), Butterfield managed mostly at Class A in the Yankees' and D-Backs' systems during the 1980s and 1990s. If LeVangie is being retained, it's probably as bullpen coach, given the conventional wisdom that Cora needs an experienced bench coach and/or former manager to be his dugout aide.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Aug 24, 2017 9:51:41 GMT -5
I've been a subscriber to BA since it was "The All-America Baseball News" (although published in British Columbia!) in the early 1980s. It filled a void when The Sporting News terminated its in-depth coverage of baseball, and BA also published definitive periodicals (the Almanac, Directory, Minor League Register) just as TSN used to do. I know that many here also read BA from cover to cover. In the background, of course, the magazine changed owners several times and was forced to adapt to the digital age.
After this June's draft, the print edition underwent a major change in format and focus. Organization reports (Alex Speier contributed to the Red Sox' coverage) were dropped, as were some obsolete features like minor league batting stats. There's still coverage of the minors and HS and college baseball, but soft feature stories now predominate. Ringolsby, Crasnick and Gammons still contribute columns.
Their online site is still robust, although it has not updated its organization reports since the makeover: Speier's last entry is dated June 13.
Of course, information about baseball is all over the web, and B-Ref, MLB.com and MiLB.com are invaluable; unfortunately, if the changes at BA signal a permanent change in coverage (or, perhaps, its pending demise), we'll have lost a central resource for news about all 30 MLB clubs, their organizations, and college, HS and international prospects. The periodicals may not survive on their own either.
I thought I'd post this to gauge others' reactions to this development, and find out where, if anywhere, you go for aggregation/curation of baseball news.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Jul 24, 2017 15:38:58 GMT -5
Per Red Sox.com, Devers has been assigned a low number, Buchholz's old No. 11, rather than a number in the seventies like some of their other recent rookies. They either think he'll stick, or they're looking to move some authentic game uniforms with DEVERS 11 on the back.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on May 22, 2017 16:32:54 GMT -5
Looking at the top echelons at the minor league level:
Ralph Treuel, minor league pitching coordinator, has been in the system since 1996 and has been in this role since 2006. (He spent most of that year as the MLB Sox' interim bullpen coach when Dave Wallace needed emergency hip replacement surgery and Al Nipper moved from the bullpen to acting pitching coach.) He also briefly was the Red Sox' MLB pitching coach under Joe Kerrigan in September 2001. Treuel's actually in his second stint as the Red Sox' MiLPC, as he served in that role under Dan Duquette in the late 1990s. Prior to 1996, he was the Tigers' MLB pitching coach in the last year of the Sparky Anderson era.
Goose Gregson, Latin American pitching coordinator, has been in the system since 2002 and in this particular role since 2007. He's also helped out with the GCL Red Sox. Was acting pitching coach during 2003, when Tony Cloninger was diagnosed with bladder cancer and before Wallace came over from the Dodgers.
Bob Kipper, Pawtucket pitching coach, joined the Red Sox in 1999 and has coached at all levels of the minors, with the PawSox since 2015. He's also had two stints as MLB bullpen coach, including all of 2002 under Grady Little and August-September 2015 under interim manager Torey Lovullo.
Kevin Walker, Portland, joined the organization in 2011 and is in his third year with the Sea Dogs.
At Class A, Short Season and Rookie levels:
Paul Abbott, Salem, has a similar history to Walker's, coming to the Red Sox system in 2011 and now in his third season with Salem.
Walter Miranda, Greenville, is another veteran of the Red Sox system, first joining it in 1999. He's been with the Drive since 2015 and has never coached above the Class A level.
Lance Carter, Lowell, is in his third season with the Spinners and his third in the organization.
Dick Such, GCL Red Sox, is a former longtime MLB pitching coach (Rangers, Twins) who has been with the Red Sox since 2009.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on May 17, 2017 17:53:20 GMT -5
Fashion/sock note: I prefer stirrups-and-sanis to all-in-ones, and solid red stirrups, like Noe Ramirez wears (and like the Red Sox wore at home in 1974; Yaz and Rico liked to wear their socks high that year).
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on May 15, 2017 11:18:11 GMT -5
I joined in 2014 and posted intermittently through last season, and I'm guilty of being quiet since. I think it's partly a function of Dombrowski's trading away of farm system assets (although how can I complain about Chris Sale?), the ban on international signings, and a lingering hangover from the mistakes (Sandoval, Craig, Castillo) of the Cherington/Lucchino regime (although how can I complain about Betts, Bogarts, Benintendi, EdRod, etc.?) Another reason is that I haven't felt that I had anything particularly interesting to contribute to the existing discussions.
My dad took me to my first Red Sox game when I was seven on September 28, 1960. I was happy to get out of my second-grade class early (it was a cloudy, crappy Wednesday), my dad picked me up at school and with my brother (in junior high), uncle, and cousin (who was eight) we drove into Boston for the afternoon game. I'd played catch and little soft-toss baseball in the backyard but wasn't in little league (yet) and had no idea who Ted Williams was, except that my father and uncle had said, over the previous weekend, that this would be the last chance they would have -- and for my cousin and me the ONLY chance we would have -- to see him play. (I would learn later, as an adult, that Williams had not formally announced his plans but the press were speculating that he would not go to New York for the final weekend series).
As everyone knows, the park was two-thirds empty. I think we walked up to the ticket window and my dad and uncle bought our tickets then and there, and we ended up in box seats behind home plate, maybe 20 rows from the field. I remember we were not under the overhang. (So I suppose it's possible that my dad and uncle had gotten the tickets from a business associate who had STs. I mean to ponder getting great seats like those as a walk-up sounds absolutely ridiculous to me now.) And, since there was a ceremony for Williams before the game, I guess he had confirmed that this was his last game. (I'm sure I heard him make his one last sarcastic reference to the "knights of the keyboard" but it flew right over my head.)
I was pretty clueless. I remember that I kept asking my brother what the score was, because the left-field scoreboard at Fenway was configured differently than later on, when I went to games in the mid-1960s. The scoreboard then did not have total Runs (or Errors) at the end of the horizontal rows on the board, just total Hits. So you'd have to count the runs by inning and total them up in your head and math was not my strong suit, I guess. (Let's not even get into my confusion about what the yellow numbers meant.) Anyway, I remember my brother being really annoyed at me for not being able to keep track. And I also was confused because all the American League games were listed like that -- all nine innings in a row, inning by inning, with no Total Runs column. I actually asked if the Yankees and Senators (the original ones who became the Twins the next year), who were listed right under the Baltimore-Boston score, were going to play later that day at Fenway Park. (That REALLY annoyed my brother.) (EDIT: I recall now that, because the NYY-WAS game was that evening, the scoreboard spelled out "NITE GAME" instead of having blank slots where the innings go.) So I think I paid more attention to the scoreboard than to Williams or anyone else on the field, early on anyway.
That changed as the game progressed. Maybe my dad, uncle and brother were filling me in on Williams' career. And by the time of his last two at-bats, I could feel the mounting excitement across the park because all the adults knew this was it, and we all stood up for them -- I stood on my seat. In the penultimate AB I remember that Williams got hold of one and hit it to the warning track, and how deflated everyone was that it didn't go out. Then an inning or two later, bottom of the 8th, last at bat ever, he hit that blast into the bullpen and everyone was screaming "We want Ted! We want Ted!" so I joined in. He didn't tip his cap, but I didn't really care. I don't clearly remember the top of the 9th, when they sent in Carroll Hardy to take Williams' place after he had run out to left field so Ted could get another ovation. It's possible my dad and uncle wanted to beat the traffic, and figured the home run in the last at bat was enough in terms of witnessing something historic.
So, that's a special memory for me. But it didn't ignite my passion for the Red Sox (my aunts and uncles were pretty indifferent and some were Braves fans). That ignition took place two years later when I was nine and, on a Saturday when I was sick with the flu, I happened on the Red Sox game on Channel 5. I became consumed with baseball. It was another second-division Red Sox team, although it had some good players: Malzone, Monbouquette, Yaz (a sophomore) and Radatz (a rookie). And even though the team was terrible through 1966, it held my interest and my loyalty. I remember fuming after every loss, and there were a lot of them. I also started closely following the other 19 MLB teams, even though (until 1965) we saw no National League players on TV unless it was the All-Star Game or the World Series. That obsession is one reason that my posts here tend to be long on history. Like this one.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Oct 17, 2016 7:23:37 GMT -5
I'll join the chorus of those who hope the next GM is from among their current group of young baseball ops execs - Sawdaye, O'Halloran, Romero - to keep some continuity in the organization.
A brain drain is inevitable (ask the Indians) but keeping it to a slow trickle is key.
EDIT: I'll add Quattlebaum's name to the GM mix. There are a quite a few guys there in their 30s who could be promoted as part of a chain reaction, too -- Banner, Crockett, etc.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Sept 25, 2016 10:30:49 GMT -5
What a shock, and terrible loss, as everyone has said. It does remind me of Steve Olin and Tim Crews; Nick Adenhart and Oscar Taveras, who might have become superstars. It reminds me of Bostock because of the time of year it happened -- in the closing days and weeks of the season. And then, the next year, the mid-season death of Thurman Munson, ex-ROTY and ex-MVP, at 32 with probably 4-6 years ahead of him. Even a Sox fan like me would expect that he'd be in the Hall if his career had continued.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Aug 23, 2016 11:39:05 GMT -5
The Carolina League will have a new look next year, and the Salem Red Sox will have two new opponents. Kinston will rejoin the league as a Texas Rangers' affiliate and a second city, probably Fayetteville, will be added, with the Houston Astros as the likely parent. Concurrently, the California League will contract from ten to eight teams, with Bakersfield and High Desert dropping out. Seattle currently has a PDC with Bakersfield; they may replace the Astros in (old friend) Lancaster. Their poor Low A pitchers! Only other potential impact on the Red Sox is that the Kinston and Fayetteville territories would no longer be considered IF the Appalachian League were to expand. I know there was discussion a year or two ago that the Red Sox might add a seventh domestic farm club at the Rookie-Advanced level. MILB.com link
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Aug 17, 2016 14:25:49 GMT -5
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Jul 20, 2016 18:40:37 GMT -5
So they're wearing the 1975 throwbacks again? But they're not all wearing the same style sock: is that Holt sporting the old "navy-top-with-two-white-stripes" look? Looks weird without stirrups and sanis.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Jun 25, 2016 19:17:15 GMT -5
Best pitching staff I've ever seen there, and the draftees haven't shown up yet. Yeah that group is going to be awesome to watch once Anderson, Shawaryn and potentially Groome show up. Great managing debut for Iggy Suarez. Fast track him to Boston.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on May 27, 2016 9:38:04 GMT -5
The aspect of Boggs's ceremony that I found interesting was the credit given to Walter Hriniak as his batting coach. (And it was particularly poignant when Boggs cited Hriniak's role in trying to be there for Boggs on the day his mother was killed by the drunk driver in Florida in mid-1986.)
Hriniak was enormously influential here, a member of the Sox' coaching staff for 12 years but who left under heavy criticism in 1988. Although he'd played for, admired and befriended Charley Lau, Hriniak came to the Red Sox as bullpen coach in 1977 and first became known as the Red Sox' tireless batting practice pitcher. In that role, he began to work with hitters like Evans and Yastrzemski (Boggs was still in Class A). The Red Sox' hitting coach was Johnny Pesky, who of course was a dedicated baseball man himself and was extremely helpful to Jim Rice as a hitting coach (and, later, to Boggs as an infield coach). Even though many Red Sox players went to Hriniak for batting instruction, I don't remember Pesky and Hriniak ever having issues about that, at least publicly. Ted Williams was another story, however. His disagreement with the "Lau method" got a lot of ink -- he hated what he called "hitting down on the ball," "swinging one-handed," etc. Rich Gedman was made the poster child for Hriniak's critics: his troubles, which seemed to begin in the 1986 World Series (when Jesse Orosco owned him) were blamed on his "helicopter swing" and on Hriniak; never mind that Hriniak's approach had helped Gedman put up an OPS of over .800 in both 1984 and 1985.
I remember Dan Shaughnessy, then the Sox' beat guy and later the Globe's national baseball writer, being very critical of Hriniak. Not surprising, given Shaughnessy's growing closeness with Williams and his entourage, and that Hriniak tended to be brusk with the media and (like Belichick) didn't suffer fools gladly. With the chorus of criticism increasing, and with Joe Morgan wanting to hire Richie Hebner to his staff, Hriniak was allowed to move on to the White Sox in 1989. Today, you still usually only hear bad things about Hriniak -- even though he helped Dwight Evans became an offensive force. As a postscript, last night, when Yastrzemski visited the NESN booth very briefly, Remy or O'Brien asked him who had been the best and most influential coach in Yaz's MLB career, and Yaz named Hriniak. Interesting, in that the two men didn't work together until Yaz was 37. (And Hriniak is four years younger ...)
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on May 17, 2016 15:42:15 GMT -5
Dick McAuliffe, who died last Friday, remembered by most as the guy who grounded into one double play in 675 plate appearances and thus delivered the 1967 pennant to the Red Sox, was also part of Dick O'Connell's arguably second worst trade during his 12 years as GM.
O'Connell obtained the 34-year-old McAuliffe straight up for a 24-year-old Ben Oglivie after the 1973 season. Sox had a logjam in the OF, with Evans, Beniquez, Harper, Yaz, Reggie Smith (about to be traded to the Cardinals for another OF, Bernie Carbo), and two prospects named Rice and Lynn. Oglivie had shown some pop in 1972 but had an off-year in '73. They might have held onto him longer (the offense-challenged 1974 Red Sox could have used his bat) and let him ripen here before trading him for a little more value than they got in return. McAuliffe was coming off a productive season (.804 OPS) in Detroit, and they were tearing down the Mayo Smith-Billy Martin Tigers and beginning a rebuild. But here, McAuliffe cratered in 1974 (.630 OPS) and by 1975 he was managing the Bristol Red Sox of the Eastern League.
I give O'Connell a lot of credit for the organization he built here, but, like all GMs, he got hornswoggled on a couple of trades. I equally blamed Eddie Kasko, the manager, for O'Connell's worst trade; Kasko wanted Lyle off his ball club. But, again, were the Yankees and Cater the only option? In those days, it was unthinkable that Red Sox would not have a right-handed hitting first baseman--even though Cater lacked power, was slow afoot, and not even close defensively with the man he replaced, George Scott. Lyle in the bullpen could have brought division titles to the Sox in 1972 and 1977, and a World Series title in 1975.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on May 9, 2016 11:03:36 GMT -5
John Young, longtime amateur scout and founder of the RBI Program seeking to revive baseball in the inner cities, has died at age 67. Tracy Ringolsby's appreciation.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Mar 21, 2016 19:06:34 GMT -5
No excuses made here for Gorman, but the Red Sox had a siloed organization at the time. Most of Gorman's department heads, minor league managers and scouts were holdovers from Haywood Sullivan's administration and Sullivan was still a general partner in 1990, if pushed to the sidelines by Harrington and Mrs. Yawkey. One of Gorman's only hires, Steve Schryver, who came from the Mets (like Lou), didn't fit in with the holdovers and was gone in a year or two. The Baseball America 1990 Directory does not list any "pro scouts" as part of the Red Sox' org chart -- just scouting director Eddie Kasko, advance scout Frank Malzone, and Latin American supervisor Willie Paffen. IIRC, Sam Mele was one of their Major League scouts, though he's lumped in as an area scout on their BA page. Wayne Britton was still listed as an area scout, although he was likely a crosschecker by that point. The responsibilities for pro scouting were likely mixed in with the amateur scouts, with the New Britain manager (Butch Hobson) probably also responsible for reporting on his charges. The Red Sox were also known to be extremely traditional in their minor league instruction strategy -- no field coordinators, only a roving pitching coach (Lee Stange) and batting coach (Terry Crowley). Their philosophy was "roll the ball out onto the field and let them play." To be fair to the Red Sox, though, they had excellent amateur scouts (Digby, Stephenson, Doyle, Enos, etc.) and BA's 1990 directory shows that only a few clubs had then created a professional scouting department distinct from amateur and Major League scouting corps. I remember the "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out" heave-ho to Sullivan. I agree that Gorman chose an unfortunate situation for himself. And he was actually pretty good at evaluating major league talent coming back. But they really struggled with core development, and they had a penchant for trading away great talents for minimal return (with the exception of Easler, who nevertheless was only around for two years). But yeah, their amateur scouting was excellent. Unfortunately, the understanding of the role of the minor league system as core development just wasn't there at all under Gorman. Which is odd, given the Clemens-Boggs-Rice-Evans-Hurst-Boyd-Tudor-Ojeda-Lynn bunch from the early 70s to early '80s. They were just always hamstringing themselves one or two players short of a great team, and then struggling to spend ($ or prospects) to get that "one guy" who they'd had two or three years earlier and just traded away for an aging veteran who was supposed to put them over the top. The Andersen acquisition, on the heels of Wllie McGee to the A's ("where would we play him?!") was the pinnacle of their reactionary strategy. When the well inevitably dried up under Gorman, and the core that he inherited and afforded him his success aged and declined, they became a truly awful team from '91-'94. I remember those days well enough that I can appreciate Cherington's approach to the minors, even if his MLB team construction was...ahhh...suboptimal. It's funny to say this of an organization that came within a strike of winning the 1986 world championship (as underdogs against a Mets team that won 108 games), and then won division titles in 1988 and 1990, but from my perspective the Red Sox were a very dysfunctional organization all during the Sullivan-LeRoux-Yawkey/Harrington era played out from 1980, when Lynn and Fisk left town, through the autumn of 1993 when Gorman was fired, Sullivan was bought out, and Duquette was hired away from Montreal and given carte blanche to run the baseball side of the ball club. I blame this dysfunction, more than Gorman, for the decline of the team in the early 1990s. You're right: Gorman chose an unfortunate situation because while he had the title of general manager, he was not allowed to shape the organization into a modern one. His background was impeccable, too: he trained under Harry Dalton in Baltimore, which pioneered standardized minor-league instruction (at least in the American League) and produced a home-grown dynasty; then Gorman (with the support of Ewing Kauffman and Cedric Tallis) built a top-tier player development organization with the Royals from scratch; and, after Seattle, where as GM of an expansion team with no money for free agent signings (unlike the Marlins of 1997 and the D-Backs of 2001) he predictably struggled, he built a first-class player development and scouting group with the Mets from 1980-83. Granted, they had very high draft picks, but they hit on guys up and down the draft and were a very productive farm system. Here, he was hired during the middle of the LeRoux-Sullivan/Yawkey 1984 power struggle and, as I said before, kept in place the department heads (Kasko and Ed Kenney Sr.) Sullivan had depended on. Both men were highly respected locally and in the media, but neither of them believed in the instruction-intensive player development concept that Dalton had in place in Baltimore. (And paging through old Baseball Blue Blook Red Sox guides of the mid-1980s, the number of slow, RHH, college senior first-basemen is staggering -- Dick Gernert and Norm Zauchin and Jack Baker types redux!)) It's interesting to note that Duquette was also a Harry Dalton guy, a fellow Amherst alum who broke into the game in Dalton's front office in Milwaukee. When DD began changing the guard in the Red Sox' scouting and player development groups, and longtime Red Sox hires abruptly retired or were moved sideways, the grumbling was pretty loud. (I think Lee Stange filed a lawsuit.) Duquette made it all worse, of course, with his tone-deaf and control-freak tendencies (I think the guy wrote his own Wiki page, it was so laudatory -- at least when I read it last a few years ago). But the Red Sox did not have a system-wide field coordinator of instruction in place until Duquette hired Bob Schaefer in 1994. (A guy the Duke would later clash with, and fire, of course.) So, anyway, Travis! Whatever he turns out to be, at least he'll be in an organization that will (I trust) project him a little more accurately than what it might have done had he been born a generation earlier ...
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Mar 21, 2016 14:03:34 GMT -5
No excuses made here for Gorman, but the Red Sox had a siloed organization at the time. Most of Gorman's department heads, minor league managers and scouts were holdovers from Haywood Sullivan's administration and Sullivan was still a general partner in 1990, if pushed to the sidelines by Harrington and Mrs. Yawkey. One of Gorman's only hires, Steve Schryver, who came from the Mets (like Lou), didn't fit in with the holdovers and was gone in a year or two.
The Baseball America 1990 Directory does not list any "pro scouts" as part of the Red Sox' org chart -- just scouting director Eddie Kasko, advance scout Frank Malzone, and Latin American supervisor Willie Paffen. IIRC, Sam Mele was one of their Major League scouts, though he's lumped in as an area scout on their BA page. Wayne Britton was still listed as an area scout, although he was likely a crosschecker by that point. The responsibilities for pro scouting were likely mixed in with the amateur scouts, with the New Britain manager (Butch Hobson) probably also responsible for reporting on his charges.
The Red Sox were also known to be extremely traditional in their minor league instruction strategy -- no field coordinators, only a roving pitching coach (Lee Stange) and batting coach (Terry Crowley). Their philosophy was "roll the ball out onto the field and let them play." To be fair to the Red Sox, though, they had excellent amateur scouts (Digby, Stephenson, Doyle, Enos, etc.) and BA's 1990 directory shows that only a few clubs had then created a professional scouting department distinct from amateur and Major League scouting corps.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Feb 29, 2016 20:17:55 GMT -5
Paging through the 2016 media guide, I discovered that Paul Beeston's son, Dave, is working in the Red Sox' front office as senior/vp, strategic planning and senior counsel. Never knew that until now -- but maybe I wasn't paying attention since he's been here since 2013.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Dec 30, 2015 14:36:08 GMT -5
Had the Sox not let him go to the Angels and he played one more season, he'd have ended his career on a World Series club. I hope the Sox honor him with a memorial patch of some sort this season. After Malzone retired from the Angels, he immediately became a Red Sox scout. They didn't use the term then, IIRC, but he became the Sox' advance scout and his scouting reports -- like Todd Claus's and Dana Levangie's forty years later -- were crucial during the Red Sox' 1967 stretch run. Advance scouting was just being formally organized at the time: Jim Russo's scouting report helped the Orioles sweep the Dodgers in 1966, and then Ray Shore of Cincinnati would become very famous as an advance scout. And as Peter Abraham's story had it today, Malzone also was an infield coach specializing in third-base play during spring training. I remember hearing him interviewed on radio during a Sox' pregame show or rain delay sometime in the 1980s. He spent a long time in the minor leagues before finally making the big club in 1957. A year earlier he had been given a real shot to take over at third base, but he struggled badly and was sent down to the San Francisco Seals. Malzone said that his wife had suffered a miscarriage just before or early on in his MLB trial in 1956 and that the grief and emotional strain on him and his wife were so severe he couldn't concentrate on baseball. That interview really struck me and reminds me of what I used to often forget: that baseball players are human and are subject to the same stresses and setbacks that "civilians" are. Most of them, anyway.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Dec 27, 2015 9:21:10 GMT -5
Sigh. Cafardo today wants the Red Sox to follow the Yankees' lead (and the Celts', I must admit) and retire the numbers of standout players of the distant and recent past: #3 for Jimmie Foxx #7 for Dominic DiMaggio #11 for Frank Malzone #21 for Roger Clemens (not surprising; Nick also said he favors his election, along with Bonds, Bagwell, Piazza, etc., to the HoF) #23 for Luis Tiant #24 for Dwight Evans (many would agree) #33 for Jason Varitek #49 for Tim Wakefield Surprised he left out Tony C's 25 and Schilling's 38 while he was at it ... said Tony's career was tragically too short, and never mentions Schilling at all (short-career criteria would probably apply). We know that 34 is going up on the wall and so, probably, is 15. They'll have to build a new upper deck to handle all these numbers. I don't think we'll see 33 or 49 on anyone's backs -- except Varitek's and Wakefield's -- anytime soon. Number 21 is clearly going up for Clemens at the appropriate moment. A strong argument exists for Evans. But the others are just a reach -- and I loved Tiant. Who today thinks of Foxx when they see #3 out there? Same for DiMaggio and Malzone. Let 33 and 49 be reserved for select future players who might merit the numbers.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Dec 21, 2015 17:01:12 GMT -5
Brock Holt changing to #12.
My general feeling has been very conservative about retiring numbers, unless it's a Williams-Yaz case, or even Jim Rice's. But how can anyone wear #45 again?
BTW, the Yankees' first available number is now #11. They may have to switch to three digits in a few years.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Dec 18, 2015 8:17:03 GMT -5
Former GCL Red Sox manager and outfield/baserunning coordinator George Lombard didn't stay long with the Braves (whom he joined as minor league field coordinator in September). He's now on Dave Roberts' staff as first base coach with the MLB Dodgers. Good for him. Billy McMillon replaced Lombard as the Red Sox' roving OF/baserunning coordinator. They'll have to replace Tim Hyers as hitting coordinator, too, as he has teamed up with Roberts in LA as well. Maybe a bump up to roving system-wide hitting coordinator is where Gedman lands next year.
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Post by jamesmcgillstatue on Dec 18, 2015 8:13:25 GMT -5
I believe most minor league affiliation agreements are 2 years. Likely same people own the minor league team in Nashville, they just made a change to their affiliation with a ML club Yes. There was a major shakeup in Triple-A affiliations after 2014 and the Oakland Athletics -- supplanted in Sacramento by the Giants -- changed their affiliation to Nashville, signing a two-year PDC. Link
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