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Post by caseytins on May 10, 2015 10:26:46 GMT -5
He has continued to make awful decisions with the lineup and the bullpen. He did win a world serious with a lot of different players, Since then, this team has gone into a downward spriral (despite the talent in the Majors and in AAA) He will be the next shoe to drop and Castillo will be called up to play RF eveyday and Victorino will be a sub.
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Post by bigpapismangosalsa on May 10, 2015 10:39:36 GMT -5
On the line up, I disagree a little bit. It's not like he's constantly playing Allen Craig when there are better options on the roster (Holt was away from the team this weekend, Nava hasn't been hitting at all either, Castillo and Vic have been on the DL, etc). That said, he and his coaching staff have not done nearly a good enough job continuing to develop young players. Look at the way Tito was able to continue to develop young players once they got to the majors (Lester, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Papelbon and Youkilis, just to name a few).
NONE of our prospects have continued to progress under Farrell and his staff, to me that is the biggest cause for concern. I understand there are some on this board who think that it's not up to the MLB staff to develop young players, but I strongly disagree with that opinion - though everyone is entitled to their own of course.
His use of the bullpen has been very sub par, though, agreed.
Overall, I think Farrell is a slightly above average manager, but he and his staff don't appear to be the right fit for the Red Sox at this team, with all the influx of young players currently on the roster and on the cusp of it.
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steveofbradenton
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Watching Spring Training, the FCL, and the Florida State League
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Post by steveofbradenton on May 10, 2015 10:45:28 GMT -5
I agree that everything looks a little hopeless currently, but I still believe John Farrell and Ben Cherington are right for this organization. EVERY move they made this past winter I thought were well thought out (except maybe Masterson). I'm still in agreement with them steering away from 6-7 year contracts for 9 figures to any starter not named Clayton. Yes things look really bad, but this is baseball. Things can and WILL change, often on a dime. The moves that have been made over the 48 hours have definitely got many players on the major league roster and the 40-man to sit up and take notice. I honestly believe we will see several more moves this upcoming week. As to Castillo.....I'm all for bringing him up, if we can give him consistent at-bats, but not until. And yes, the Victorino situation does play into this. Vic probably has one more chance, and then he too is gone. He has earned that, but for 14 months he has been nothing like the player we had in 2013. Final words: give em time, this too shall pass.
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Post by brianthetaoist on May 10, 2015 10:57:25 GMT -5
I'm maybe the guy who bashes Farrell the least on this board ... I generally think 90% or more of the stuff in the game threads is nonsense or at least mostly irrelevant. And just in general I think managers are rarely as important as people make them out to be.
However, I'm about to conclude that Farrell's a liability as a manager. There are three overriding jobs for a manager: prepare the players, manage the media, and provide the leadership that doesn't let seasons slide out of control. I think Farrell's pretty good on the second of those three, but I have serious questions about the first, and he seems terrible at the second. I remember the season where Torre missed the beginning of the year with the Yankees for some reason (cancer?), and the team started to go awry, losing games and looking ragged and dispirited. Then Torre came back, calmed everyone down, managed for a week or so as if he wanted to win every game, and they were back on track.
The magical/lucky part of 2013 was not really that a bunch of guys had career years, but they never really had any significant streaks of poor play. Farrell never had to show any creativity or flexibility. He just rode the wave, kept the trains running on time, gave the players the prep materials, and they won. He's clearly a mediocre at best in-game manager, but, again, I think that's by far the most overrated part of the job. But when you lose, the ability to push some buttons to steal a win or two is important, and he doesn't have it. And the ability to get the team psychologically back on track and focused is even more important, and it's hard to avoid concluding that he's not good at that, either.
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Post by jmei on May 10, 2015 11:01:14 GMT -5
I mentioned this with respect to Nieves, but it's just really hard to judge a coach based on how you think the players on his roster should have performed. I don't think you can conclude that a better coach would have gotten more out of Bogaerts/Bradley/Middlebrooks/Webster/etc.-- sometimes, prospects just bust, and I have a hard time putting most of their struggles on the coaching staff (especially since Middlebrooks and Webster have not exactly excelled in their new homes). It's also unfair to say that Farrell has been unable to develop any young players-- Brock Holt, for instance, has blossomed from a AAAA afterthought to a legit bench weapon/second-division starter, and you could say the same thing about Daniel Nava.
That said, Farrell's lineups and in-game decisions (two things which we can absolutely judge him on) leave a lot to be desired. He's not the worst tactical manager in the league, but he's probably no better than average.
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Post by James Dunne on May 11, 2015 16:41:56 GMT -5
I'll begin what I say as someone who admits to being critical of managers. I think that, as a group, they've become uncreative, overly-regimented, and that they do more harm than good strategically. Even while admitting that other managers do it, Farrell's bullpen usage is unacceptable to me. It's his third year as manager, and the third straight season we're hearing about Tazawa suffering from overuse in May. MAY! To do that one season, ok - 2013 was a high-pressure situation, Tazawa was pitching great on a team where Hanrahan and Bailey had imploded, and being overaggressive was an understandable mistake. But learn from it! Say "ok, Tazawa is great and durable, but I have to be more disciplined with my early-season usage of him." So then it happened a second time, and I was restless. A third time? No, completely unacceptable. Despite getting the fewest innings in the league from his starters, Farrell has insisted on three-out appearances from his relievers.
An ancillary effect of his reliever overuse is an undersized bench, despite having players with specific flaws. Mookie Betts was being flanked for two weeks by combinations of Hanley Ramirez, Brock Holt, Allen Craig, and Daniel Nava. That team needed Jackie Bradley, but instead was carrying a 13th pitcher for many games. Why? Because all SEVEN guys in the bullpen were overused. Not having a decent backup outfielder because you can't ration innings between seven relievers is bad management.
For someone who is supposed to be good with pitchers, he's done a miserable job at developing them as manager - both while with Toronto and Boston. Now it's likely that most of the young pitchers he's had just weren't good, but both franchises brought along a lot of pretty well regarded prospects during his time. Kyle Drabek, Henderson Alvarez, Felix Doubront, Brandon Workman, Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster... that's a freight train of players who went backwards. Ricky Romero's career fell apart with him at the helm. So did Brett Cecil's, who rebounded (with a bullpen move) after Farrell left.
And yeah, maybe all those guys just weren't all that good in the first place. But a good manager/organization can find roles or build a support system for fringy young players to succeed at some level. Not every B- pithing prospect turns into Jacob deGrom, but maybe one in five years should turn into a useful middle reliever.
I don't think Farrell is "the problem" as it were, but I see no evidence that he's the solution either.
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Post by ethanbein on May 11, 2015 17:24:27 GMT -5
I'll begin what I say as someone who admits to being critical of managers. I think that, as a group, they've become uncreative, overly-regimented, and that they do more harm than good strategically. Even while admitting that other managers do it, Farrell's bullpen usage is unacceptable to me. ... Yep, agree with all of this. I'll add that Farrell having no idea of when to pull starters is not helping with bullpen fatigue. I know the group of starters have generally pitched pretty poorly, but the manager of a team like the Red Sox should at least have a basic understanding of BABIP, and now when to pull a pitcher because of performance (he can't throw the ball over the plate) vs. when to leave him in despite allowing runs (few pitches thrown, still getting strikeouts and limiting walks).
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Post by James Dunne on May 21, 2015 21:14:03 GMT -5
espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/44053/red-sox-optimism-about-bradley-jr-has-clearly-wanedmgoetze posted this in the gameday thread, but I wanted to expound upon it here. Short version: This is, on all counts absolutely embarrassing. Longer version: For a team that is supposed to favor analytics and data, giving up on Jackie Bradley after three games against Dickey, Felix Hernandez, and Sonny Gray absolutely can't happen. But what's much worse is that this came out at all. The team lost confidence in him (for a stupid reason), then undermined Bradley's confidence AND value by allowing this to get out into the media. Not that it wasn't obvious, given that he hadn't started in about a week, but my god. Bradley hasn't done well, but the development of young, talented players under Farrell has been totally unacceptable. I'll buy that maybe Allen Webster and Brandon Workman and Felix Doubront weren't that great to begin with. But Bradley has been a disaster, Swihart hasn't hit, Betts isn't hitting (his fielding is carrying him, as it did with Bradley last year), De La Rosa was fits and starts. Bogaerts, the most talented player I saw in the minor leaguers in my adult Red Sox-watching life, seems to have lost confidence in his swing. He's been okay statistically this year but he looks nothing like the player he did in August 2013. The team went into last season projected by at least one major system to be the best team in baseball, but they were below average before selling off at the deadline. The expectations were slightly more modest this year (division favorite, rather than best team in baseball) but they have the worst run differential in the American League. Some of that is bad luck and bad timing, but part of that is the sort of sequencing the manager has control over - batting order, what pitcher is in the game, stuff like that. I said two posts above that I wasn't sure Farrell is the problem. But today, with a loss to 93-year-old Wandy Rodriguez and the Bradley-shaming article, made me pretty sure that he is, at least partially.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2015 22:19:31 GMT -5
Where, in that article, is there any real evidence that the reason they aren't playing him is because he went hitless versus three pitchers? Sportswriter speculation is certainly pretty piss-poor evidence, and that's all I see there.
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Post by grandsalami on May 21, 2015 22:21:20 GMT -5
Where, in that article, is there any evidence that the reason they aren't playing him is because he went gutless versus three pitchers? My memory is a little fuzzy, but didn't JBJ have some attitude issues last season when he was called up? (it was something about fixing his swing or working in the cage?)
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Post by grandsalami on May 21, 2015 22:25:21 GMT -5
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Post by James Dunne on May 21, 2015 22:32:39 GMT -5
Did your phone autocorrect hitless to gutless? Because that is so amazingly perfect.
Anyhow, maybe they aren't down on him because he's 0 for 13. But they called him up, they only gave him three starts against three really tough dudes to hit against, and now he's disappeared. If Farrell was doing an okay job getting production from players who weren't in the league in 2010 it would be one thing. But they haven't.
Maybe I'm reading between the lines too much in that Farrell quote, but the fact that he didn't outright talk about how they have full confidence in Bradley at the plate, or that he's put in the work since last year to become a better hitter... something. This feels like one of those 2012 Bobby Valentine story: on its own, not a big deal; but taken with the bigger picture of everything else the manager is doing poorly, it really starts to become damning.
Again, we all agree that Farrell isn't there for his strategery, right? So he needs to be good at getting the most out of his players and managing/shielding them from the media. In this article he's failing miserably at both of those things.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2015 22:39:45 GMT -5
Yeah autocorrect fail.
They're not playing him because it's unclear that he's better than Nava. We can have that argument if you want, but I hope you'll acknowledge it's at least a legitimate open question. They would probably prefer if Bradley were getting full time reps in AAA, but there's no better candidate to call up (Shaw? Cecchini? Brentz? A reliever?) and Bradley at least offers speed and defense off the bench.
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2015 22:41:02 GMT -5
I also think you're reading too much into the quote. I thought it was totally innocuous. If the article had a different slant, it wouldn't be hard to spin that quote as praising Bradley for his attitude and legitimate improvements.
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nomar
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Post by nomar on May 21, 2015 22:43:04 GMT -5
Yikes. You have to wonder at what point Farrell is really on the hot seat. And I agree with what James said in his "long story" besides the exact reasoning for the demotion. The player development at this level has been horrendous.
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Post by taftreign on May 21, 2015 22:53:08 GMT -5
They may have lost confidence in JBJr but I've lost confidence in Farrell. He's a meh manager for me. Nothing special. Of course when you win a World Series title it's hard to second guess a decision and I won't. I will say my preferred managerial choice after the Valentine fiasco was Brad Ausmus at that time. I will gladly trade that preferred option for the 2013 Championship but I think it's getting time to move on if he doesn't turn this season around.
As dumb as it may sound I'm beginning to think the credit for 2013 goes to the players and the way each of them raised their performance playing with the emotion of a city recovering from a tragedy. It's still early and there is time but I need to see more. There just seems to be a disconnect between prospect performance and production in the upper levels of the minors and the majors for whatever reason. If the team decides to move on at seasons end I would hope for a new manager who has results developing young players, whomever that may be. I still believe in the star power of Bogaerts, haven't lost any faith in Mookie, don't fear a slow start from Swihart in his circumstance and believe JBJr is a much better player than he's shown offensively. After the magical 2013 season something has just felt off with the team even after adding more young talent and new free agent additions and that has to fall on Farrell.
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Post by James Dunne on May 21, 2015 22:58:26 GMT -5
Not so sure. If the robots are finally understanding that hitless=gutless then it's really only a matter of time before they destroy us all. Anyway, you may be right that I'm reading too much into that quote. But I'm still trying to figure out what Farrell does well. Edes doesn't tend to be a very agenda-driven writer in my experience. He's pretty in touch and plays things pretty straight, so if he's getting the vibe that Farrell doesn't trust Bradley then I feel like it's coming from somewhere. Maybe I'm just in a crummy mood after listening to them get shut down by Wandy Rodriguez though.
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Post by huskies15 on May 21, 2015 23:08:47 GMT -5
What about a guy like Butterfield as manager? He has experience managing in the minors and is constantly praised for his dedication to working with the fielders on developing their game.
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Post by dcsoxfan on May 21, 2015 23:12:10 GMT -5
I agree with James Dunne; the Red Sox record of developing young players under John Farrell is a cause of concern.
Jackie Bradley Jr., Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts all had significant records of minor league success, and none came with serious red flags. All showed above average plate discipline and solid contact rates -- they were not the types of prospects one expects to struggle. And yet all three have found the transition to the Majors offensively far harder than one would expect.
It has been pointed out that other prospects have struggled recently, but the comparisons were weak. High floor prospects like Kolten Wong and Travis d'Arnaud also struggled, but they both found their footing far more quickly. Prospects like Hamilton and Baez came with major question marks regarding their bats, and even Oscar Tavarez had some doubts due to his plate discipline. Gregory Polanco has also struggled, but he had only about a year's success in the minors.
The struggles of Bradley, Bogaerts and (to a lesser extent Betts since I think there genuinely is some bad luck in HIS numbers) significantly exceeds what other teams are experiencing.
It is a cause for concern.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 21, 2015 23:21:37 GMT -5
Not so sure. If the robots are finally understanding that hitless=gutless then it's really only a matter of time before they destroy us all. Anyway, you may be right that I'm reading too much into that quote. But I'm still trying to figure out what Farrell does well. Edes doesn't tend to be a very agenda-driven writer in my experience. He's pretty in touch and plays things pretty straight, so if he's getting the vibe that Farrell doesn't trust Bradley then I feel like it's coming from somewhere. Maybe I'm just in a crummy mood after listening to them get shut down by Wandy Rodriguez though. Yeah it's Edes making a (somewhat) reasonable inference, but then taking it to its extreme and then putting quotes from Farrell and Cherington in the piece, which makes it look like everything else is coming from them. Tough not to read into a quote when everything around it is pointed.
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nomar
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Post by nomar on May 21, 2015 23:21:40 GMT -5
I would just prefer a manager that was remotely statistically enlightened or inclined. I'm surprised our front office tolerates Farrell as well as they seem to.
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Post by chud on May 21, 2015 23:29:33 GMT -5
Where, in that article, is there any evidence that the reason they aren't playing him is because he went gutless versus three pitchers? My memory is a little fuzzy, but didn't JBJ have some attitude issues last season when he was called up? (it was something about fixing his swing or working in the cage?) If I had to guess, the reason Nava is getting the playing time over JBJ is that they're trying to get him going at the plate to showcase him for trade...bring up Castillo, trade Nava (although i still like his versatility), carry Castillo, Hanley, Betts, JBJ, Victorino in the OF...
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Post by jmei on May 21, 2015 23:48:14 GMT -5
I just don't believe this idea that teams which are trying to contend will deliberately play a player they believe to be significantly inferior in order to "showcase" him and increase his trade value.
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radiohix
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Post by radiohix on May 22, 2015 0:23:57 GMT -5
Interesting read from Tomase, specialy this part: Nieves got fired because of "communications problems" with the pitching staff, right? ADD: There's also that Pedroia-Napoli discussion on the flight back from the west coast where you ask yourself "What this Davis guy is doing?"
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Post by mgoetze on May 22, 2015 4:05:07 GMT -5
So Tomase wants the hitters to make more outs intentionally, rather than unintentionally. Sorry, not interested - I want them to not make outs at all.
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