Firing John Farrell may not be the end-all turnaround the Red Sox need, but it’s a start
COMMENTARY
If I’m Dave Dombrowski, I don’t fire John Farrell.
Not today.
I would remove myself from the immediate hysteria that followed the Red Sox’ 4-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays Wednesday afternoon, and try to reason with the embarrassing pom-pom that the Red Sox manager has become. I would meet with Farrell on the doorstep to a nine-game homestand, and convey the message as transparently as possible: Immediate improvement on what was a dismal, 10-16 swoon in June is essential heading into July.
I would publicly back my embattled manager, placing a level of trust there will be a turnaround against the Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers, and Rays.
I would give him until the upcoming All-Star break to convince the masses that he’s earned a stay.
Then, I’d fire him.
This is no longer a situation where the Red Sox can ride their albatross through the waves of success. Only nine games remain before the Midsummer Classic, a juncture that, admittedly, few realistically thought Farrell might see this season, a campaign he entered on the hot seat, only to have his buttocks cooled by a torrid stretch of offensive backing.
Boston is 3-7 in its last 10 games, losing a trio of series to the Chicago White Sox, Rangers, and Rays. Only one of those wins, Tuesday’s victory in Tampa following a closed-door meeting in the clubhouse, possessed anything of a convincing nature. It took 10 innings for the Red Sox to avoid a four-game sweep at the hands of the White Sox last week, and a monstrous offensive comeback to beat the Rangers last Friday night.
On June 1, the Red Sox were 32-21, two games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the American League East. With July approaching, they’re now 42-36 and five games out of first place, a half-game ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays.
It’s not all John Farrell’s fault. It’s not the manager’s doing that has Travis Shaw scuffling, Jackie Bradley Jr. regressing into normalcy, or Koji Uehara showing his age. He’s not responsible for the lack of production from Hanley Ramirez, nor can he control injuries to guys like Brock Holt and Blake Swihart. He can’t make the trades to make this team better in the areas it most desperately needs.
But the guy who can, president of baseball operations Dombrowski, needs to discover the realities of this team before he risks prospects on the dwindling hope that the 2016 Red Sox aren’t headed in the same direction that Farrell led them in each of the previous two seasons.
That should give Farrell 10 days to even things out, three weeks before Major League Baseball’s July 31 trading deadline.
It won’t be enough.
Farrell, a pitching coach who once sparked a level of intimidation into his pupils, has turned into a delusional storyteller as manager, cuddling inaccuracies into a message that has made it increasingly difficult to soak value from anything he says about his floundering team.
Wednesday’s instance should shine as one of the final straws for the Red Sox front office, particularly after Farrell was so easy to praise Price for his outing against the Rays. Price wasn’t good, allowing four runs over 6 1/3 innings to one of the weakest-hitting teams in the major leagues.
Not according to Farrell.
“On a day when I thought overall he probably had his best stuff of the season, in terms of velocity, in terms of the shape to his secondary pitches, they bunched a couple hits together,” the manager said.
It stands to plenty of question to where the guy whom the Red Sox presumed could aid their pitching problems has disappeared. A noted pitching “guru,” it’s not unreasonable to conclude that only Jon Lester has truly flourished under Farrell’s upbringing. Clay Buchholz is a consistent mess, even if the manager may say similar things about his “stuff” after a similarly disastrous outing, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better for Eduardo Rodriguez. If Henry Owens had a suspect major league track in Boston, it’s probably hopeless with Farrell as the manager, and you can forget about pitching coach Carl Willis being the missing link. Not as long as Price-Whisperer Dustin Pedroia is around to do the video work.
The Red Sox need pitching. Desperately.
They even more perilously need someone capable of handling them.
Because they don’t have those people now.
“That’s probably the worst changeup I’ve had in a month,” Price said about his outing on Wednesday. “My curveball was awful. I can’t move my cutter and slider how I want to, and command my fastball the way I need to.
“It’s frustrating. It’s been my worst year. It’s unacceptable.”
Compare and contrast those two assessments of the same situation and it’s becoming clear that the marriage with Farrell is just about over. It isn’t like the team is rushing to extend him past this season anyway, a year awarded to him in light of his health battle last summer. Dombrowski couldn’t part with Farrell in the wake of his cancer treatment, but with the manager writing the resume similarly to the way he did three out of the last four years, the time has come. Why skate through the next three months with the guy when you can see what Torey Lovullo — or somebody else — can give you as the new manager?
The last two times the Red Sox fired a manager mid-season delivered polar opposite results. It’s been 28 years now since John McNamara (43-42) was let go in favor of “interim” manager Joe Morgan (46-31), who led the team, 9 1/2 games out at the All-Star break, into a summer of “Morgan Magic” and an AL East title.
In 2001, when Dan Duquette fired Jimy Williams (65-53) and let Joe Kerrigan take over. The team went 17-26 and is generally regarded as the worst group of malcontents ever to call Fenway Park home.
Since the Red Sox already had a taste of Lovullo, who went 28-20 in the absence of Farrell last season, where’s the harm in making the change?
But not today. Give Farrell the nine-game homestand against two last-place teams and the first-place Rangers and see what he can finally summon from his team. The Red Sox aren’t as bad as they’ve been the last four weeks, nor are they as good as they were when they burned through May. But they’ve also been increasingly aloof, a trait that the manager should be able to recognize.
He doesn’t though, and that’s only the beginning of the list of reasons why the change is needed.
John Farrell isn’t the problem, but he’s the first one that needs to be dealt with if there’s truly any expectation moving forward.
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