High expectations for Red Sox could mean little patience with John Farrell
COMMENTARY
Expectations in baseball are almost always higher than achievement.
So, with the 2017 Major League Baseball season only days away, it’s little surprise to find the re-tooled Boston Red Sox are the American League darlings among preseason prognosticators.
Red Sox-Cubs is a popular World Series pick, a matchup that would likely certify Theo Epstein’s immediate canonization in Cooperstown. Boston figures to win anywhere from 92-100 games this season, the latter which no Red Sox team has accomplished since 1946. Chris Sale could wrestle the Cy Young Award from new teammate Rick Porcello. Mookie Betts might win the Most Valuable Player Award he probably should have earned in 2016 if not for the constant worship that surrounds baseball deity Mike Trout. Pablo Sandoval for Comeback Player of the Year? Sure, if you say so.
But spring training has done little to swell the optimism that surrounded this team during its busy offseason. It remains a mystery as to when (or even if) $217 million pitcher David Price will make his first start of the season with an elbow injury that won’t immediately require Tommy John surgery. He still hasn’t thrown since getting the diagnosis in late February.
Reliever Carson Smith still hasn’t fully recovered from his own Tommy John surgery last summer, possibly already delaying his targeted return date in June. Hanley Ramirez has an aching right shoulder, which has prevented him from playing first base throughout March. Drew Pomeranz will start the season on the 10-day disabled list with a forearm flexor strain, which is another way to say “roster flexibility.” New bullpen arm Tyler Thornburg will also begin 2017 on the DL with an “impingement” of his right shoulder.
It was the Thornburg news that awakened Red Sox fans from what had been a sleepy spring training as far as conversation is concerned up the coast. Both Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and manager John Farrell went on the defensive against the argument that the injury was a result of the team’s strenuous throwing program. Thornburg had suggested earlier this month that the throwing program was much more intense than anything he experienced in Milwaukee over the first seven years of his career, and said it had led to some shoulder fatigue.
Farrell agreed.
“What we encounter with guys coming from other organizations, and whether it’s Rick (Porcello), David (Price), guys that come in, and they go through our shoulder maintenance program, there’s a period of adaptation they go through, and Tyler’s going through that right now,” Farrell said on March 11.
Until this past week, when he, you know, didn’t agree.
“There’s been a lot written targeting our shoulder program here,” Farrell said. “I would discount that completely. He came into camp, he was throwing the ball extremely well, makes two appearances. They were two lengthy innings in which inflammation flared up to the point of shutting him down. But in the early work in spring training, he was throwing the ball outstanding. So to suggest that his situation or his symptoms are now the result of our shoulder program, that’s false.”
OK.
So, how are you feeling about John Farrell?
Unlike last season, Farrell figures to enter opening day with a clean slate. Last spring, he was coming off of back-to-back, last-place finishes in the American League East, yet with a clean bill of health after a lymphoma diagnosis cut his 2015 season short. Many figured simple human decency played at least some role in the Red Sox bringing Farrell back for last season, which resulted in the manager’s second AL East title in four seasons at the helm.
It also ended a three-game sweep at the hands of the Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series last October, a stretch during which Farrell was embarrassingly out-managed by old friend Terry Francona, who took his club to extra innings of Game 7 in the World Series.
Farrell’s in-game managerial decisions are a source of constant headaches for his critics, as is his propensity to twist reasoning into a Snyder’s specialty. Apparently, they are of little concern to Dombrowski, who infamously uttered the following words after the playoffs, when he announced that Farrell would be returning for 2017.
“I do not feel that in-game strategy is the biggest thing as a manager,” Dombrowski said. “I think it’s important, but there’s other things that I think are probably more important.”
One can only imagine how differently Farrell might have handled postseason challenges than the likes of Joe Maddon and Buck Showalter. Or, just review the 2013 World Series that he managed to win in spite of a host of questionable decisions.
As Maddon proved with his handling of Aroldis Chapman, no manager is perfect, even if his eventual autobiography might try to give that theory some juice.
But 2017 will go a long way toward defining Farrell’s career in Boston, and it hasn’t started well, even before it started at all.
David Ortiz might be gone, but Dombrowski’s December deal with the Chicago White Sox for lefty Sale pushed the Red Sox into baseball’s preseason elite. With Price, Sale, and defending Cy Young champ Porcello at the top of the rotation, the Red Sox have the tools to boast the best starting pitching in the game. (The trio is also still a combined 2-11 in postseason appearances, with zero wins in starting roles, but we’ll deal with that matter down the road.)
Now, there’s no Price.
No Thornburg. No Smith. No Pomeranz.
No Ortiz.
If Farrell’s team gets off to a slow start this season due to the rash of injuries infiltrating his clubhouse, one can wonder how quickly Dombrowski might welcome the firing squad to town.
Consistently non-committal in his assessment of Farrell last summer, Dombrowski only announced the manager was coming back after letting him squirm through his own season-ending press conference. It was bizarre.
Based on how things have already started this year, with Dombrowski receiving his fair share of heat for surrendering the bulk of the farm for players who may have come to Boston broken down to some degree, the blame on Farrell might come quickly.
Quicker than you expected.
Quicker than some might have hoped.
The expectations are out there.
But reality is starting to set in for Farrell and the Red Sox, and so far it’s failing to keep pace with the hype.
