It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Late last night, Steve wrote a post about why Boston Red Sox skipper Terry Francona deserves to stay as the manager of the team.
A little while after he posted this, the Twitter world was a buzz with a report from Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com stating that Francona was out as Red Sox manager with an announcement coming on Friday.
Terry Francona will meet with Red Sox management on Friday morning, and the expected resolution is that he no longer will be the team’s manager, major league sources say.
While Francona’s departure is not certain, it is the likely outcome, in part because he is pressing for a resolution, sources say. He would not be fired; the Red Sox would simply decline their club options on him for 2012 and ’13.
If Francona is leaving on his own, then I’m okay with this. Could you blame him? Especially with the reports of discord in the Red Sox clubhouse involving the starting pitchers.
We all may not agree with his managerial style at times. But he did what no other Red Sox manager had done since 1918. And that’s win a World Series with the Red Sox. And he won twice.
On Thursday, Tito and GM Theo Epstein held their annual end of the season state of the Red Sox. And with emotions still raw from what happened, the basic nuts and bolts of it all was that Francona would not be made a scapegoat for what happened.
Well if it’s true they aren’t going to exercise the options on his contract, then isn’t that exactly what they are doing. Epstein said that he is ultimately responsible for what happened because he put this club together.
So why isn’t the Red Sox ownership group holding him accountable as well? He put this together. He gave Tito a good squad but in the end, it was a team that lacked chemistry.
How else can you explain the fact the team started 2-10 and finished the season 7-20? You can’t blame Tito for that. The players need to be held accountable.
It’s always a coach or a manager that takes the fall. Why can’t a player take the fall? If one or two or a group of them are the cause of the problem, shouldn’t you fix it? “Firing” the manager isn’t the answer.
Baseball is a business, I understand that. Don’t most businesses fire people who aren’t getting the job done?
Yeah, that’s what I thought too.
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