After five seasons, John Farrell is out as the Red Sox’s manager. The discussion about his job security went on all season long, despite the team’s success. President of Baseball Operations, Dave Dombroski was not forthcoming with his reasons for firing Farrell, other than to vaguely imply that the underperformance of many of the team’s young players was a leading factor. I have never been a big supporter of John Farrell, but I recognize that he was probably one of the better managers in the game. That is not to say that the Red Sox can’t improve in the manager department, but it needs to be acknowledged that things can be worse under whoever takes over. Within 24 hours of Farrell’s firing there were already ~10,000 articles on the Internet providing career summaries, speculations on why he was let go, and lists of candidates to replace him. In my article for BP Boston this week I made note of some possible replacement options, but my primary intention was to note that when it comes to judging managers and managerial candidates from afar, we are all just guessing. The excellent Jonah Keri, made a similar point in his column today. Nevertheless, there are many folks out there who think they can accurately identify the ‘perfect fit’ to handle the next few seasons in Boston.
Read more of my thoughts on the impending Red Sox’s managerial search: On Searching for a New Skipper