John Farrell didn’t change his managerial style from the time the Red Sox won the World Series in 2013 to now. He’s still the same guy. He’s still the guy who gives you convoluted answers to simple questions, anded he’s still the same guy who treats the bunt as if it’s a communicable disease.
Farrell rode into town on the heels of the Bobby Valentine disaster with a reputation of being a tough guy. One Boston media representative actually called him a John Wayne-esque figure.
That must be because he’s a big son-of-a-gun. I can’t think of any other reason he’d carry that reputation around.
In fact, Farrell comes off more as a Caspar Milquetoast character these days.
This may be a dated reference, but then again, I’m dated. Caspar was a cartoon character created by H.T. Webster in 1924 while he was a cartoonist for the New York World. Milquetoast, he said, was a guy who “speaks softly and gets hit with a big steak.”
That accurately describes Farrell as he stands before us today. There’s no accountability for anything these guys do.
It’s bad enough when they mess up on the bases, or fail to get bunts down (when he asks them to bunt, which isn’t very often), but his lack of action in the whole David Price-Dennis Eckersley flap is inexcusable and really needs to be dealt with.
And, sadly, there’s only one way to do that, and we all know what it is.
Managers manage. And either you’re good at it, and can deal with the fallout that comes with delivering bad news to people, or saying what needs to be said, or you’re not.
It’s apparent Farrell is not.
To backtrack, Eckersley has been filling in for the ailing Jerry Remy. Remy may be, at times, an astute analyst, but he stops short lots of times of being overtly critical. The Eck has no problem with that. His Hall of Fame status, and his reputation, as a player, of being a genuine stand-up guy who pretty much defined the word “accountability,” gives him a cachet that others just don’t have.
The snowflakes who play for the Red Sox don’t like to be criticized. They live in an insular world, where they get paid oodles of money. The club keeps the riff-raff (beat guys, and even the team-owned broadcasters) at arm’s length. They are like politicians who surround themselves with sycophants.
Eckersley can be tough on some of these guys — and some of these guys deserve the toughness. But that’s another story for another day.
He saw Eduardo Rodriguez’s stats during a rehab start flash onto the monitor a few weeks ago, and they were terrible. He said so. Actually, what he said was “yuck.”
This got Price all upset, and he went after Eckersley on the team flight from Yankee Stadium to wherever they were going next. Now, Price is already on record as saying he’ll only speak to the media on the days he pitches, which prompted me, when I heard it, to wonder why anyone would want to talk to him any other time.
Price swore at Eckersley and wouldn’t let the Hall of Famer get a word in edgewise when he asked why Price was acting the way he was.
Two things. First, Price is a jerk. And this isn’t an opinion I jumped to initially. I can recall writing that there are times when athletes in this town can feel, with some justification, as if the media are ganging up on them. But if this keeps happening, you can draw no other conclusions. And every time Price stinks out the joint, the way he did against the Angels Saturday, it just reinforces what a jerk he is.
Second, and more important than first, where is the adult in the room? If this was last year, David Ortiz, even with the uneven history he’s had with Price, would have taken him aside and told him to cut it out — that you win no friends when you do these things, and that you make the organization look bad.
Nobody did that. Not Dustin Pedroia, who is the elder statesman in terms of age and service; and, more importantly, not John Farrell.
And before anyone starts to argue that it’s not Farrell’s job to arbitrate disputes between players and the media, oh, yes it is. It’s his job to maintain control of that clubhouse.
Farrell needed to step in, not because Eckersley needed someone to fight for him. Please. In a war of words, Eckersley could probably box Price all over the ring without breaking a sweat.
Eckersley’s reputation is solid.
But Farrell needed to assert some authority here … to make it clear, even if only to fans who fork over serious money to buy tickets, cable TV packages, and outrageously overpriced hot dogs and beer, that his players should be laser-focused on playing baseball, and not on the media and whatever Dennis Eckersley says. And reinforcing that message to his players wouldn’t have been a bad idea either.
Not nipping this thing in the bud as soon as it became public is a tacit admission that he sides with these babies … and, perhaps more to the point, that he is afraid he will lose them if he doesn’t stick up for them.
I can just see Dick Williams doing that. Or even Terry Francona, who was often criticized as a “players’ manager.”
This was a huge faux pas on Farrell’s part, and I’m afraid it’s going to come back and haunt him. The Red Sox aren’t exactly knocking ‘em dead coming out of the gate in the second half.
Perhaps this is why.
