John Farrell canned as Red Sox scapegoat

Well, at least we get to see the Red Sox have their sixth manager this decade.

Wednesday morning, the team announced that they had fired manager John Farrell. Farrell had been the team’s manager for five seasons (2013-2017) and in that time, he won the division thrice and a World Series in 2017.

Now, if we’re being honest, this is a real scapegoat move. There’s a lot of people blaming Farrell for the Red Sox playoff failures in 2016 and 2017. There’s a lot of people blaming Dave Dombrowski and well, to be honest, maybe neither is to blame. How about we just blame the dudes who didn’t perform in the postseason? Drew Pomeranz. Craig Kimbrel. Dustin Pedroia. No one could capitalize on bases loaded game 4 of the ALDS this year. That’s the difference right there. The team made too many mistakes and trailed for too many innings to win that series vs. Houston.

Maybe if John Farrell had a bat in his hand, he’d be to blame. But yeah, a lot of dudes didn’t perform the way they were supposed to–especially in the regular season.

There has been a lot of managers for the Red Sox this decade. Terry Francona did 2010 and 2011. Bobby Valentine did 2012. Farrell did 2013 onward. Torey Lovullo did like a month and a half in 2015. And Gary Disarcina managed two full games this season. That’s a lot of guys if you think about it–even if you don’t count Gary.

Farrell should be able to get a job easily this offseason. There’s actually a lot of teams in the managerial market (Philly, Detroit, New York Mets and Boston, at least)–and there’s some talent on the market.

We’ll definitely get into some of the guys who could end up getting the job at some point in the future because I like lists. But let’s put it this way, Alex Cora is probably their best bet.

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