Massarotti: Might Hot Seat Force John Farrell To Manage With Chutzpah?
"It is, yes. To be as candid as possible, yes."
--Red Sox manager John Farrell, on Monday, when asked if third base is an open competition between incumbent Pablo Sandoval and challenger Travis Shaw
Do you believe him? Do you? Or do you think the Red Sox are just playing some cutesy little head game, giving Pablo Sandoval a warning to start the season?
Here's what we know, Red Sox followers: John Farrell is desperate. And this has nothing to do with off-field relationships, public relations or corporate doublespeak. This is about baseball. The Red Sox have finished last in two consecutive seasons under Farrell, and whether a result of consequence or circumstance, they played their best baseball last season when Farrell was sidelined and the Sox played under Torey Lovullo, now a replacement in waiting.
Farrell's job is on the line and we all know it, including him. The leash is tight and short. And if that means Farrell is going to have a quick trigger finger this season, well, so be it.
But whatever path he chooses, he'd better be right.
We've said this before and we've said it again: Whether he knew it or not, Farrell learned how to manage under Terry Francona, who had a veteran team stocked with talent. And he knew it. Francona generally gave players latitude because he knew he had a core of competitive athletes that would never let the team get too far off the rails, at least for the majority of his tenure as Red Sox manager. (The final year or so was a different story.) Francona knew that baseball is a marathon, that you generally manage for the long haul, that talent usually finds its level.
For the most part, he won. Over and over again.
When Farrell had that kind of team – a group of drive veterans – he won the World Series in 2013, a lightning-in-a-bottle season if ever there was one. But think of what the core of the Red Sox was like that year: David Ortiz, Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, John Lackey, Jon Lester, Dustin Pedroia, David Ross. Many of those players had won before. Many were motivated by the embarrassment of 2012 and, for that matter, 2011.
Farrell didn't have many problem children on that team because many of his players had something to prove.
The Red Sox have had a very different team the last two years, something John Henry specifically noted when he said that in between 2013 and 2014, the Red Sox curiously lost their focus. They really haven't had it since.
Last year, Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez rolled into town as the literal and proverbial fat cats, one bloated with three World Series trophies and a $95 million contract, the other with an $88 million deal and a weightlifter's body.
Farrell never pushed them, at least not really. He held a meeting with veterans in Texas after Ortiz badly peeled off a double play, but the messages were too few and far between. And so as the Red Sox ended up right back in the toilet again, Farrell ending up squarely on the hot seat.
The good news? Maybe Farrell has learned a lesson that Francona learned in 2011, when the Red Sox imploded inside a locker room filled with selfish, overpaid ingrates: The players you coddle are ultimately the ones who get you fired. Sometimes they need a good old-fashioned kick in the garbage chute. Whether Farrell decides to focus on Ramirez or Sandoval is immaterial. Just because a guy has a guaranteed contract doesn't mean he has a guaranteed job.
The obvious question, of course, is whether Farrell might "lose" Sandoval or Ramirez – or both – if and when he makes an aggressive decision. (For as much talk as there has been about Travis Shaw, first baseman Sam Travis -- also having a terrific spring -- finished last season at Double-A and could be a candidate for call-up my midyear.) For that, there is an obvious reply: What, exactly, would he be "losing"? Sandoval and Ramirez were anvils on the 2015 Red Sox, weighing them down. Neither appeared especially motivated. Replacing either would be addition by subtraction.
In all professional sports, especially baseball, caring is more than half the battle. During Monday's spring game between the Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, Farrell did an in-game interview with ESPN during which he described Shaw as a "fierce competitor." Last year, neither Sandoval nor Ramirez even remotely resembled one. Now there are jobs on the line, and with Opening Day less than two weeks away, Farrell is talking tough.
Will he follow through?
Heaven knows.
But on-field accountability has been badly missing from the Red Sox' operation over the last two years, and the pressure at Fenway Park is being applied from the top.