Each week it seems that we get more evidence that the Boston Red Sox are being run by clowns. Larry Lucchino, John Henry and company have fired the manager, half the coaching staff, the medical staff, the conditioning staff, and let the general manager go to another organization. They still have been unable to negotiate compensation for that move. Now they’ve thrown their new general manager under a bus, letting him begin the process of hiring a new manager to replace Terry Francona with one set of criteria, then rejecting the list of candidates from that search only to focus in on a completely different type of candidate in Bobby Valentine. How could they have not known what they wanted in a manager in the first place? How can you interview a bunch of candidates with little or no experience managing in the big leagues, only to turn around and decide that management experience is important? This is like walking into a restaurant and asking the waiter to describe each of the vegetarian offerings, then ordering a big, juicy porterhouse steak.
“We never closed it [the list of managerial candidates] down,’’ Lucchino said. “It’s not a process where everybody moves in lockstep. You have different reasons to move people along, or other people have schedules they need to keep.
“You try to respond to people individually. We’re going to make sure we get the right guy.’’
If you are wondering just what the fuck that means, let me translate: When Lucchino says, “We never closed it down,” he means he never approved of the list in the first place. When he says, “We’re going to make sure we get the right guy,” what he means is, he’s the person who determines who the right guy is, not the general manager.
I predict that Ben Cherington is going to get fed up by Larry Lucchino’s meddling very quickly. He’ll resign by January. At that point, Lucchino will claim that the process of hiring a new general manager never closed down. Giving Ben the title of GM didn’t actually make him the GM.
Well, good luck. It’s going to be a while before the Red Sox are serious contenders again.
