Bobby Valentine’s Misery
The thing about Bobby Valentine: he has never finished first.
“I gave my heart, I gave my soul, and I gave every waking hour I had to the Texas Rangers organization and family… If anybody wants anything more than that, I just don’t have it to give.” — Associated Press, 7/9/1992
He’s been a manager for 23 years, 16 in the majors, two in the minors, and seven in Japan, managing five teams in total: the Texas Rangers, the Norfolk Tides, the Chiba Lotte Marines, the New York Mets, and now the Boston Red Sox. In those 23 years, he has a career record of 1817-1729-23 (there are tie ballgames in Japan). His teams have finished in second place seven times, and have gone to the playoffs four times. He took the Mets to the World Series NLCS in 1999 and the NLCS World Series in 2000, the only back-to-back playoff appearances in franchise history. He has won a championship, the 2005 Japan Series. But he has never finished first.
“It’s killing me. It’s killing my folks, it’s killing my family, it’s killing my dogs. It’s terrible.” — New York Daily News, 8/2/2002
His first managerial job was as a midseason replacement with the Texas Rangers in 1985. To put it mildly, it wasn’t just a bad team, it was a bad franchise. The team finished in last place in 1984 and 1985, and before he was hired, the team was 79 games under .500 for the decade. He managed the team for parts of eight seasons, with a single second-place finish in 1986; overall, under his tenure, the team was 24 games under .500. Better, but not by enough. When Rangers owner George W. Bush fired Valentine midseason in 1992, he explained that it was because the team was “six-and-a-half games back and not playing very well in a season we thought we ought to be in contention.”
“As I review it, and ponder it, and take advice from others who experienced it… maybe I’ll be better the next time when they’re not hitting or fielding or making the play… If I had to do anything over again, I would have smiled more, to get it lighter.” — New York Times, 10/3/2002
Bobby Valentine has been around the game forever. He’s Ralph Branca’s son-in-law. As a player, he played for Walter Alston, Whitey Herzog, Dick Williams, and Joe Torre. But his playing career was a disappointment: he was a hotshot shortstop prospect from Stamford, Connecticut who was taken fifth overall in the 1968 draft, but could never stay healthy, and never developed much plate discipline or power. He’s spent a great deal of his professional career in New York and Boston — the two cities that matter, if you’re growing up in Stamford — and both cities wound up hating him.
“Sometimes, I wish I had the ‘no comment’ in me… It’s probably a character flaw. My teachers and friends will tell you I like to contribute. I don’t have ‘no comment’ in me often. That’s a problem. Sometimes that becomes a know-it-all situation. And maybe I am a bit of a know-it-all when it comes to those conversations.” — New York Times, 2/15/1999
Perhaps, as with Billy Beane, Valentine’s managerial strategy developed from his own experience as a player, which taught him that players can disappoint and therefore are fungible. Valentine has always distinguished himself by his in-game moves, constantly tinkering with the lineup, which had the effect of drawing attention to himself. “He positively adored displays of in-game strategy,” writes Chris Jaffe in the book Evaluating Baseball’s Managers. “While managing he gave the impression that he thought he was smarter than everyone else.” But he is also thin-skinned, easily wounded, easy to offend.
“Someone had the audacity to say that I’m trying to get fired from this job, or that I want to quit – the job that I hold the highest place in any job in the country, in the world, the thing that I live and breathe and die for every second of my life… If it’s ever said again and I find the person who says it, I will get – I will not say what I will get.” — New York Daily News, 8/25/2002
Yesterday, Valentine made minor news by using the word “miserable” to describe this Red Sox season on a Boston radio station, and took great offense at the suggestion that he was “late” for a game because he had gotten caught in traffic on his way to pick up his son at the airport to see the team. Well, it is a miserable season. And that’s not entirely his fault. In the best of times, the Boston media fishbowl is claustrophobic: in the worst of times, it’s utterly unendurable. Believe me, I live here. The negativity in this town sucks.
Everyone thinks that misery is something that people run away from. I think you learn from misery, you learn from challenges, you learn from failures as well as you learn from success. So, this is what I chose to do. I think it’s been miserable, but I also think it’s been part of my life’s journey.” — WEEI, 9/5/2012
As a manager, Bobby Valentine has won more games than he has lost, and according to Jaffe’s work, which tracked his major league record from 1985-2002, he was worth +356 runs to the 15 teams he managed: in other words, something like two to three wins a year. He also has been hailed as a sabermetrically inclined manager, one who acknowledged the influence of Bill James relatively early. As Marc Normandin of SB Nation and Over the Monster wrote last offseason, “Valentine sounds like a progressive manager willing to learn in order to succeed… And he’s a baseball lifer known for ruling the clubhouse.”
“I think there’s times with Fred [Wilpon] that he really, really likes me. And I think there’s times that I really (tick) him off… I think the latter is more the exception, but Fred’s honesty with me is such that he’s told me that personally, too, which I think makes it a wonderful relationship.” — New York Daily News, 5/19/2000
On the other hand, he may be above average, but he’s also a know-it-all who’s incapable of shutting up for his own good, who has a knack for fighting fires with gasoline instead of water. His flaws are obvious, and it’s hard to argue that he does not deserve to be fired — the clubhouse discontent was so fierce this year that the team was essentially forced to trade Kevin Youkilis for pennies on the dollar. Bobby Valentine was fired in 1992. He was fired in 2002. And it looks an awful lot like he’ll be fired in 2012. Perhaps Bobby Valentine is miserable because he realizes that he deserves it.
The Mets made the Series in 2000, not 1999.
Yes, sorry, fixed.
Or maybe he is miserable because he is right and the players are overrated whiny little babies that should be told so instead of pampered. The Red Sox aren’t very good. Their pitching is terrible. Their offense has been inconsistent and Epstein left the team with a whole lot of iffy prospects and overpaid unproductive injury prone players that aren’t nearly as good as they think they are. I hope Boston’s management has the stones to keep him and to remake the team in the off-season with players that are willing to work hard and play the game the right way. Maybe they can find some guys that actually care more about winning than their golf games.
He threw a veteran leader in the clubhouse under the bus in front of the media during Spring Training. That is LITERALLY the worst, most divisive thing a manager can do.
You can’t throw someone under the bus if there is no bus. Throwing someone under the bus means sacrificing them by placing all the blame for a bad situation at their doorstep. This was before the season even started he had no motivation to do anything but speak honestly, and he did. I’m sure he hope to light a fire under Youk’s ass, but it failed. Youk didn’t preform, he hadn’t preformed in a while, and if you think he started doing better in Chicago because he changed scenery then that just proves he wasn’t trying his hardest in Boston, and proves Bobby V right.
If he was trying to light a fire under Youk’s ass he should have confronted him privately, instead he insulted him in front of the media.
Bobby V is a prick and there’s a reason he’s gotten fired from every managerial position he’s ever had.
I’m not sure what kind of a guy Bobby V is. My thought on the Youk thing was calling him out to the media so that he would be forced to answer for his motivation or lack there of, not just to the manager, but to the fans as well, which would really motivate him. I just find it hard to pass judgement on these sorts of things because there is SO much we don’t know.
IMO there’s never a reason for a manager to air the dirty laundry of the clubhouse for the media to see. He’s supposed to protect his players, not insult them.
When he was with the Mets, he also made comments about Todd Hundley’s party habits, back when Hundley was the biggest fan favorite on the team. That didn’t stop them from going to the playoffs in back to back years, and it didn’t stop Mets fans from loving Valentine. Personally, I’m not the type of person that would call someone out in public – but that’s his style, and the Sox knew that going in.
@vivalajeter
Who cares whether the Red Sox fans like him? What matters is whether the players trust and respect him, and publicly insulting one of them isn’t a good way to do that,
Puh-lease, the Red Sox problems existed before Bobby V and will continue to exist if he leaves. For a saber website to honestly place any significant importance, and deciding who has a job is significant, on “club house chemistry” speaks more to the authors bias than Bobby Vs performance as a manager. Let’s not pretend Youkillis wasn’t performing, constantly injured, and being outperformed by miles by a hot prospect. Honestly, the people in the front office new they didn’t have a contender before the season even started Bobby V’s just the latest scape goat now that they can’t fire Francona again or blame “beer and chicken”.
In any organization, if a leader loses the respect of his or her subordinates, then productivity will suffer.
I honestly don’t know whether I agree with that. Productivity in an office workspace and productivity on a baseball field, or any athletic field for that matter, are very different. Besides Bobby V maybe the team manager, but there are so many leaders and the player’s pay checks are coming from them.
How can someone say the Red Sox performance this year is based on Bobby V? How could we know that? How could we measure that? How much of that performance can be attributed to him? Like I said before there’s just way too much that we don’t know. Haven’t unlikable managers succeed before? Haven’t likable ones failed miserably? If players play sooo much worse for managers they don’t like wouldn’t the inverse be true? How do this season’s injuries play into the Bobby V’s to blame narrative? The pitching staff, is their performance his fault too?
“How can someone say the Red Sox performance this year is based on Bobby V? How could we know that? How could we measure that? How much of that performance can be attributed to him?”
The whole point of sabermetrics is to answer questions like that.
One way to measure the effect of a manager is the methodology used by Chris Jaffe in his book, which I quoted above.
For each manager, Jaffe looked at the actual performance of his players, and compared their actual performance in year X with an “expected performance” calculated by a weighted regression across the player’s performance in seasons X-2, X-1, X+1, and X+2. He then attributed that difference to the manager, assuming that, in aggregate, over hundreds of player-seasons for each manager, the noise would essentially wash out. Using that methodology, as I said, Valentine has generally achieved above-average results.
But this year the clubhouse hates him and numerous players have openly and privately complained about him. Just because we don’t have quantitative data to measure that effect does not mean that there is no effect. Managers matter.
Managers might matter, but the conclusion that Bobby V has a significant role in the Redsox failure this season still seems unfair.
Would players be complaining to the media if their team was winning even if Bobby V acted the exact same? It seems like venting, and deflecting their own blame onto someone else. When the information we do have suggests he is a positive as a manager, venting players on a losing team, that have had clubhouse problems in the pas,t doesn’t really weigh stronger as evidence.
It seems like there’s a much simpler, more obvious explanation, the Redsox just weren’t that good a team, had some bad luck, and were plagued by injuries. It seems more like a narrative that’s out of control than a reflection of the truth. The fact that going into the season the Sox team had serious issues and looked like a doubtful playoff contender makes it seem likely that Bobby V is just the most recent thing to blame so that people higher up don’t have to accept it themselves. If you need a scape goat a manager is your best option, you can’t fire the players, and its a lot it’s harder to replace all your front office staff.
Well, no. They pretty much did fire a lot of their players. They shipped Youkilis off for Lillibridge and Stewart, and traded Gonzalez plus Beckett, Crawford, and Pinto to the Dodgers.
A manager is a leader. The job of a leader is, on the one hand, to get subordinates to perform. On the other hand, he also has to avoid mutiny. Valentine has basically faced mutiny, and he hasn’t acquitted himself well. The Red Sox have a lot of problems. Valentine, with his perennial tendency to draw attention to himself, is not helping.
I don’t mean they literally can’t get rid of their players what I meant was players are much more difficult to replace. That is more to the point that if a team is going scape goat someone for a bad season, and the redsox have in the past and will in the future because in that market they are expected to compete every year so they need an excuse for their fans when they don’t, they will scape goat someone who has at least enough influence to make it seem plausible but is influential enough that they are more easily replaceable.
Bobby V has been are for ages, as you said, if the Redsox thought his style of management and his obvious love of the media would be a problem why did they hire him? It’s not like anything he’s said could possibly be unexpected.
Sure, a manager is a leader, but again how much does that manager’s leadership is to blame for a poorly performing club? There are plenty of easy to see reason why the Redsox have the record they do that have nothing to do with Bobby V, why do those not take the blame instead? Where, specifically, has Bobby Vs bad management manifested itself? Pedroia’s lack of power, his fault not the thumb injury? Beckett’s bad pitching, Bobby V as well? Lackluster performance from the SS position? Ellsbury’s injury, Crawford’s?
Like I said what we know for sure is that in the past Bobby V has helped his teams win, and we have plenty of data to prove this. Does a few disgruntled players, with history of club house issues, bad mouthing the manager in a losing season provide stronger evidence that he has been a negative for the team than all the other information that we actually have? To me it doesn’t.
Woops, I mean to say “not influential enough”.
He’s failed to get on with players to the extent that half the team has had to be shipped out. Most of these players have been managed by an array of different managers and styles over the years without problems. That suggests to me that there is a significant issue with his people-management skills.
While it might be true to say that everyone knew what he was like, that doesn’t mean that it’s OK for him to completely mess up that part of his job. I’d guess that the same players (both the ones still in Boston and those who were traded) will do better under different management. It’s obvious that everyone involved (both Valentine and the players) hates the current situation, and the Red Sox would be nuts to go into next season without resolving it.
I’m not sure that he necessarily deserves to be fired (I think he probably will though). The clubhouse was a mess when he got there, and the players were awakened from the lax style to Francona to a more demanding manager. The leaders in the clubhouse weren’t willing to change the team culture which is what should happen when a new manager comes in. The team was in disarray all of September 2011, and despite a managerial change, its still a disaster. Maybe the problem in’st the manager, but the players.
You flipped his postseason appearances, Alex. It was NLCS in ’99, World Series in 2000. As a Braves fan, I definitely remember that “grand slam single” from ’99 Game 5, and I also remember well that the Mets managed to blow the series in any event. (lolmets)
Yes, sorry, fixed. I remember Ventura’s grand single too!
Maybe he just doesn’t do that well in years that end in a “2″.
Sorry Tom and Yeah, it’s the manager’s job to get the most out of his players, nothing more, nothing less. What the players deserve is not part of the equation. Setting the clubhouse tone that will net the most wins is part of that equation. Wins put butts in the seats and the manager is supposed to maximize wins. I don’t think you can make the case that Bobby has done that this year.
Well, I doubt I’ll change your mind but these are adults and professionals getting paid hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars and playing to make more. If millions of dollars can’t motivate them to give their best, or respect, or integrity for that matter, what can the manager do?
I doubt that it’s something they consciously decide to do. It’s not like they deliberately decide to strike out or throw a meatball down the middle. And the answer to your question is that the manager can avoid creating a toxic working environment.
So in a nicer clubhouse environment they don’t strike out, they don’t throw that bad pitch? To me that seems farfetched, but I guess we can agree to disagree.
They might be more relaxed and able to focus on playing ball, not on what the next chapter in the soap opera will be.
Would you do your job better if you’re in a nice environment, where you are supported by your colleagues and your boss, who doesn’t throw you under the nearest bus if you make a mistake, or if you’re in a shitty environment with a boss who doesn’t have your back, and where there’s a decent chance you could get fired or transferred across the country with no notice for no real reason? Assuming you’d do better in the good environment, what magical power do pro baseball players have that mean they can totally shut out the crappy environment?
I can’t even imagine a scenario where my team, 5.5 game out of a playoff spot with ~9 weeks to go, would just roll over like the Red Sox have in recent weeks. Pathetic. There is plenty of blame to go around here.
I dont care being flooded with Red Sox articles when they remind me of how much they suck
problems before problem manager valentine were and still are larry lucchino, scum bag co-owner wanted a scumbag to do his dirty work in clubhouse.
arrogant self entitled whiny fan base will yet again put a positive spin on all the problems brought about by front office.
I enjoyed watching you team up with the Iron Sheik in the late 80′s.
That is all I have to contribute.
Well you have to be a halfway decent manager to get fired in 1992, 2002, and 2012.
I like that…touche!
If the trend continues can we expect another Bobby V firing in 2022.
There are many problems in Boston. The players are/were a problem. The media/fans are suffocating. The work environment is toxic because of higher management. None of that is changing any time soon.
Yanksfan, no one wants to see your hatred toward Bobby V. over and over again. Get off your pedestal is get over yourself.
Sorry?
Does publicly insulting your subordinates as soon as you come into a new position work sometimes?
This might be our worst record in 46 years, approximately one year away from having the best record in BB. Valentine is not our only problem, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a problem.
Do you mean best record of the non-playoff teams?
At this point whether Valentine deserves to be fired or not is really irrelevant. He didn’t sign on with the Red Sox to manage a rebuilding effort, and he pretty clearly wants out (I think). His outrageous behavior is an attempt to force Red Sox owners to fire him (they would rather wait until after the season). At least that’s my interpretation.
As for the Red Sox problems, they are also easy to understand. They’ve had one top ten draft pick and no top five picks in the last 45 years (note: they are also the only team during that period never to have lost 90 games in a season). Beyond that, their financial advantages are vastly overstated. The Boston/New England market is roughly the eighth largest market in MLB behind both NY and LA teams, Philadlephia, Atlanta and Texas. And really the Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Toronto and Tampa/central Florida markets are comparable (or perhaps even larger). They are in a division with one team that can (and does) outspend them and two other teams that have had a large (in the case of the Orioles) and obscene (in the case of Rays) advantage in draft position over the last decade and a half.
Just to illustrate my point a list of players drafted before the Red Sox pick in the draft would include: Josh Hamilton, Adrian Gonzalez, Chase Utley, Joe Mauer, Mark Texiera, Evan Longoria, Prince Fielder, Andrew McCutcheon, Buster Posey, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Troy Tulowitzki, Alex Gordan, Ryan Zimmerman, Matt Wieters, Josh Beckett, Zack Greinke, Scott Kazmir, Justin Verlander, Jared Weaver, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, Steven Strasburg, Tim Lincecum, Dylan Bundy, Chris Sale.
Personally, I think the Red Sox have done extraordinarily well over the last decade, and arguably over the last 4 1/2 decades. Unfortunately, given their situation, they don’t have as much margin for error as people think, and they have made some mistakes: hiring Bobby Valentine, trusting Theo Epstein. (As an aside, I really think there ought to be more scrutiny of Theo Epstein’s departure from Boston. In particular, I am really surprised MLB allowed him to trade the Red Sox top prospect to two of his friends and then re-acquire that prospect from his friend when in Chicago. That, combined with the timing of Ricketts buying the Cubs and contracts awarded in Boston, raises serious ethical questions which have somehow never occurred to media corps that is usually quick in responding to even the slightest hint of blood in the water). They aren’t likely to compete again for a couple of years (although if Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz go back to what they have been and what most people think they ought to be, they could be back in contention next year).
Finally, I think, despite their recent mis-steps, that the Red Sox are still a well-run club. If they can ignore the unrealistic expectations of some elements in the fanbase and the media, ignore what the Yankees have done over the last decade and a half (which IS truly remarkable), realize that you can’t compete every year and accept that it is alright to have a bridge year or two every decade, they’ll come out of this just fine.
“The Boston/New England market is roughly the eighth largest market in MLB behind both NY and LA teams, Philadlephia, Atlanta and Texas. And really the Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Toronto and Tampa/central Florida markets are comparable (or perhaps even larger).”
What do you mean by this? Most of the markets you mentioned have teams in the or around them that clearly draw lower attendance. Unless you mean there are simply more people in those areas? If that’s the case then it’s irrelevant, the market isn’t the entire population in the area, but the population of an area that will attend or at the very least is interested in baseball games. Boston clearly has a large advantage here, which is pretty easy to see by the amount of ads, and merchandise they sell, and media presence they have, not to mention they sell out almost all of their games and have for years.
Attendance, media and marketing are driven by the ability of a team to create the perception that it is likely to compete more often than not. (Note: this requires more than simply winning)
The Red Sox draw more revenue out of a smaller market (in term of population) because they have been arguably the second best team in baseball over the last 45 years. People like to dismiss the Red Sox success on the field as a product of financial advantages while ignoring the fact that that financial advantge is also a result of success on the field. They, better than anyone but the Yankees, have created an expectation that any year coud be the year.
What the Red Sox are now finding they have to adjust to is that some of these other teams, who actually have the advantage of even larger markets, have done the same thing Specifically, the Angels, Phillies and Rangers have now created the perception of winning and seen their revenues rise. And as those revenues have risen, they have entered into the high end free agent market making it an even bigger buyer’s market.
And that change in the economics of baseball is going to force the Red Sox to change their approach.
I can’t hang this all on Bobby V. Boston just might not have been the right fit for Bobby, especially having been away from the major league game for so long.
The media is relentless – and stupid – in Boston. Additionally, Bobby V. was handed an aging team full of pampered veterans. Bobby V. does much better with younger players.
He has his own way of doing things, and he needs his players to buy-in. He took-over a team that was complacent, and thought that they just deserved to be in the playoffs every year just because of the uniform on their back.
Beckett and Lester were terrible all year. Crawford did nothing, again. Ellsbury has been out most of the year. The lone bright spot, David Ortiz, has been sidelined for a couple months now. The bullpen was and remains a mess.
Could Valentine have handled things with more grace and dignity? Yeah, for sure. But would have the results on the field have been much different? I don’t think they would have been.
One additional note on the Boston media: the Bob Hohler “Chicken and Beer” story should NEVER have been published.
Anonymous sourcing is fully justifiable when the president is authorizing a burglary of the opposition party headquarters, or Company A is dumping carcinogens in the local water supply or Congressman X is cynically pimping a project from which he stands to gain financially. It is not acceptable for spreading mean-spirited gossip without fear of consequences.
I happen to disagree, as I wrote here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/peter-gammons-to-boston-globe-burn-your-sources/
Mr. Remington,
Thanks for your response, although in fairness my assertion that the article should never have been published is not necessarily mutually exclusive with your asserting that once the article has been published, the sources need to still be protected.
In addition, I think there may be another issue here. If Theo Epstein was a key source of the chicken and beer article (and yes I am sure there were multiple sources), then he may have been acting to distract attention from the highly suspsect manner in which he left Boston. I can’t imagine any scenario in which a GM can trade a team’s top prospect to two of his friends and then re-acquire that prospect from one of those friends after having taken another job that does not represent a serious conflict of interest.
When one looks at the timing of Ricketts buying the Cubs, the Red Sox handing out irresponsible long term deals, Josh Byrnes getting hired in San Diego and Anthony Rizzo getting traded twice, there is a solid body of circumstantial evidence of something just a little fishy. When one realizes that the Red Sox paid twice for Adrian Gonzalez — once in prospects and once in a contract — one can be reasonably suspicious that the real purpose of that trade was to provide Mr. Epstein a top prospect to help in his new job.
I agree with you: the manner in which Theo Epstein decamped for Chicago while still contracted with the Red Sox, being allowed to accept the Chicago bid before adequate compensation with the Cubs had been determined, was exceedingly problematic, and frankly fishy.
But I actually will go further than saying that the Globe had a responsibility to protect their sources. I think that story was an important one, and one worth writing. I criticize the Globe for not being more forthright about the exact reasons that each anonymous source was granted anonymity and what motive each may have had, but I believe that the story of the epic collapse really needed to be told. It was a trainwreck in plain view, and the reasons needed to be better understood.
And considering the circumstances, the only way that it could be told would be via anonymous sources.
Mr. Remmington,
I genuinely appreciate your willingness to engage on this issue; thank you!
I’m not 100% convinced the Globe is under any real obligations to protect anonymous gossips; however I willingly concede that it isn’t worth setting a new precedent for this story. Protection of anonymous sources is too important to jeopardize over the reputation of a baseball team.
However, I still don’t agree the story needed to be told. In part, I don’t really believe the story, or at least not the narrative, and in part I don’t believe that anything that happens to a sports franchise that does not involve public moneys is important enough that it has to be told.
I don’t believe the Red Sox collapse last year was caused by complacency, or lack of conditioning or discipline or beer or chicken. I think it was caused by pressure. I think the pressure reached a point where it affected enough players that the team could no longer perform. I think the stories fed to the Globe were nothing more than a smear job (I find it especially amazing that in all the copious research for the article, nobody told Mr. Hohler that John Lackey was pitching with an injury that clearly should have ended his season months before it did. No matter what one thinks of Mr. Lackey he clearly took one for the team).
Finally, I think the one unambiguously distressing aspect of Theo’s departure from Boston is his acquisition of Anthony Rizzo. Given the circumstances surrounding this acquisition, I can’t understand how MLB ever allowed the Cubs to acquire him. I can’t help thinking the beer and chicken story was intended all along as a diversion to distract from the sleazier aspects of what Mr. Epstein was doing.
I can’t wait for them to suck next year under a new manager and see what they cook up to blame for it.
I thought that the Rizzo trade from San Diego to the Cubs was very fishy at the time it happened and was surprised that I didn’t see or hear anyone in the media saying so . In fact , this is the first time I have seen anyone bring this up . Was it brought up before and I somehow just totally missed it ?
I think most people thought the Cubs got a bargain, but you’re going to have to explain why San Diego would deliberately take a bad deal before it could go down as anything other than a baseball decision that looks poor at the time. You also need to remember that Rizzo had not succeeded in the bigs at that stage, and his cup of coffee in San Diego probably had a significant negative impact on his value, as did the decision that they were going to go with Alonso as the 1st baseman, leaving no spot for Rizzo long-term.
Hoyer hires Byrnes 3 days before Gonzalez deal; Byrnes trades Rizzo to Hoyer at a discount.
It may be all above board, but it looks like a quid-pro-quo.
So the case is that Hoyer hired Byrnes, and then Byrnes traded Rizzo cheap in return for getting a job. Or, as it’s more commonly known, accusing two different front offices of behaving in a grossly unprofessional manner without any evidence at all.
Simon,
Mr. Epstein, Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Byrnes had obligations in this case beyond just not defrauding their employer. They had an obligation to avoid any situation in which they stood to gain personally from decisions made on behalf of their employer — especially, as in this case, when those decisions were arguably not in the best interests of that employer. Whether they actually talked before hand or not is irrelevant to whether they had a conflict of interest which should have prevented them from making the trade. This is basic practice in most organizations and businesses.
The best analogy I can make is to baseball’s policy on gambling and baseball and Pete Rose. There isn’t one shred of evidence that Pete Rose ever made a decision as manager that put his interests above those of the team, and yet he is banned from baseball for life because, in gambling on baseball games, he put himself in a position in which he had a clear conflict of interest. Whether Mr. Epstein, Mr. Hoyer or Mr. Byrnes intentionally did anything wrong makes no difference; they put themselves in a position in which they had a conflict of interest.
Personally, while I doubt it could ever be proven, I suspect it was pre-planned. These three are very smart men, and this is an egregious case. Three friends executed three highly questionable decisions at the expense of their employers and all three appear to have profited from it.
Just because it is not all, or even mostly, Valentine’s fault doesn’t mean he has done a good job, is a good fit, or deserves another year.
The Red Sox were probably going to be terrible this year regardless of who managed. But did Valentine do anything to make things smoother or better? No, in fact its pretty easy to argue he made things worse. The team was bad. Bobby Valentine’s ego and personal flaws helped make it bad AND pathetic.
Ordway is an asshole but Valentine’s outburst at him is the perfect example — Valentine explodes and says if people want to know about things they should just ask him and he will answer (re: being “late”). But anyone who has watched his post game interviews knows he is sarcastic, insulting or simply non-responsive to even the most benign questions (like about pitching match ups say).
There’s a reason Valentine was out of MLB baseball for a decade and its apparent he hasn’t learned anything in that time. Is he solely to blame for the Red Sox dismal season? No. But he should be fired because he was never a good choice and he remains an awful choice for the team.
So if the Yankees lose out to the O’s, will Girardi get fired after we find out about Beer & Chicken?
I think Valentine will be better with a turned-over squad. I think he is hell on established veterans already there when he arrives (witness the Hundley thing as well as Youk) and better with younger players or players brought in after he’s there. This is just an off-the-cuff observation. but frankly, i wouldn’t get rid of him. Ortiz, Pedroai and Ellsbury will be used to him now and I think he’ll be fine for the next wave of players, Middlebrooks, Bogaerts, Barnes, etc. The Red Sox can reload with the money they have freed up. And Valentine actually is taking the heat off his miserable team a bit with the focus on him (although i doubt that’s his intent).
He did a fine job with the Olerud (albeit replaced by Zeile), Ventura, Piazza, Alfonzo Mets. If I am Boston I keep him around another year or 2 for the entertainment value, unless they find he is scaring off free agents, which I doubt.
Bobby V. has always come off pompous, self serving and a know it all.
He was irritating as a TV announcer, let alone having to answer to
him as a manager.
The bottom line with Bobby V, is that he gets himself run out of town by pissing off upper management, veteran “stars” or any guy who has “name value”. As another commenter mentioned, he has people management issues. Bobby is at his best with young hungry guys, guys just a bit short on talent, grinders…anyone who would buy in. He absolutely got the best out of those guys. Be it Timo Perez or Benny Agbayani or Deal Relaford or Pat Mahomes. It’s why he was successful in Japan. I think he was just a bad fit. Boston management thought they needed a tough disciplinarian, a prick to keep players in line. What they found out too late is that they needed to purge their roster of overpriced malcontents. No manger was succeeding in Boston this year.
I’m beginning to wonder if Valentine was brought in to fuel the chaos and give Red Sox management an excuse to flush out the roster and kick off some overdue rebuilding.
He’s stupid. Literally:
1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/stupid
IMO, while Bobby V didn’t help the problem at all (especially by calling youk out in spring training as if he had been youk’s manager for many years), he is not as large of the problem as many say. The fact is that the Red Sox didn’t get that much production from a lot of their players. While the production of their players very well might’ve been influenced by Bobby V, I find it hard to believe that, before they were traded, Beckett would have been an ace, A-gon would have walked more and hit for more power, and crawford would have been less injured. Or that ellsbury wouldn’t have partially dislocated his shoulder, papi wouldn’t have messed up his achilles tendon, and pedroia and lester would have had MVP/cy young-like years. My biggest critiques of Bobby V are his stupidity with the media and the decision to put aceves as the closer and bard in the rotation(should’ve been switched). Instead, bard ruined his young arm and aceves sucked anyways(and sweated a ton). While Bobby V seems to be a terrible manager, most of the “proof” is speculation which seems to have gotten too much attention, like everything does in Boston’s media(KFC anyone?). Don’t get me wrong though, I hate Bobby V as much as everyone else and this is just my take of the media’s take on the Red Sox clubhouse.
Bobby V made a huge mistake isolating Youk from the start.
He was trying his “Divide and Conquer, make them all rather together and hate me!” shtick and it whiffed completely.
*rally together