Bobby Valentine will become the next manager of the Red Sox, reports Gordon Edes of ESPN Boston (on Twitter). He is expected in town on Wednesday. Mike Lynch of WCVB-TV in Boston was the first to report that the two sides had reached a verbal agreement (Twitter link).
The job was offered to Valentine while he was in Japan for personal business over the last few days, adds Edes (on Twitter). He immediately accepted. ESPN's Karl Ravech reported earlier tonight that Tigers third base coach Gene Lamont was out of the running for the job.
Valentine, 61, will be the 45th manager in team history. He has previous managed the Rangers (1985-1992) and Mets (1996-2002), as well as the Chiba Lotte Marines (1995, and 2004-2009). He led the Mets to the 2000 World Series and the Marines to the 2005 Japan Series. The Rangers and Mets went a combined 1117-1072 under his watch.
You’re missing their point and conjuring one point from nowhere:
You’re basing your stance here on the fact that some anonymous sources choose to stay anonymous for a reason, which is an entirely reasonable assumption in any circumstance in which it is applicable. However, no one’s questioning any anonymous sources here because there are no anonymous sources to cite. Most of this has been conjecture and assumption by the Boston media who are already notorious for conjecture and assumption.
Go look at the Globe’s Extra Bases blog sometime. The entire blog has been one big mess of contradiction and back and forth for like a month and a half now. They were citing the top candidates as guys like Martinez, who allegedly was never even interviewed in the end and saying Sveum was an unpopular candidate and then Sveum was the top candidate, but then the the Sox dropped the ball on him. Then Valentine was involved and apparently he’d been involved since the beginning (To the point that players have now allegedly been grumbling about it for a while) but no one in the media knew about it. And after weeks of saying what a disaster the Valentine hiring would be, now that it’s announced it’s all THIS WAS TOTALLY THE RIGHT CHOICE BE QUIET EVERYONE.
This situation leaves us with two possibilities: either the Boston sports media is pulling their stories out of their backside and citing opinion as fact (Something they’ve been doing since the forties) or the Red Sox front office is in such monumental disarray (Some disarray is to be expected, but let’s not forget that there honestly hasn’t been much turnover in the front office, the overwhelming majority of the old regime is still in place) that all of these conflicts which make absolutely no logical sense do exist. While the latter is certainly a remote possibility, Occam’s Razor (The simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation) leads us to go with the former.
No, no! Don’t go back on your entirely valid stance:
There are no conflicting reports, there are conflicting stories. Reports indicate there’s a source, stories are just that: stories. There has been very little word, official or otherwise, reported as coming from Yawkey Way outside of who interviewed and when.
Eh, my point all along has pretty much been that anyone who is condemning the Sox (specifically Lucchino and/or Ben) based on these stories is doing it without anything to stand on. There’s nothing legitimate that has been reported to suggest that any of this is remotely true.
For the last time, we have a catcher!
Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s not Brian McCann, but I don’t think the guy could be more criminally underrated at this point.
Entirely up for debate. I’ve been on record multiple times in regards to how awful of a manager Girardi is in my personal opinion. The guy is about the biggest whiner in the MLB and he either threw the final game of the season or managed it away due to incompetence (I’d believe either one, he’s got a history of playing the numbers poorly), neither of which is a particularly attractive quality in a manager.
Valentine’s a one man circus sideshow, but most people who’ve worked with him claim he’s a good in-game manager.
Of course its up for debate it’s not like there’s any real way to prove how good a manager is there are no stats or anything of the sort. I have no problem with any of his in game moves he manages the bp way better than torre ever could and really think thats the most important part of being a manager, something if you ask around that valentine really screwed up while playing the yankees in 2000. ANd you probably cant say he is the biggest whinner when you have a guy like beckett.
“he manages the bp way better than torre ever could”
This is a matter that can be directly cited to the fact that Girardi only had access to Scott Proctor for one month of his managerial career. He did his best Torre impression by overusing him in the like three weeks he had him.
“ANd you probably cant say he is the biggest whinner when you have a guy like beckett.”
Beckett’s an enormous suchandsuchhead, but Girardi’s got him trumped in the whining department. He can’t even get his whining straight. He whines whenever his players get hit and then sends guys like Chamberlain out there to headhunt, whines that people accuse him of sign stealing then accuses people of sign stealing. I can’t even say it’s bias as a Sox fan as I always loved Torre, but Girardi just drives me nuts.
Ron Gardenhire’s widely considered one of the best managers in baseball and he doesn’t have a ring. Meanwhile, a lot of people feel Ozzie Guillen and Bruce Bochhy are incompetent, but both have rings.
Perhaps gardenhire shouldnt be regarded as the best manager in the GM? Not for the ws thing but in general.
I’m content to give him a season and then get the Brinks truck ready to park at Maddon’s house next year if the opportunity arises.
But the club signed him for a minimum of two years and holds the option for two more. I sense that Bobby V. knows this is his chance of a lifetime. At 61, I don’t think he will show up in the dugout with a fake mustache unless the Red Sox create an old timer’s game to be played,say, mid season.
“Garza isn’t going to happen. Not enough major league ready pieces.”
To be entirely fair, I highly doubt Epstein’s looking strictly for major league ready pieces for Garza. If they’re open to moving Garza, it’s because they’re going into full rebuild mode. It’s an EXTREME long shot, but most of our better prospects are guys in the low minors (Ranaudo, Barnes, Swihart, Brentz, Vitek). I’m against the idea because it would gut our system, but there’s possibilities there.
“I think the likelihood of the Red Sox making a trade for even a #3 is unlikely at this point unless the team is willing to take prospects that will take a while to mature.”
On the other hand, we really don’t need much better than a #3. Lester, Beckett, Buchholz is a pretty solid 1-3 as long as Buchholz bounces back from injury and pitches to his capabilities. We need guys to round out the back end of the bullpen which, while not a cake walk, is substantially easier than trying to find a #2 or 3 pitcher. The rotation needs work, but people are vastly overrating how much work (Solving 4/5 and getting depth is much easier than solving 2/3 as you can solve the former through quantity rather than quality). The problems that need solving can be solved by a few spring training invites and a little luck.
Nepotism is not the word you’re looking for here.
“Or that he’s not just a puppet.”
Now, I know the two things don’t have to be directly related, but just for full disclosure, are you implying Cherington is?
Because it’s hard to reconcile a statement of “Cherington is a puppet despite there being no actual evidence of ownership overriding his decisions” with “Cashman is not a puppet BECAUSE he admitted to ownership overriding his decisions.”
A heads up before anyone reads this, I will be heading into personal territory here, almost nothing to do with baseball, so only bother reading on if you’re one with a vague tendency toward morbid curiosity:
“Who made it an insensitive term?”
The people using it in a crass and disrespectful manner. Just because a word’s base definition does not have a necessarily insulting connotation doesn’t mean that utilizing the word in a derogatory manner doesn’t make it potentially offensive.
“And are you even effected by retardation or are you just sticking your head where it doesn’t belong?”
First and foremost, my head belongs anywhere I have an opinion on the matter. My own personal experience with mental illness is not the be all end all on whether I can form a valid opinion on the matter. I assume you’ve never managed in the MLB before, so what are you doing poking your head in here where it doesn’t belong (Heck, as a Tigers fan, you don’t even have the slightest vested interest in this thread, so why stick your head in? Because you have an opinion to register that can be a valid point on the matter regardless of the fact your personal interests do not directly intersect with the subject matter)?
That all aside, full disclosure: yes, I have been very much affected in my personal life by mental retardation, in fact, based on your apparent experience, unless your parents were your uncle’s primary caretakers when you were growing up, my experience in the matter trumps the heck out of yours (I have a sibling who suffers from numerous mental disorders, including borderline mental retardation, so I spent the first eighteen years of my life living with it).
That all said, I’m not offended by the use of the word around me. I was at one point (When I was around eleven or twelve, though that was more sheer embarrassment to be fair admittedly), but not really these days except in specific isolated cases. That said, just because I’m not offended by it doesn’t make it ridiculous that others are and my ability to draw that line is part of being an adult. The fact that you seem incapable of rationalizing the fact that, despite your personal experiences and ability to shrug off that kind of behavior, your inability to accept the fact that others have a right to be offended by it shows a stunning lack of maturity.
I’m sorry for snapping a little. It’s just I get very frustrated when talking about this. The past few years, I have watched as my uncle slowly has fallen in health because of his mental state. He just had his 48 birthday and I’m not sure he’ll make it to 50. They say that’s really old for people in his state. That aggravates the hell out of me. Then, while he never really had a chance to have a normal life, I see people throw away theirs. My step sister has a serious drug problem and many of my friends either smoke, drink, do drugs, or any combo of that. People like your brother/sister and my uncle don’t get all of the perks of life and people have the nerve to throw theirs away. Then people just like that have nerve to tell me what words I should say and how I should feel about my uncle’s retardation. It pisses me off. Again, I’m sorry for snapping at you.
he invented the wrap sandwich