The Red Sox have decided not to bring back assistant hitting coach Andy Barkett, as Alex Speier of the Boston Globe first reported. The 46-year-old had been in the role for two seasons.
Further coaching decisions aren’t yet known, though Speier notes that head hitting coach Tim Hyers is expected to return in the same capacity. While Barkett is said to have been valued as a communicator, Speier suggests that an analytical approach may be preferred in the role.
Which brother, don’t they know ppl are more valuable then a computer read out?
Henry made his billions on a computer. Sad that the team could go 180 degrees in a year. I’ve loved this team forever but this ownership despite their championships is getting hard to root for.
what more do you want? how many teams would kill for a ring, let alone multiple in half a decade.
Red sox fans are psychotic .3 rings since 04 and the owner is bad? LOL
My complaint is that the team decisions of late make it hard to root for. this past year has been a disaster and DD was a scapegoat in that the time to pull the plug was before re-signing Sale who has never been able to pitch well in September and beyond. Ownership sold its’ sole to DD’s philosophy but now wants to cut ties after one lousy season when the starters were “non-starters”. I laugh at your response to tough criticism. I stuck it out after Bucky Dent, after Billy Buckner was wrongly vilified, after 2003, etc. The firing ofvan assistant batting coach who was brought in with Cora surely seems directed at him. Now the team is again about to announce a “modest” ticket price increase when they should be offering a rebate after thus year. Such is never happening but why not keep prices as is? What will that bring in, $5M more? is it worth it for negative feedback from the media (all except the Globe anyway).
*4 Rings
Hell, I was upset when they traded Dick Stuart. He hit a lot of home runs for the Red Sox and what did I know about Dr. Strangeglove’s defensive metrics? I could calculate batting average on a slide rule. I started figuring that stuff out back in the 60’s, just in time for the greatest single season player performance in baseball history, Y A Z; This team has been awesome this millennium and it’s mostly due to the owners. I still think it’s GREAT that the first unanimous hall of famer is the guy who choked it over to us in 2004, TWO GAMES IN A ROW!!!!! I, for one, have enjoyed the ride.
I also enjoyed the ride. My problem is analytics have ruined the sport by taking over decisions. Winning of course has always been the end goal, nut unless you participate in fantasy, the game is now unwatchable as a fan. Henry and his computer philosophy have been a big part in this. The game has evolved to absurdity. LaRussa changed the sport with a one inning closer. The Yankees also developed the 7th, 8th and 9th inning guy. The Yankees and Red Sox also decided to take pitches to force the starter out earlier. Instead of developing pitchers with more control, baseball countered the above by turning a 10 member staff into as many as 13 and through analytics, the game is what is today. Just my take on how the sport has gotten worse instead of better when combined with smaller stadiums and now a ball that is ridiculous. What’s next a super ball that takes crazy bounces so there will be inside the park homers?
Henry could blow an extra 100 million on salary and luxury tax penalties for 10 years and hardly make a dent in his fortune. His hedge fund profits are probably more than that every year. What’s he saving it for? Hearses don’t come with luggage racks. It reminds me of
old man Sam Walton flying coach until the day he died.
He could have bought the airline…..
Which explains why someone that thinks like you will never be rich..
LOL
Sounds like an indirect hit on Cora since he joined the team when he arrived. Could be wrong but was the hitting really the problem? Scapegoat time…
Next re-assign Levangie and his disastrous pitching staff.
Levangie should have been let go ages ago.
there should not have ever been a fall guy here. DD’s acquisitions were crucial to the title last year and the hitters carried the way. one rough year due to unfortunate fiscal constrains shouldnt be cause for a house cleaning.
I don’t think fiscal restraints was the problem. They’re basically the same team minus Kelly and Kimbral and they won last year in spite of them, not because of them. They just had a bad year. No reason to think they can’t turn it around next year.
Kelly was lights out late last year. The starters is why they lost. That and not having a closer. Fiscal mismanagement is their problem. They had no ability to add payroll at the deadline. What most forget is during DD’s watch, the team basically had no international money to spend because Shervington spent so much before. The Sale deal is going to be a killer going forward just when the Hanley abd Panda deals are off the books.
I just don’t get why ownership green lit both Sale’s extension and Eovaldi’s contract. Sale was at least defensible. And I was certainly happy to see Eo back after the WS high, but if the cost of one or both of those guys was not retaining JD and/or Mookie for this year it looks really bad on both DD and ownership.
Exactly but I still say ownership approved the signings. I though place more questions on the a sale inking because of when it happened. They paid full price when there was no competition. If he stayed healthy and produced, it would have cost another year perhaps but not more in average cost. Would they sign him for that money now or use it to keep the offense together?
IMO Sale has been ailing a while, n we never knew or he never said. I think it’s good we know what the problem is n there is a treatment. Lordy knows we have enough yrs to fix it, n still have productive yrs, hopefully.
As a life long Red Sox Fan, it pains me to say this team only has 1 or 2 more seasons (max) before a massive overhaul or complete rebuild needs to happen. They have a few young, talented players to build around in X-Man, Devers, Benny and maybe one or two kids close to the bigs, but the team has ZERO stud pitching prospects who could make this team in the next few years. All of their minor league talent is in low A or high A ball right now, and they are hamstrung with unmovable contracts in Price, Sale, Pedroia and Eovaldi. It sounds like Mookie is as good as gone too. Where will this team be after 2020 with no Top 100 prospects in the system? The new GM certainly has a tough road ahead in a post apocalyptic (Dombrowski) setting. While DD got us a ring, he completely drained the prospect pool so let’s hope Henry opens the pocketbook one more time this off season as the next half-decade after 2020 looks beyond bleak unless 2 or 3 Mookie type prospects appear out of nowhere to save the franchise. I honestly hope I am wrong here, but all signs point to an end of an excellent 15-20 year run.
What prospects did he trade that will be those pitching studs? DD inherited a great core of young talent that matured together but the minor league system was hamstrung by the lack of international drafting that was on the prior regime.
If he’s over the injuries, Jay Groome can shoot through the minors and be a top 100 pitching prospect. And also be on the major league squad in just a couple years.
He did trade Kopech who many still believe will be very good But I would agree with you. DD made some very good trades that I don’t believe he is getting credit for. We are learning that Henry is not easy to work for and he doesn’t like to take the blame when he fires people. Theo and Cherrington left on their own but when you think of Francona, Farrell and now DD, they seem to always blame the terminated individual. Very seldom is it one persons fault. Thank God for the 4 WS Chsmpionships But they need some stability and tenure vs so much change between the front office and field manager. Other teams and executives are shaking their heads at the constant change. It’s probably not fair to compare to the Patriots when you have the GOAT coach, owner and of course Brady but the Sox can and need to do better.
The patriots are the yankees of football. Suspect players and a culture of cheating. In football, a great quarterback like Eli Manning can win you two Super Bowls, but in baseball, no single player has the same impact as a quarterback.
Manning was a great big game player once the team got to the playoffs. His inability to get them there often enough in my view prevents him from being called “a great quarterback”. Jim Plunkett also won two championships.
Makes sense.
They need pitching and they fire their “back-up” assistant hitting coach?
Look, we hired an inexperienced manager and we watch him make mistakes daily. We fired a Head of Operations who was experienced and did the job he was asked to do and was waiting for additional money to free up from contracts made before he was hired when ownership turned on him so we couldn’t determine if his moves from last year fit in a long term plan or the decisions of a strip miner.
The Red Sox organization is full of surprises. When Theo was sent packing I was disappointed, when DD was hired I was surprised and confused and now when he is fired after a championship and a bad season caused by a huge mistake made by the inexperienced manager he hired, I felt like he was being held accountable for a very bad decision. Why Cora wasn’t sent packing after botching the off-season/Spring Training preparation is beyond me. Or maybe he should have been sent packing when he ok’d the idea of changing Sale’s wind-up, mechanics and arm slot. A top 5 pitcher who earns over $20M a year and a former utility infielder and his pitching coach decide to turn into Dr. Frankenstein and rebuild your all-star pitcher? When it failed, shouldn’t that have been grounds for firing him?
What we need now is to wipe the table clean. We need to hire an experienced GM who can bring in a whole new team of experts to run the club. We need new pitching coaches, we need new analytics, we need an experienced manager and we need to see if we can get JD’s hitting instructor along with a new set of hitting coaches.
As far as the players go, we need to hang on to the players with value greater than their cost. Example: JBJ needs to go because $9M is too much for a guy who hits under .200 for the first third of the season no matter how good his defense is. We have a very young team with many of the key players still approaching their prime and who are pre-arbitration or arbitration. Rebuilding is for older teams. Rebuilding talk needs to stop.
We need to re-tool, that’s all.
We need Sale, Price, Eovaldi and E-ROD to show results comparable or better than their pay. That will be a tall order for Price but it’s possible with the right pitching coaches. Likewise, Sale just needs to either spend more time on his new mechanics and arm angle to regain his control or he needs to go back to what made him great. Eovaldi needs to stay healthy. E-ROD will have the great challenge of having another great year after he just completed his career year. These things are a must for us to win in 2020.
If Benny and E-ROD arbitration numbers are reasonable compared to their value provided there is no reason to think they must go. If management thinks two dozen errors by Devers at 3B is acceptable then Chavis needs to start at 2B, Moreland needs to sign for around $6M and Dalbec needs to take over Chavis’ role of utility player along with Holt at $4M. We need an OFer to replace JBJ and a new back-up catcher with upside. We need a closer and both righty and lefty set-up men to go along with Workman, Barnes and other inexpensive relief pitchers we have that performed well in 2019.
Without Porcello’s money and other bad contract money that has rolled off we have significantly less wasted payroll. We’ll need to figure out what to do with Pedroia. If he can’t play we should try to have him restructure his contract. Is retirement with no money owed an option? I don’t know but that would be nice.
A hitting coach wasn’t the problem. The problem is far more systematic and keeping the people that headed-up the systematic problems as a four person board of governors seems like a very bad idea. Lets clean house and give an experienced person a shot at bringing in a more skilled set of executives, coaches and manager.