Out of 30 teams in MLB, the Boston Red Sox rank No. 23 in team ERA as of Aug. 21.
Only three American League teams have a worse mark than the 4.30 ERA Boston’s pitching staff carries. A change was going to be made. With the way this season has gone for the Red Sox, a change had to be made.
The Red Sox didn’t wait until the end of the season to make adjustments on their coaching staff, dismissing pitching coach Bob McClure on Monday (Aug. 20). Assistant pitching coach Randy Niemann takes over the position through the final six weeks on the schedule and possibly into next year.
But is McClure being made a scapegoat for the Red Sox’s failures this season? How poorly should this reflect on manager Bobby Valentine for reportedly working so poorly with one of his coaches? How much should this fall upon general manager Ben Cherington, who hired McClure even before hiring a manager and then forced Valentine to work with him?
What about the players McClure worked with this season? Is it entirely the pitching coach’s fault that Jon Lester is having the worst year of his career with a 7-10 record and 5.03 ERA in 25 starts? Josh Beckett also is having a terrible season, going 5-11 with a 5.23 ERA in 21 appearances.
Is it just that simple an explanation to highlight McClure as the primary difference between this season and last year for Lester and Beckett? Was McClure too hands-off or deferential to his veteran pitchers, as this profile by the Providence Journal‘s Brian MacPherson seemed to indicate?
Yet we’re also talking about two pitchers with a combined 19 years of major league experience between them. Sure, any major league player can develop bad habits and get out of his best form. Coaches are there to help correct that. But shouldn’t the players also be held accountable for their performance?
Is it also possible that McClure was essentially emasculated as a pitching coach when Valentine added Niemann to his staff? Even if he wasn’t marginalized, couldn’t two coaches possibly offering differing, perhaps conflicting tutelage cause problems among a group of pitchers?
McClure and Niemann had separate duties, as MacPherson explains in another article. McClure worked with the active pitchers on mechanics and game planning, while Niemann focused more on strength and conditioning.
That sets up the possibility of conflict in the area of throwing motions. McClure could be telling a pitcher how throwing a certain way could create more movement on a pitch, while Niemann might advise the same pitcher to throw differently to save his shoulder or elbow.
The inherent problems caused by this arrangement may have become most apparent when McClure took a two-week leave of absence to help care for one of his babies who had become seriously ill. Niemann took over the pitching coach duties, likely giving Valentine the setup he wanted for his coaching staff all along.
As ESPN Boston’s Gordon Edes recounts, however, Valentine tipped off his true feelings when he derisively referred to McClure’s leave of absence as a “vacation,” which seems terribly cruel considering the circumstances. Valentine corrected himself, but his initial word choice appeared to be deliberate, speaking to how poorly he regarded McClure.
However, this goes back to whether or not Valentine should have been forced to deal with this situation to begin with. Why did Cherington hire a pitching coach before hiring a manager? Obviously, he could have made McClure a condition of the hiring, and Valentine presumably wanted the Red Sox manager job badly enough that he’d agree to it.
But wouldn’t you want to set your manager up for success by letting him hire his assistant coaches? Was McClure seen as such a brilliant pitching mind and indispensable hire that Cherington didn’t want to risk losing him?
Let’s not absolve Valentine of responsibility, either. If he knew this was the circumstance he’d be working with, he was under a professional obligation to try and make it work rather than freeze McClure out.
Obviously, the two couldn’t have known whether or not they could work together. As CSNNE.com’s Sean McAdam wrote, Valentine and McClure disagreed on things such as whether or not pitchers should throw from the stretch all the time. McClure also apparently irritated Valentine by refusing to go out to the mound to talk to a pitcher during an inning. Perhaps this relationship was irreconcilable.
That leaves Valentine and Cherington with little other recourse than to share the blame and cover their you-know-whats in explaining McClure’s dismissal.
As the Boston Globe‘s Peter Abraham points out, firing McClure is at least a passive endorsement of Valentine. Hey, it was that guy’s fault, not this guy’s. Valentine now has his guy, Niemann, fully in place, and things presumably will proceed more smoothly from here on out.
Of course, it also puts more accountability on Valentine in the future. He can’t use the excuse that he didn’t hire McClure anymore.
In turn, Valentine is attempting to claim some responsibility for McClure’s hiring, thus taking some of the heat off Cherington. According to WEEI.com’s Mike Petraglia, Valentine told reporters that he thought McClure was the best guy available at the time he was hired, so he and Cherington were in agreement on the hire.
Bobby V still just couldn’t help himself, however, admitting that McClure also was hired because they were running out of time to put together a proper staff because Valentine was hired as Red Sox manager in January. That reflects poorly on Cherington—and team ownership—for dragging out the managerial search for as long as they did.
But now, Valentine and Cherington have six weeks to show that this thing can still work if the circumstances are more agreeable. If the pitching staff improves,—and Lester has pitched well in his past two starts—then changing pitching coaches speaks for itself.
The 2012 season is a lost cause, so coaches and executives can get a head start on next year. Valentine, especially, can make up for the lost time that he didn’t get in the offseason. And maybe a few other scapegoats, such as Beckett, can be cleared out before next season.
Yet there are only so many more culprits Valentine and Cherington can throw off the truck before they’re asked to jump off themselves.
Follow @iancass on Twitter.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com