Even before they fired Manager John Farrell, there was already lots of ink spilled on the state of the Red Sox. Here are a smattering of some of the more interesting ideas online:
- Rob Bradford of WEEI breaks down the team position by position, both the current state of affairs and his thoughts for what’s best in 2018.
- At The New York Post, Kevin Kernan expects a team shakeup writing that “there’s too much October failure here, and too much payroll for ownership to sit back and do nothing.”
- Even before the news was official, there was a rising chorus of calls to “Fire Farrell” but Boston Herald writer Michael Silverman says fans should aim higher. Silverman says it’s the former manager’s boss, Dave Dombrowski, who has “earned the right to take responsibility for how and why his team fell short — again.” Fellow columnist Steve Buckley laid the blame at the manager’s feet writing that “it’s time for the Red Sox to end John Farrell’s managerial tenure.”
- Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan likewise predicted Farrell’s dismissal, saying it would be no surprise if the Red Sox offered Farrell “a kindly pat on the back with one hand and a one-way ticket with the other.”
- Setting aside Dustin Pedroia‘s second straight lackluster Division Series (a combined .143 AVG), local sports radio personality Fred Toucher says Pedroia is also hardly the leader the Sox clubhouse needs. “Pedroia is mystifying,” Toucher says. “He apparently has done some number on the people that are around there every day where he looks into their eyes and hypnotizes them into thinking he’s a special kind of guy.”
- Alex Speier of The Boston Globe writes that “Pedroia enters the offseason, perhaps for the first time of his career, as something of an uncertainty.‘
- Across Red Sox Nation there’s lots of interest in super slugger Giancarlo Stanton, but Providence Journal sportswriter Tim Britton says the Sox would do better to consider players like J.D. Martinez, Carlos Santana, and Jay Bruce.
- Michael Hurley of CBS Boston was less than impressed with Craig Kimbrel‘s reaction to blowing his team’s chances to progress in the postseason.
- Boston.com assembled a wide array of post-ALDS quotes from Kimbrel, Chris Sale, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Andrew Benintendi.