The past few days I listened to sports talk radio, which I rarely do. I read all the sports page articles, which I rarely do. The concensus is Francona lost the team. His strength is managing personalities. Too many players were tuning him out. It's easier to fire the manager than trade all the whiners. The word is the whiners were Varitek, Youkilis, Crawford, Drew, Ortiz, Lester, Beckett, Lackey and Wakefield. What this team needed was a Kevin Millar. Millar would pull guys aside who needed a "talking to."
Someone mentioned Youkilis in a previous post. It's time to move him to DH or trade him while he's still worth something. As mentioned he has a bad body. He's 32 this season. He's missed at least 25 games each of the last three seasons.
Varitek and Wakefield were unhappy with their roles. Release them. It's not going to get better.
Epstein will have a lot of 'splaining to do before he's allowed to spend big money on a free agent again. Two (Crawford and Lackey) were flops. Drew was questionable. Gonzalez's heart is now in question.
Sometimes players come from soft media and fan markets can't handle the pressure of the big market. Nothing more needs to be said about Lackey and Crawford. Gonzalez had 1 rbi the last week of the season. He has 14 in September. Of course it was better than the 13 he had in August. He's earned the Dave Winfield Award, formerly known as Mr. May.
The Patriots appreciated the Sox drama. Hardly anyone talked about their 21-0 collapse to the Bills all week. Even this morning the sports talk show that wasn't the Patriots network is still talking about the Sox.