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I don't recall there being many stolen base attempts against the Astros by Boston. Throwing out runners is pretty much the only thing they don't do well. Why not exploit it?
The Red Sox have gotten spoiled. 15 years ago, they were like any other team that supported their players and managers. A few WS wins later, not so much.
To be honest they were looking for any reason to fire. John Farrell was just not well-favored in Boston. I think their reasoning is more the players not respecting him and how some off the field things were handled (mainly a current player mocking a well-beloved former player and commentator).
I think their issues are beyond the manager, however.
The fact that they came within a hair of getting in the World Series during what had to initially be considered a rebuilding year makes this firing ridiculous. If the inpatient owners & fans of New York were told that Girardi would take them to the cusp of the World Series at the beginning of the year, they would have been anxiously trying to sign him to a renewed contract.
In the last 10 years under Girardi the Yankees made it to the World Series the same amount of times as the Rays did....once. The glaring difference is that he had about $1.8 billion more in payroll then Tampa Bay managers did.
Imagine how many World Series appearances Maddon and Francona would have racked up armed with those bullets. Torre made the post-season all 12 years including 6 pennants. Anything less than that with those payrolls is absolutely grounds for dismissal.
The Phillies were one of the last holdouts against advanced metric analysis, but they swung on board in 2014 when Middleton, MacPhail and Klentak took charge. Kapler is a metrics enthusiast as well as a believer and practitioner of health foods only for athletes. His hiring is in keeping with the new direction which management is taking, Kapler is a brainy guy.
Dave Martinez trained under the Rays metric department and Joe Maddon when he was a bench coach with Tampa Bay and Maddon brought him to Chicago when he changed teams. This is another metric minded, modern manager.
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