Why John Farrell Is Perfect Man to Unite Red Sox's Divided Clubhouse

To be the manager of the Boston Red Sox, one must be the right guy in the right place at the right time.

At least this certainly seems to be the case after watching Bobby Valentine crash and burn as the manager of the Red Sox in 2012. He was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his bumbling ultimately resulted in the club's worst season in nearly 50 years.

The Bobby V experiment was terminated for good the day after the regular season mercifully came to an end on Oct. 3. Thus began the organization's second managerial search in two years, and the pressure was on it not to screw this one up.

The end of the search became official on Sunday; John Farrell is leaving the Toronto Blue Jays to become the new manager of the Red Sox.

Will Farrell be the right guy in the right place at the right time? Is he the perfect man to lead the Red Sox?

In my estimation, the answer is yes. Farrell still has much to prove as a manager after going 154-170 in two seasons at the helm of the Jays, but he's the right guy for the Red Sox job because he can do something that Valentine failed spectacularly at, and that's make the team's clubhouse whole once again.

Uniting the Red Sox's clubhouse won't necessarily lead to a winning season, mind you. The Red Sox have a long uphill climb ahead of them after going 69-93 in 2012, and they don't have a ton of talent to help them get to the top after trading Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez to the Los Angeles Dodgers in late August.

But anybody expecting the Red Sox to become World Series contenders right away in 2013 under Farrell's watch is missing the point. His first order of business is not to deliver a championship. It's to wipe away the losing culture that overtook the clubhouse in 2012 and to reestablish the considerable dignity the Red Sox once had.

Whatever dignity the Red Sox had went up in flames under Valentine's watch. He continually made a mockery of himself, and in the process, he turned the Red Sox into a house divided. The old "25 cabs for 25 players" saying certainly seemed to apply to the 2012 Red Sox.

It's common knowledge by now that many Red Sox players did not march to the beat of Valentine's drum, but he wasn't without supporters. The now-infamous report that came from Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports in August claimed that were some players within Boston's clubhouse who felt that Valentine was being "scapegoated unfairly" for problems that were largely related to the club's star players.

So on one side, you had players who loathed Valentine and wanted him out. On the other, you had players who saw no wrongdoing in Valentine's methods. Thus, a house divided.

In a way, it was like the 2011 season never ended. The October 2011 report from Bob Hohler of The Boston Globe made it clear enough that there was relatively little unity in Boston's clubhouse under Francona, and this lack of unity certainly played a part in the team's epic September collapse.

Bringing in Valentine in to succeed Francona could have worked if the club's players had bought into his leadership and the mentality he wanted the team to have, but that didn't happen right away. Whatever chance Valentine had of winning Boston's players over was probably sabotaged for good when he threw Kevin Youkilis under the bus barely two weeks into the regular season.

Valentine's motivation to publicly criticize Youkilis was unclear, but at the time, it looked like he was going out of his way to make it clear to his players that he was in charge. This, of course, was after he went out of his way to deliver the same message during spring training, going so far as to institute a more rigorous training regimen than the one Sox players were used to and then banning beer in the clubhouse.

The fact that Valentine felt he needed stunts like these to establish control of his players says a lot about just how hard he had to try just to get his new players to follow his lead. Sox players didn't exactly gravitate to him, so to speak.

This is an area where Farrell promises to be considerably different, as he comes to Boston with a reputation as a natural leader. 

Such is the general consensus around the baseball community, according to Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com. Farrell is seen as a man who has the perfect blend of people skills and leadership skills to tackle that challenge that lies ahead of him.

"He's a likeable person,'' said one source. "And he's fun to be around. Players naturally like him. But he also is a natural authoritarian. It's not done in an in-your-face way. But people don't want to disappoint him."

If this is true, then Farrell is already off to a better start than Valentine. Farrell's leadership isn't contrived. It just is, period.

It also helps that Farrell knows the score in Boston. Valentine never could get a grip on how to handle the intense pressure that comes with the territory of managing the Red Sox, harming himself in particular with his interactions with the Boston press corps.

Farrell was Boston's pitching coach for five years from 2006 to 2010, so he knows all about what is expected of the leader of the Red Sox.

"He won't be overwhelmed by the scrutiny because he's already lived it. There won't be a lot of surprises for him," said one of McAdam's sources.

The fact that many of the players on Boston's current roster know Farrell well from his five years with the team should help. He'll have considerably less bridge-building to do with Boston's players than Valentine ever did.

In fact, Farrell hasn't even had the job for a matter of days, and the glowing sentiments are already rolling in.

"I'm very excited to have him back and looking forward to playing for him," said star second baseman Dustin Pedroia of Farrell, via the Globe's Peter Abraham. "He's been through it before here and it should be fun trying to accomplish our goals together."

That Farrell already has Pedroia in his corner is a very good sign. Pedroia is the heart and soul of the Red Sox, and it's worth noting that he told Peter Gammons at the end of the season that he's committed to changing the culture of the Red Sox. If Farrell is OK in his book, then he must think highly of Farrell's general perspective on things.

Another guy Farrell already has in his corner is David Ortiz. He's a free agent, but he told Abraham that he expects to be back with the Red Sox in 2013, and he told ESPNBoston.com that he's very excited to play under Farrell.

“To be honest with you, there is something about John that they can see because they’ve been chasing John for the last couple of years,” Ortiz said. “I love John. John is my main man, even when he was the pitching coach."

Ortiz was also quick to note that Farrell's experience as a pitching coach should, in theory, help the team's pitching staff find its way:

"

He has a great relationship with our pitchers and I think they need that. If you can line up your pitching staff, it makes everything easier. I think [Farrell] will give us a chance to win games because the pitchers will produce for him. It was hard to win games last season because we were always behind. That's a tough position.

"

In Farrell's last season as Boston's pitching coach in 2010, the club's starters posted a 4.17 ERA that seems modest until you compare it to the 5.19 ERA Sox starters posted in 2012. 

Under Farrell in 2010, Clay Buchholz went 17-7 with a 2.33 ERA, Jon Lester won 19 games with a 3.25 ERA, and even John Lackey had a decent season with 14 wins and a 4.40 ERA. If Farrell can get his magic to work on the three of them once again, Boston's rotation won't be nearly the kind of disaster in 2013 that it was in 2012.

And that, in turn, means there could be considerably less pressure on Boston's hitters to pick up the slack for the pitching staff in 2013. Pedroia, Ortiz and whomever else the Red Sox retain for their 2013 lineup won't feel like they have to do all the work if the pitching staff comes around, and that will only help the clubhouse come together.

You can rest assured that getting the club's pitching under control is one of Farrell's priorities, if not his absolute top priority. If the Globe's Nick Cafardo is to be believed, shoring up the club's pitching is also general manager Ben Cherington's top priority.

To that end, Farrell and Cherington should be able to see eye-to-eye. They should be able to see eye-to-eye on other things as well, as a big reason why Farrell has been tabbed as Boston's new manager is because Cherington himself hand-picked him for the job. Gordon Edes of ESPNBoston.com and virtually everyone else has pointed out in the last several days that Farrell is Cherington's man, plain and simple.

This is yet another thing that makes Farrell different from Valentine, who was chosen to be the club's manager by ownership rather than by Cherington. According to Edes, Cherington's first choice for Francona's successor was Dale Sveum, but principal owner John Henry and his brain trust preferred Valentine. 

If Cherington and Farrell get along, then Farrell should fare better in Boston than he did in Toronto under Alex Anthopoulos.

Toronto's GM told the media on Monday, via The Boston Herald, that he wasn't happy with the way in which the Blue Jays were essentially forced into handing Farrell over to the Red Sox. He made it sound like the Blue Jays never had a shot at keeping Farrell once the Red Sox got involved with him.

Whether or not Farrell even had a long-term future in Toronto, however, is very much open to debate. According to Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun, Farrell and Anthopoulos didn't exactly get along. Farrell's ideas for the direction of the Blue Jays didn't always mesh with what Anthopoulos wanted or the personnel moves he actually made.

In Boston, it already sounds like things are going to be different. Farrell is the man Cherington wanted, and they both have—or should have—common goals for the direction of the team.

Put it all in perspective, and you can see pretty clearly why Farrell is the right man at the right time in the right place as the manager of the Red Sox. He has the support of the front office, and indications are that he has the support of the team's clubhouse. Even if there are some players who are skeptical about Farrell, having the team's pitching staff and clubhouse titans like Pedroia and Ortiz on his side is a huge victory.

The Red Sox may have just hired their second manager in as many years, but this year's situation is a complete 180 from last year's situation. Valentine was a ticking time bomb walking into an already volatile clubhouse. Farrell, by comparison, may as well be a square peg going into a square hole.

If he can't cure what ails the Red Sox, they're even more doomed than any of us even dared to fear.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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