Why Boston Red Sox's Hiring of Bobby Valentine Is Finally Some Good News

It's not that Bobby Valentine is some sort of "magic bullet" to cure all the ills of the Boston Red Sox. In fact there is a chance that his hiring could be a total disaster. 

With that said, as a Red Sox fan, it was kind of nice to turn on the computer/radio/television and hear some sort of positive news about the team.

After all it had been a while. In the third inning of the Red Sox's Labor Day matchup against the Toronto Blue Jays, Josh Beckett was throwing a shutout and appeared fairly dominant. Then with two outs in the fourth inning, Beckett was gone. He left the game with an ankle injury, and from that point on, good news regarding the Boston Red Sox became a rarity.

It's not as if the Red Sox were worthy of positive spins and stories in the aftermath of Beckett's departure. They went on to lose most of their September games, culminating in a gut-wrenching and heartbreaking blown save and walk-off loss on the final night of the season, which sealed their fate as a team on the outside of the postseason looking in.

It only got worse from then on.

Terry Francona's contract was not extended, and the Red Sox were without a manager on September 30th. Then, Theo Epstein began to set up meetings with the Chicago Cubs. And while they courted the Sox general manager, numerous stories surfaced about various forms of player dissent and reprehensible behavior in the clubhouse as the team's fortunes disintegrated in September.

Stories of drinking, ordering of take-out food, a general lack of discipline and a lax attitude toward physical fitness all fueled a media frenzy nationally and particularly in the Boston area.

Epstein left and the news continued to be devoid of any sort of positive feeling as the general feeling seemed to be that the front office of the Red Sox was either conspiring to push Epstein out or powerless to prevent him from leaving. Even the compensation for Epstein, which still has yet to be determined, was not something the Red Sox brass could get done in an efficient manner.

In the first week of the free agency period, veteran closer Jonathan Papelbon left for the Philadelphia Phillies without even waiting to see if the Red Sox would make him a formal offer to stay. It may be debatable if Papelbon's departure is a good or bad thing for the Red Sox; but the fact that he was not willing to even wait for an offer made the Red Sox appear like a weakened entity.

As the managerial search dragged on long past the time when other high profile jobs in Chicago and St. Louis were filled, the Red Sox again caught heat for front office dissension. This time it was the rumored rift between longtime Sox president Larry Lucchino and newly appointed general manager Ben Cherington.

With all that bad news spanning a almost a full three months it sure was nice to hear some positive Red Sox reaction when Bobby Valentine was finally announced as the Red Sox 45th manager on Tuesday night.

Sure, in the long run it could turn out to be a huge mistake; it could also be a great move. None of that will really be hashed out until actual games are played starting in April. In the meantime, the Red Sox now have both a manager and a general manager and can begin the job of both adding and subtracting players from last year's team.

Those moves—much like the managerial decision, will be met with a mix of both positive and negative reviews. That's fun. It's fun for the fans and fun for everyone to play the speculative game of trying to figure out the benefits versus cost of acquiring a free agent or a player via trade. Losing prospects can be a tough thing to take, but it can yield good results at times.  

The nicest thing about the Valentine hire just might have been the Red Sox leading some sports headlines with something—anything—other than dissent, departures and disarray. That's refreshing at this point. It was a long and rotten fall for Red Sox Nation, winter is approaching and there's already a touch of springtime optimism in the air.