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So far Cherington's duties appear to have been restricted to functioning as the team pinata, hung up at home plate in Fenway Park so that the Boston Media and fan base can swat away at him hoping to crack him open knocking a few gifts to the ground in the process. While I am indulging in a bit of overstatement to make a point, I don't think the way they are using Cherington is particularly bright nor will it be productive in the long run.

Why so much hype....because they can do it....that's why. It is difficult for most of us to get a real read on how a player performing in the Japanese leagues will perform here. Plus there has always been an aura of mystery around the Japanese players and the team PR machines here just play that to the hilt. Everything about importing Japanese players smacks of a PR mans dream....the posting fee....interpreters. Every one of them is treated like what is called in the classic and antique car world a "barn find" which generally refers to a rare, classic car that has been sitting "mysteriously" unattended in some barn in East Nowheresville for the past fifty years.

One thing that will likely be a source of frustration for Ortiz and fans alike is that I do not sense any urgency from teams to leap to close a deal with Ortiz at this time. He will more likely end up being a fill in at the end of the FA season more than a guy that gets a deal done early.....probably a consequence of being a dedicated DH. He may sign with the Sox earlier if they actually do have a real offer out there to him and he decides to take it.

Well the Sox process at least the one they claim to have forces media involvement. One part of the process is a candidate press conference. It really does not matter. JH and LL are going to hire the guy they want as long as he is available and wants to come here. Nobody else seems interested in Valentine and I guess he would want to come here. So, I guess he is going to be the guy.

As far as I am concerned going through all of this ******** to end up with Valentine is not an indication of how smart they are. It is just another indication of how screwed up they are. I don't care if they had a full blown clandestine effort going or just had Valentine in their hip pocket. Nobody else seemed to be whispering sweet nothings into Valentine's ear. Just make him part of the process and be done with it. If anything I might believe that LL kept Valentine apart from the "process" because he did not want him to come out of that process unable to make his way to to the top of the list when in fact that was the guy JH and LL really wanted. My last memory of Valentine as Manager was with the Mets in 2002, another team with veteran stars. How did that work out for ya'. As I posted earlier though the Sox have not been offering Managers long term contracts lately and Valentine is probably as anxious to get back into baseball as DD was with Baltimore. So if the Sox want to sign him to a short term deal, fine.

Well there is one interesting aspect of Valentine. Nobody has decided that they "needed" him for 9 years now. What, no manager openings for the last 9 years? Actually as long as the Sox don't go backwards before they go forwards, I don't really care all that much. I would rather have Valentine here in 2012 than some other year. If he loses the veterans it will likely happen in the very first year. Since he has not had a manager's job in 10 years and the Sox have grown used to this thing of only offering managers one year or two year contracts with a team option, they can s*** can him at the end of 2012 without much damage if they need to.

Interesting how all of the "rumors" so far are restricted to the AL East. Clearly if the Sox had a preference it would be for Ortiz to land in the AL West if they were not going to sign him. Wondering how much rumor there is in these rumors.

Using the calculation for the Luxury tax cap provided that the Sox did not resign Paps or Ortiz, the Sox had a whopping $24M or so to play with outside of current commitments.

Did the Biue Jays/Ortiz rumor come out later today? The last thing I heard today was Ortiz agents talking to Baltimore. Did the Blue Jay rumor sound closer to being some sort of deal or was it more like the Oriole rumor?

They have to depend on Cherington and the people BC will be talking to hoping to sign them will be people that will have to believe that when BC says something he has enough juice within the organization to make what he says relevant. The Sox blew that up as much as anything. Again it is not about BC having the juice to actually hire a manager which he would not have had under any circumstances. However would you believe that BC was speaking for the Sox if he was negotiating with you as a player or as a player agent? LL has always wanted to consolidate more and more power around himself. If the Sox are not careful nobody will believe BC is relevant in any sense and agents and players will insist on talking to LL very early in any process as they will prefer the mouth end of the horse. LL may want it that way but it is a hell of way to run a business.

As many detractors as he has Larussa might have been the best we have seen at being pretty tough about getting his team to play the game the way he wanted it played without losing the key guys. Larussa's cred was probably as much a result of his early success as much as anything else. So, it was probably hard not to toe the line as a player without losing the respect of teammates. Seemed to me that Larussa always had a really high visibility ally on the team much maybe like Torre had Jeter and that went a long way to their success as managers as well.

It would be nice to have a team that could lay down a bunt now and then as opposed to doinking it off their batting helmets. The biggest problem for a team with as many long term big contracts as the Sox have is that those players simply do not have to be intimidated by a disciplinarian. They have their guaranteed money. So any manager has to find a way to get them to be responsive without losing them. Usually the last line of defense for management is the threat of breaking up the team or trading away guys that have been at the center of things if they don't toe the line. I fear that last weapon has lost some of its effectiveness here in Boston though. The only guys that seem strongly attached are guys that figure they cannot get anything like the kind of deal they could get from Boston anywhere else if they happen to be FA this year...guys like Wake and to some extent Ortiz. Other guys that appear strongly attached are not problems anyway...guys like Peddey.

Agreed 700. Vals even has that chalk against blackboard voice just to make sure he achieves optimal annoyance.

Boy it sure did not take them long to justify our worst fears regarding the FO. It is almost like they could not have done it faster if they had tried. Actually feel a little for BC like I did for Bellichek when he finally got sick and tired of being part of Parcells constant brinksmanship about whether he would continue to coach...if he would continue to coach etc. Remember Bellichek came here just as Parcells was playing another of his games this time about the Jets job and Belichek finally said, screw this, I am going to New England. So he found a way out from under Parcells. BC has been a loyal camper to the Sox at least as much as Bellichek had been to Parcells and BC's reward is a very public disrobing.

I don't know if this is anything the players would care about but it always seemed to me that Valentine press conferences were so much about him....his strategy...his move at a particular point in the game....etc. Again the players may not care at all but I would likely get tired of hearing it. Obviously not a critical factor unless his press conferences are a reflection on everything else he does as a Manager.

. Do you see what I mean? I think you are confusing what is being assigned with the number of innings ultimately pitched.

Look at my last point and I think you will see where we are missing each other.

One other thing i did not see in your argument until you selected it as a quote....I think you are confusing what a Manager "assigns" for a starting pitcher with the result. I did not say that the #4 will automatically pitch more innings than the #5. I said that his manager will automatically be assigning the #4 more innings than the #5 by virtue of their positions in the rotation and the number of starts that the #4 will get as opposed to the #5. We quickly went on to discuss results and the discussion became focused on results. It was not until I saw this quote that I thought to comment on it. This is also why I focused later in the discussion on number of starts as opposed to just innings because there the relationship between number of starts and position in the rotation is easier to see. However now I think you used "assigning him more innings" to mean that the pitcher would in all cases pitch more innings.

. pumps this can't be the gist of your argument. You are suggesting that there is no difference in the number of starts and that they do not correlate to a pitchers position in the rotation. Further your argument is that because you cannot account for injury, you cannot guarantee that the #5 will pitch fewer innings than the #4. But to extend your argument further, managers should not assign pitchers any spot in the rotation because injury is going to negate the number of starts for each and that is simply not true. Sure you can find cases where the #4 got fewer starts than the #5 due to some whacky extenuating circumstance but it is absolutely critical to a manager that he establish this hierarchy in his rotation regardless of what might happen due to injury and your argument flies in the face of that necessity. The Manager has no choice but to establish the hierarchy based on recognizing that he will avoid using his 5 as much as possible with the ultimate result that the 5 will end up with fewer starts than the 4.

Jesus, you really want to go with this pumps? Although maybe this does get to the heart of the issue. There is a difference between which SP the manager believes gives him the best chance to win which does relate to the pitchers spot in the rotation and the eventual performance based stats that are produced. The manager does not have the convenience of predetermining outcomes such as ERA. Those performance based measures are produced in real time and the manager can't simply move guys around in the rotation willy nilly based on what those stats are during the course of the season. He may move a guy up to the 1 from the 2 and so on at the start of a season based on a number of influences including performance based stats and who he thinks is his best big game pitcher etc.

Even innings pitched does not get to the point. GS or Games Started is the only stat for Starting Pitchers that gets to the issue of a manager maintaining his rotation based on who he thinks gives his team the best chance to win with the #5 whoever he is getting the least number of starts of a five man rotation. The Manager will make that decision based on a number of elements including stats like ERA but a single stat like ERA will not by any means be critical enough to be the arbiter.

Injury MAY become such a factor, particularly at the top of the rotation, that your rotation becomes a complete mess and the team loses the relationship between which SP gives the team the best chance to win and his place in the rotation but as User indicated injury that deep is the rarity. the SPs' whoever they are will still be maintained in some order based on who the team thinks gives them the best chance to win each moving up in turn. That would be the difference between "reasonable health" and uncommon degrees of injury. Reasonable health would still allow a team to maintain a rotation based on the the pitchers they think give them the best chance to win getting the ball more than other pitchers. It is "uncommon" for the SP rotation to be so decimated by injury that an order based on that philosophical approach cannot be maintained and the result of that approach by seasons end will be that pitchers in the 1,2,3 and 4 spots will have more starts than the guy in the 5 spot. I will grant that a pitcher can be elevated to the 4 spot from the 5 and conversely demoted to the 5 from the 4 regardless of injury. But the very fact that such movement can happen supports the contention that an order does exist and if maintained through the season will produce a #4 with more starts than a #5.

Neither Aceves or Bard are great choices for #5 starter but I think it less likely that they will sign enough SP either via trade or FA to avoid trying Aceves in the #5 spot for 2012. I don't think it is a question of the Sox not trying to get enough starting pitching within the constraints of the 2012 luxury tax limits. I think that within those limits they will try to get enough starting pitching to make Bard the closer and leave Aceves as a reliever. However I think it more likely that they will fail by at least 1 SP forcing Aceves into that role.

I would say the only element of this whole managerial business that matters is: The degree to which the organization in total understands that 2011 was an organizational failure, the extent to which they are willing to change and the degree to which BC is a GM in name only.

There is no question that BC would not have been allowed to make the choice here. However, his process or at least the candidates developed from it are pretty close to being completely ignored which means that BC's bosses either did not give him clear instructions or he did not follow them or the entire process is bogus. It is not an issue of who actually does the hiring.