20/20 Tito

Just to show how slight the difference is, not only in impressions, but in the reality behind the impressions.

The Red Sox collapsed by going 7-20 in September. The accusation is that they were soft in many ways. People did not push themselves and play hurt, as one might expect in a pennant race. This is regarded as at least partly Francona's fault. He mighta, shoulda, coulda pushed 'em. He's a "player's manager," which means he coddled them, didn't react strongly enough to bad attitudes, etc. Well, that's true, to some extent. Some players had bad attitudes and were whining - I mentioned it as far back as July - and it's the managers job, at a few million a year, to uh, manage that. But had the Red Sox won just a few more games, had they gone an unexciting 13-14 in September, they would have won 96 games, never been challenged for the wild card, and everyone would be oohing and aahing that everyone was healthy for the playoffs, and how brilliant Tito was not to panic and let everyone heal without hurrying back. And in baseball, it is easy to find a few games that could have gone the other way.

Similarly, the Sox showed very poor focus, making a lot of mental errors in September. Sometimes they tried too hard, attempting stolen bases or extra bases - sometimes they were asleep at the switch, missing cutoff men, mixing up scouting reports, and not noticing pinch hitters and pickoff plays until it was too late. You can fairly blame this on a manager as well. But a criticism that says "sometimes he pushed them and sometimes he didn't, and he missed the balance" is a rather weak complaint, isn't it? Yet again, with even a 10-17 September, everyone here would be sagely noting that it's a long season, and keeping an even keel is as important as keeping sharp. Which is also true.

In both of those alt-histories, what Boston did in the playoffs would then be used to retrospectively interpret the managing during the season. Bad playoffs - similar criticisms to now. Good playoffs, Francona is brilliant.

He has been a wonderful manager in the past. This year's collapse - did he stick with Wakefield too much? Did he give Lackey too much rope? Did he let players make their own determination about when they should play and how they should act? Easy to say yes. Obviously, if we could replay history we would play those decisions differently. But does that make it true? He was criticised for sticking with Pedroia early in his career - that worked. Last year he was criticised for sticking with Ortiz, then for not making Ellsbury come back and play sooner. Terry looks good on those calls in retrospect, doesn't he?

I hope he gets a good gig, wherever he goes. Upper management has not been entirely complimentary about his leaving, damning with faint praise in places in hopes of diverting criticism away from themselves. But Tito left decently and didn't throw anyone under the bus.