Report: No Surprise, Little Out in Boston

Looks like I can change my sig now



Move had been expected by many

The Boston Red Sox, still smarting from a bitter seven-game loss to the rival Yankees in the ALCS, fired manager Grady Little on Monday, a high-ranking team official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

ESPN's Peter Gammons, who reported earlier Monday that Little would be fired Monday, reports that the team will formally announce the move at a 3 p.m. ET news conference at Fenway Park.


Monday's Boston Herald, citing a Red Sox source, reported that two candidates to succeed Little could be former Indians manager Charlie Manuel and former Red Sox second baseman Jerry Remy, a television analyst for NESN, a regional sports network partly owned by the Red Sox.

According to the report, others on the Red Sox list are Yankees third-base coach Willie Randolph, Yankees first-base coach Lee Mazzilli, Dodgers third-base coach Glenn Hoffman and former Phillies skipper Terry Francona, now the A's bench coach.

Little's dismissal has been hinted at since the series ended. Although Boston's CBS affiliate, WBZ, reported Sunday that Little would be fired Monday, Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein told ESPN on Sunday night that the report was not true.

Epstein said the team had begun its review of Little and hoped to make a decision on the manager's future "as soon as possible," but said that "no decision" had been made on whether to pick up Little's contract option for next season.


On Friday, a Red Sox official told the Herald that he would be "real surprised" if Little survived this offseason. Multiple team sources told the paper that all signs pointed to Little's option, which expires Friday, not being picked up.

"He's not (team president) Larry (Lucchino)'s guy -- if he were Larry's guy, (Lucchino) would have defended him by now," a source close to Little told the Boston Globe.

Earlier last week, Little said he was ready for the worst.

"I'm prepared for the likelihood," Little told the Globe. "I am not sure that I want to manage that team. That's how I felt when I drove out of town."

Little has been criticized for his decision to stick with tiring ace Pedro Martinez in the eighth inning of Game 7 against the Yankees. Martinez failed to hold a 5-2 lead, and New York won in the 11th inning on Aaron Boone's homer off knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

The Red Sox have insisted that Little's future will not be determined by the one decision, but according to the Herald, the team was concerned about Little's lack of reliance on stats.

Many key Red Sox players, including Todd Walker and Manny Ramirez, publicly expressed support for Little's return.

In Little's two years as Red Sox manager, Boston was 93-69 and 95-67, and the Sox qualified for the playoffs this season for the first time since 1999. Little became the Red Sox' 43rd manager on March 11, 2002, after Joe Kerrigan was fired.



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This is calm compared to what I read last week in the Boston Globe...Grady Little referred to himself in the 3rd person ("Grady Little is very secure with himself") and said that if he would get canned, he would come back to Fenway and haunt it as a ghost! LOL! Good riddance, Forest Gump Little!

 

Why do you say that? You believe that Grady is going to be able to haunt that team? LOL

Look, managing in Boston is not for everyone; it takes someone with a thick skin to manage there.

"Managing by hunches" is not going to cut it there. Little did it and so did Jimy Williams. Why else do you think that Jimy was let go?

We, Red Sox fans, don't expect our managers to be the second coming of Raymond Babbitt/Forest Gump. We expect them to be normal human beings who know their baseball.

 

It is more than one decision, Major. In reading the Boston Globe during the season, Little was questioned on other moves. Granted, none had the significance of the move he made (or lack of move) in Game 7, but there had always been doubts by Larry Lucchino on him.

But it is a deeper issue....that whole ridiculous bullpen by committee and bringing in Bill James, the stat guru was one that was never fully embraced by Grady. However, Lucchino, John Henry, Tom Werner, and Theo Epstein all thought it was a great idea. In the end, it turned out to be a disastrous idea, but because it failed, no one remembers that Grady was not fully behind it. He was just doing what he was told, but I guarantee you that he told the front office that they were making a mistake. And they didn't like that - because he wasn't into stats like they wanted him to be and he went against them.

He did do some good things and I will, begrudingly, acknowledge that they went farther than they ever would because of him. However, I know that they couldn't help but think to themselves, if they had kept him, that every time they see him that this thought would run into their head: "That was the #!@%^$#! who cost us the World Series!" That is a stigma that would have stayed with him forever, even though it is unfair, but such is life in managing the Red Sox. Each game is a season. Maybe if the fans weren't so passionate and were like the Marlins, who didn't care until near the end of the season, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

My biggest concern right now is that they bring in someone who buys into what they want which is the stats but at the same time is someone that the players will like and not be some ******* like Joe Kerrigan. I'm afraid that such a person like that is non-existant.

But to summarize, in watching the Sox play the last 2 years, I just never got the feeling that Grady Little really knew what he was doing. He was good at relating to the players and they won for him, but when it came time for him to enact a "managerial decision", he was not as good.

 

That is true about Beckett, but there is a big difference between his situation and Pedro's. Beckett rarely got into trouble, while Pedro struggled mightily in getting out of the 7th. You don't think that Jack McKeon takes Beckett out if the Yankees have the tying run at the plate like in the 8th or 9th inning? But fortunately for him, he never had to worry about that.

What people who are defending Grady keep forgetting is how great the Boston bullpen performed in the ALCS. They had an ERA of 1.01 going into Game 7!! I mean what else do they have to do to earn Grady's trust? Mike Timlin only gave up 1 hit the entire series and Embree and Williamson were both clutch. So, I could have some sympathy for Little and his decision if the bullpen was shaky in that series, but they were not . That is what really made his decision look so bad.

 

I just went to the Boston Globe and here is an article that many may want to read:



By the numbers
Little's fate sealed before Game 7
By Eric Wilbur, Boston.com Staff, 10/27/2003

First off, let’s discount the notion that this move was made simply because of a series of fateful moves in the Bronx nearly a fortnight ago. All that night really did was garner some public support for a decision the Red Sox were going to make anyway.

In no big surprise, the Red Sox informed Grady Little today that they are not picking up the option on his contract, a move that had been speculated upon for the better part of the year, and picked up steam this month, after the manager’s decision to stick with Pedro Martinez too long in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series.

The team had until this Friday to exercise an option year on Little’s contract. The manager’s status was an issue team management skirted around whenever it was brought up this season.

Yes, Little did manage the Red Sox to back to-back 90-win series, the first manager since Joe McCarthy (1948-49) to win that many in his first two years at the helm in Boston, and Little did lead them within five outs of making the World Series for the first time since 1986. He kept an often tumultuous clubhouse tightly knit, and had the faithful backing of his players, many of whom in the days following Game 7 reiterated that it would be a bad decision by the club to let Little go.

But this inscription was on that proverbial wall long before such success. If the Red Sox were pleased with the job Little had done, at the very least, don’t you think they would have presented him with a contract extension on the final day of the season, at the very latest? No, this decision stemmed from Little’s refusal to adhere to the club philosophy of studying stats and numbers for success on the field. But show me a manager that is eager to have success attributed to number crunching, the stats guru Bill James way, as opposed to hunches.

And in the end, that is exactly what defined his biggest blunder at the worst possible time.

The numbers speak for themselves. When Pedro Martinez is at 76-90 pitches, opponents are hitting .215 off him. When he throws 91-105 pitches, the number goes up slightly to .231. But when he throws 106-120 pitches, batters are hitting an ungodly .370 against the Boston ace. But despite that great disparity, Little decided to stick with Martinez in the eighth inning of Game 7, when the Yankees scored three times to knot the game at five.

Despite a Boston bullpen that came into the game with a 1.01 postseason ERA, Little stayed with his ace.

He stuck with him after Derek Jeter hit a one-out double.

He stuck with him after Bernie Williams singled to center, scoring Jeter.

He stuck with him after Hideki Matsui hit a double to right.

He stuck with him to pitch to Jorge Posada who hit a bloop double to center, scoring two runs.

The Yankees won, 6-5, three innings later when Aaron Boone hit Tim Wakefield’s first pitch of the 11th into the left field stands. And although Grady Little’s future in Boston had likely already been decided, the moves he made, or didn’t make, in Game 7 were the icing on the cake for the Sox brass.

Grady Little was not let go by the Red Sox because of just Game 7. That just happened to be the prime argument in the case against their manager. Last week, in an interview with the Globe’s Gordon Edes, Little erased any doubt that may have lingered about his status when he said he wasn’t sure he wanted to manage in Boston anymore, and said that he would haunt the team. If there was still a chance of Little returning before that interview, it was completely shredded at that point.

It’s not easy to win 93 and 95 games in your first two seasons as a big league manager. It’s even more difficult to do it and find yourself out of a job. Little will be blamed for his handling of the bullpen, which had an ERA (4.83) better than only Kansas City and Texas, and provided Red Sox fans with some anguishing moments. He will be lauded for keeping a clubhouse together, and for his stature during the Manny Ramirez benching incident.

Most of all, Little will never be forgotten for his blunders in the Bronx.


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Ya, after I typed that I thought maybe he did do that - put the leadoff batters on, but I think he was still throwing around 97. With Pedro, he gave up a homer to Giambi in the 7th and even his outs were hit hard; it wasn't the same way with Beckett.

But, yea, it is a tough rope to walk.