The Boston Red Sox cleaned out the high-ups this past offseason in hopes that last year’s epic collapse would not happen again anytime soon. To offset last year’s struggles the team fired longtime manager Terry Francona, let GM Theo Epstein jump ship to the Cubs, promoted their assistant GM Ben Cherrington to the full-time GM position and dusted the moth balls off of Bobby Valentine to become their new manager.
However, after a 4-6 start the Boston Red Sox clearly haven’t shaken their struggles from last season both on and off the field. And low and behold Valentine isn’t helping matters.
This week, the usually outspoken manager Valentine questioned Kevin Youkilis’ commitment to the team. Usually something you probably don’t want to do this early into your tenure as a manager.
“I don’t think he’s as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past for some reason,” Valentine said. “But [Saturday] it seemed, he’s seeing the ball well, got those two walks, said he got his on-base percentage up higher than his batting average, which is always a good thing, and he’ll move on from there.”
Youkilis obviously disagreed with Valentine’s questioning…
“I don’t know. That’s not what I see. I go out every day and play as hard as I can — take every ground ball in the morning, take every at-bat like it’s my last. I don’t think my game has changed at all. I still get upset with myself. I still get mad. That’s just not how I go about the game of baseball.”
And like originally thought, Youkilis confirmed that Valentine went right to the media on this one and didn’t bother discussing it with him first…
Did he make similar comments in person to you?
“No. I just found out last night. My agent told me something was coming out. I just heard that.”He has never had a conversation with you suggesting there was something lacking?
“No, that’s the first time I heard it.”
Valentine later apologized for his comments and one would think that winning would soon cure-all wounds left from this. However the bigger question is whether or not this is an indicator of things to come for Boston because let’s be honest the team really did nothing with the roster to address the on the field issues from last season. The rotation is still extremely shaky and the bullpen is just downright bad.
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of this as the season progresses.
Ref: Big Lead
