Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2471: The Red Sox Sackings

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Red Sox suddenly sweeping their coaching staff clean, projected contenders off to even worse starts than the Sox, MLB offense in Mexico City, a double ball-strike challenge, Kyle Harrison as the new Quinn Priester, and Kevin McGonigle out-phenoming Konnor Griffin, then Stat Blast (38:37) about Brandon Phillips and major league afterlives, teams hitting for the homer cycle in a single inning, and individual net five-homer games. Then (53:38) they talk to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier about how and why the Red Sox fired Alex Cora and Co. and whether there’s more house-cleaning to come. Audio intro: Liz Panella, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio interstitial: The Spaghettis, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to FG post on Sox firings Link to MLBTR on Sox firings Link to MLBTR on Sox hirings Link to original Cronin wiki Link to van photo Link to Four Seasons Total Landscaping Link to Whitlock quote Link to Story quote Link to player reactions round-up Link to firing timing Stat Blast Link to Sportradar firing fact Link to “Chad” wiki Link to Cora reactions story Link to Cora text Link to Cora tweet Link to fired coaches photo 1 Link to fired coaches photo 2 Link to Paine’s Sox analysis 1 Link to Paine’s Sox analysis 2 Link to playoff odds changes Link to Diamondbacks Mexico City win Link to Mexico games Link to Ben on Mexico City scoring Link to Monterrey stadium Link to Mexico City stadium Link to run-scoring comparison Link to Vancouver expansion story Link to double challenge clip Link to double challenge story Link to Refsnyder challenge story Link to Baty challenge story Link to Harrison’s five-start averages Link to FG on-pace leaders Link to Griffin’s first dinger Link to Phillips contract story Link to EW on delayed retirements Link to major league afterlives data Link to Kenny Jackelen Link to Phillips B-Ref page Link to PCL wiki Link to SIS Cameron story Link to SIS Cameron post Link to Red Sox preview pod Link to team HR leaderboard Link to team SP WAR Link to Sheehan on the Sox offense Link to Napoli photo Link to Napoli story Link to team payrolls page Link to Rosenthal on Cora Link to team payrolls page Link to listener meetup tool (PW: EW2026) Link to meetup tool Reddit post Link to sub-two-hour-marathon story  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Hello and welcome to episode 2471 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally from FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, if you're a Red Sox coach, condolences or congrats. If you're Alex Cora, he seems somewhat elated about it. But we had a mass firing, a mass layoff event on Saturday. I saw many comps to Boston massacres, Saturday night massacres, possibly in poor taste given other events from this past Saturday.

But whatever you call it, here's the tale of the tape. It was not just manager Alex Cora fired, but also most of his coaching staff. Hitting coach Peter Fatsy, assistant hitting coach Dylan Lawson, bench coach Ramon Vasskis, third base slash outfield coach Kyle Hudson, major league hitting strategist Joe Cronin. Not that Joe Cronin, different living Joe Cronin. And maybe also kind of Jason Veritech, who was the game planning and run prevention coach, who was euphemistically reassigned. But it's not entirely clear that he cares to be reassigned. So he's off the staff one way or another. AAA manager, Chad Tracy, has been promoted to take over as the interim manager,

along with another Chad. Chad Epperson. So the Red Sox are in their Chad era. maybe that will help. And this was pretty shocking coming as early as it did in the season. And so we will be devoting our interview to this topic today. And we will be welcoming back the Boston Globe's own Alex Spear, our Red Sox preview guest, to talk about what happened here and why it happened in this way and at this time. And the dust is still settling.

This is very much still a developing story. and more will come out, but we will talk to Alex about what we know and what he knows. But boy, this was the story of baseball this weekend because it's early to jettison anyone and really to jettison almost an entire coaching staff at once midseason. That very rarely happens. To have it come sort of coincidentally the day that they won a game 17 to 1. Yes. And to leave intact the coaching side of things that pertains to pitching at a time when the pitching has been quite poor, some of which is the results of injury, but a lot of which is underperformance from established guys and guys who I think we expected to be much better to be a potential side young contender. My Red Sox World Series pick is looking kind of shaky if I had to make it about.

me. I think that timing was odd. I think that Craig Breslow's communication style has been a topic of conversation on this pod and elsewhere prior to this. I'm always mindful of wanting to be fair in my assessments of these things, right? Because a lot of people are kind of awkward when they talk about stuff. And are they really being awkward or unhelpful in a way that is notable or are we just paying attention? You know, it's like the shark attack thing. Although it is part of the job not to be awkward in that way. Right. There's always a limitation there. And I do think it's worthwhile to sort of distinguish

between how does a pobo or a chief baseball officer communicate externally versus how are they regarded internally? Not that communicating externally is an unimportant part of your job. But one could imagine a scenario where maybe you do. do a less than stellar job talking to the media, but like the guys like, yeah, right? You have the guys. You have the clubhouse. That doesn't seem to be the case here. I don't know that I can recall.

It's not like every single time a manager gets released. The players are like, whoopee! Finally, he's out of here. But very obvious that the way that this was handled internally has fallen flat. that the players are displeased, that the veteran players who are a little more comfortable voicing that displeasure on the record

feel free to do so. So they're in a weird spot. And of course, Breslo remains and we talk about this with Alex, but it's his show now. One of the reasons that managers don't tend to get fired this early is because it's like super disruptive.

Yeah. The other reason, and this is speculation on my part, but one of the reasons I imagine that Pobos and chief baseball officers and GMs are reticent to jettison their managers this early in the calendar is, ain't no one to blame but you now, Craig.

You know, like, and that's not to say that this team will suddenly rebound or that it can't falter in ways that have an obvious culprit, but you're really in it now. You know, this is your show. Friend of the pod, Jake Mintz, asked about sort of whether these were

his decisions and it's clear that they were. I'm sure they weren't made alone, but it sounds like he was the impetus for the move. So you're going to sink or swim on your own, I suppose. Yes, yes. And the players were not enthused. And there were some quotes. Garrett Whitlock was one of the guys who said that they made it very clear. This is talking about Breslo who met with the players briefly and didn't take questions. They made it very clear that we get paid to play baseball and we need to just focus on playing baseball. So kind of a shut up and dribble sort of situation. And Trevor Story came out and said he was not satisfied by what he had heard and he wanted to talk to Brazil more and clear the air and get some sense of the direction of the franchise, etc.

Of course, it would help if the Red Sox players did play better, Trevor's story included. But also I do understand. And there's a lot that's kind of funny. It's partly this happening after the blowout, as you said, the blowout win. And we did a stat blast back on episode 2202 about how rare it is for managers to be fired following a win. Because usually managers get the axe after a loss. And it's not unheard of for them to get fired after a win. But at the time we did that stat blast in 2024, I think it hadn't happened since 2010. So it had been a while.

It had been a while. You can't hit me with the song if I say it that way. And I think, you know, it's uncommon. And especially coming off of a blowout win, I mean, that made it kind of unintentionally funny. And then the way that Cora responded to it, so he texted various reporters to say, I'm happy. And he tweeted happy. And then he also evidently replied all to some Red Sox organization notice email about this to say that he and his family are going to be just fine and there was a winking emoji.

I mean, is he protesting too much? I don't know. Maybe we'll talk to Alex about that. And then the group photos that all the fired coaches took with Veritec having thumbs down in the first of them. And then in the next one, because they're all just kind of a traveling road show now. They all had their thumbs up. They're almost like meming it. So that was pretty amusing. According to sport radar, Alex Cora was the first manager to get fired after winning a game by 16 plus runs since the New York Metropolitan's fired Bob Ferguson following an 18 to 2 win over the Cleveland spiders

in the second game of a doubleheader on May 30th, 1887. So, yeah, you don't tend to see that very often. And then, of course, the punchline of all of this was the Coaches for Higher LLC van. If anyone didn't see this, the van that took. van that took the fired Red Sox coaches away. The name of the van company was Coaches for Hire LLC. And when I saw Chris Cotillo tweet the photo of the van, I honestly thought that this was Photoshopped or something.

I thought it was a gag because there was no possible way that they would hire a van from Coaches for Higher LLC to take away a group of coaches for hire. that just seemed too on the nose. Not since four seasons total landscaping. Have I seen a funnier PR fiasco than coaches for higher LLC? So yeah, do you think that when Breslow broke the news to everyone, he said, we're making moves? Do you think he used the Alex Cora oft-repeated line from the Red Sox Netflix documentary

that he used for every single player that they demoted from Major League Camp in spring trading? we're making moves. We're making moves. We're making moves. And this is a, right, this is a good example of where I want to be fair, because there are only so many ways to deliver that news. And at the end of it, you're being demoted.

And so you don't feel good regardless, which doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to take care in delivering that news to players, particularly because the whole idea is that they will at some point be a better fit for the roster, mostly based on talent, sometimes just based on necessity, and be up. And so you want to have a good relationship with them. You want them to get better.

You want this to be a temporary reassignment. And there are only so many ways to say that. But also just like, why are you letting yourself be filmed saying it the same exact way every time, man? Yeah. Why couldn't Netflix have been filming this season or any other season than that mostly boring season? How many more Red Sox documentaries will we get now? Are we doomed to several more Red Sox documentaries? I mean, the answer to that seems to be.

yes, but that was probably true before this decision. Do you think that he keeps that Cora and co keep their jobs longer if the Netflix crew is around to film a second season of that documentary? I think they might, right? Because you're like, oh, we can't give this to Netflix. Jeez, Louise, you got to be able to talk like a person, you know? I think that this is an emerging theory for our time. I think that good leaders can figure out how to talk like a person to other people.

Yeah. In the chat GPT LLM era, it's probably even more important to be able to sound like a human being. Right. And I think that Breslow's tenure has been a mixed bag at this point. You know, you mentioned this. I don't want to like totally give away our interview here, but you mentioned this in our conversation with Alex. Like, you didn't hate their offseason. I didn't hate their off season. I thought that they were like there was an outfield consolidation trade that failed to materialize that would have made their roster make more. sense. Like as it was put together, it was sort of weird in its shape. But I think especially because so much of their abundance came on the pitching side, we're like, well, you know, they're going to need that at some point, right? Every team does. Every team needs pitching. Can you really have too good a staff? Let's see. Like, and, and our projections reflected the way that that staff was expected to be good. You know, they, they were right up there at the top in our, in our preseason projections. So I think that there are parts of what he has done that made a lot of

sense. They did get to the postseason last year. I thought some of the moves that they made last year were smart. I thought that the way that they reinforced their rotation this year was doubling down on a strength in a way that, you know, I like when teams do that. But I think that when you point to some of the failures of his tenure, there is sort of a thing. a common through line, which is that they are either born of poor communication or exacerbated by poor communication. I don't think that everything that went on with Devers was like the fault of Breslo. And I'm sure that if you're a Red Sox fan and you're looking at how Devers is hitting now, like maybe you're just happy to be out from under that contract. But it looked bad

at the time, in part because it just seemed like they could not get themselves on the same page with the player who was really important to the franchise. Having to move on from the majority of your major league coaching staff on, you know, April 25th is an organizational failure. That isn't to say that the team has been playing well. And I don't really have a strong, like, allegiance to Alex Cora one way or the other. I don't know. Maybe it's good that he's out of there.

But you're making an organizational failure look even worse by the way that you're communicating with your players. And so, you know, at the very least, like, this should be a developmental goal for Craig Breslo. He's setting developmental goals for the organization. That's part of his job. This is a developmental goal for him or it needs to be because, as you said, talking to people is part of your job when you're in that seat. And the way he is communicating is fanning the flames of bad situations rather than tamping them down. And that's also a failure. So, Craig. Yeah.

Yeah, I can't easily research this because I don't know if RetroSheet has like coach hiring and firing dates and coaching staffs have expanded so much in recent years. But it is rare for this many coaches to be let go at once, certainly midseason. I think basically because of the disruption that you mentioned, just it makes sense on paper, I guess. If you're going to clean house, just do it. Just have a clean break and bring in new people because you can. could imagine sometimes it seems like a half measure, you let the manager go, and then you elevate the bench coach on an interim level, and, well, how much are things actually going to change, especially if the bench coach is a buddy of the manager, which isn't always the case,

but often the coaching staff kind of comes together at the same time, and the manager has some say over his staff. And so if you just dismiss the manager, but then keep everyone else in place, well, how much is everything actually going to change? And then are people going to be sniping, about how you let the manager go because he was their buddy or something. So on that level, it almost makes sense to just do a hard reset. But I could imagine that it doesn't happen very often, if ever, like this, because it must just be hard to kind of keep the routine going. And I guess if you decide that the routine was a problem, okay, but still, you know, you have to elevate all these interim people. And Jose David Flores is now the interim bench coach and Pablo Cabrero.

is the interim first base coach slash outfield instructor. And then Jack Simon Eddy has been hired as the interim hitting assistant. And then the promotions from AAA, I mentioned the giga chad's coming. This is, by the way, this is not, they hope. This is not the big league, Chad Tracy. This is career minor leagher Chad Tracy. So don't confuse your Chad's Tracy. Don't get your Chad Tracy's confused.

Make sure that when tagging your Chad Tracy's in a piece that you You're tagging the correct. Chad Tracy, a nightmare, Ben, a new. You know what? Now I'm mad about it. Before I was just like an objective observer being like, you guys seem like you really love mess over there, but now I'm furious because you've made my job harder.

Gosh. Added Colin Hetzler to the hitting staff. So they have almost replaced all of the dismissed coaches, not quite. But still, a lot of those guys, even if they've been around the organization and AAA for years, they're still just kind of not going to know the routine and where do we go and what time. And you don't have now a lot of the AAA guys, of course, have longstanding relationships with some of the younger Red Sox players, which makes them natural people to take over whether on an interim basis or ultimately a full-time basis, permanent basis, quote-unquote, permanent. Nothing is permanent when it comes to managers and coaches clearly. But still, they just kind of don't know their way around.

And, like, you know, you have to prepare the season doesn't stop for you to regroup. So you have to have your pre-series meetings and you have to disseminate your scouting reports and all that stuff and make your lineups, right? There was some report that Chad Tracy, I think, was making his lineup on the plane, but then the front office delivered a lineup to him, which again, optics, but, you know, maybe coming in, he has a lot on his plate. So I think just that. And maybe you think it's a kick in the pants and you need that. But also there's probably some stuff that's going to be just slipping through the cracks from a preparation stand. point just because everyone's new here. And they all have to learn the ropes, too.

So that's probably why we don't see this with a team that is expecting to contend. Right. And it's supposed to be good now. So, yeah, it's unusual, but could it work? Well, we will talk to Alex about that. But I think the bones of the team still strong. So we'll see if they can come together after this or whether this just mushrooms into an even bigger deal. But we can move on to a bit of other banter.

and then we will return to the second biggest story in sports involving a New England sports teams hedgecoats slash manager. What is going on in New England? Just all the sports teams scandal-ridden year after year somehow punching above their weight in that respect. Oh, boy. Oh, boy, Ben. We just said a mouthful. So the interesting thing is that it could be worse. The Red Sox are not off to the worst start of a team this season that was expected.

to condense. I mean, you look at the changes in playoff odds. And, you know, Carlos Mendoza of the Mets, Rob Thompson, the Phillies, they have to be looking over at Corr and saying, well, better he than me, at least for now. Because, yeah, the Red Sox playoff odds are down about 26 percentage points since the preseason and their odds of winning the division have completely cratered. But the Phillies and the Mets are nine and 19 each. The Red Sox are 11 and 17 after they won on Sunday,

so they're already on the upward trajectory here. But, yeah, it's been even worse for the Phillies and the Mets. They are down 36 percentage points and 48 percentage points. Phillies and Mets, respectively. Mets got beaten by the Rockies soundly this weekend. So I guess the fact that they are both NL East teams has cushioned the blow a little bit, but not that much. because, yeah, things are pretty dire for them.

The Royals are off to a rough start. The Astros are off to a rough start. The Blue Jays have, of course, corrected a little bit, but still are not doing great. I mean, there are a lot of teams that had high expectations that have fallen far short of them thus far. I sort of jokingly remarked on Blue Sky a little while ago that I think we have to entertain the idea that every team in baseball is bad this year,

even the good ones. Yeah. I think I stand by that. You know, because some of the ones that are good or at least off to good starts, I'm a little skeptical of their ability to sustain. I think the Dodgers are pretty good. I'll go out on a limb and say, I think the Dodgers are kind of okay. Wow. Yeah, I know. It's bold.

Yeah. You're just, you know, no one, people don't talk about that enough. No. They don't talk about enough about how brave you are. Yes. Although even they have a mere half game lead over the Padres who are doing quite well themselves. Yeah. the NL West is shape enough to be a fun, a fun little time, you know, because you're right to say the Padres as we're recording only half game out.

DeBacks 15 and 12. Yeah. Only three and a half games back. You know, do I think they're going to win the division? I don't. But because they'd need at least one good reliever for that to be a possibility. But I'm trying to decide what I'm more surprised by. The fact that the Mets are 9 and 19 or that the Braves are 20 and 9.

I know that despite their injuries and they were a myriad and despite the suspension, uh, a Jericho pro for it. They still projected pretty well. Yeah. Projections vindicated thus far. Yeah. But in my mind, I was like, we're over projecting the braves, I think. And so I'm still surprised to see them 20 and 9.

But yeah, like, if you had told me on opening day that the nationals had a better record than either the Phillies or the Mets. Well, I would have assumed that it was like the day after opening day, and they had only played one game. So, yeah, there are some surprises to be had, but I don't know, getting late early. Yes, so we'll see if any of them following the Red Sox footsteps, although these days would be hard for them to wait for one of those teams to win. You might be waiting a while if you wanted to ax your guys after a win. I can't believe the Reds are 18 and 10. Yeah, how about that?

With two guys scoring. We're essentially two hitters. What if they built the whole lineup out of Ellie and Sal Stewart? That'd be a good idea. But yeah, I mean, they've kind of been a run prevention team for a while now. And you give them a couple of good hitters and a little luck and some one run wins, et cetera. Sure. And, yeah, Reds off to a far better start than the Reds socks.

And, you know, the Dodgers, they had a double challenge. There was a double, a dual challenge this weekend, which, was, I guess, not an accident, but the Cubs were playing the Dodgers and Nico Horner, who was hitting for the Cubs, and Dalton Rushing, who was catching for the Dodgers, they both tried to challenge simultaneously the same pitch. I wondered whether this would happen. I think we even got an email about, like, would a hitter challenge a ball at some point because they might want to stay at the plate and say not take an intentional walk and keep swinging away or something like that. Would anyone ever make a challenge kind of against their interests? And technically,

it doesn't go down in the books as a double challenge. But it was in the moment because it was a three-and-one pitch. It was the second inning. The Dodgers ultimately won this game six to nothing on Sunday. But it was very amusing because it was three to nothing at the time. And Justin Rebleski, who had himself a fine start, he allowed a double and then walked a couple batters. So the bases were loaded with one out, and there was a pitch, three one pitch, and they both immediately moved to challenge because rushing was anticipating that it might be called a ball, and so he would want to get that changed to a strike so that they didn't walk in a run, and Horner was thinking that it wouldn't be a ball, that it would be a strike, and so they both signaled to challenge.

And what happened ultimately, because Horner had started down the first baseline already. And so I think rushing, seeing that maybe was thinking that this would be a ball call and just didn't want to leave anything to chance. So the home plate umpire, who was Malachi Moore, he called the pitch a strike. And rushing didn't hear that evidently. And so he just challenged kind of preemptively, I guess, and just to be safe. And because it was a strike, it went down as a challenge for Horner, and he lost the appeal. And it was ruled that the pitch had caught the zone by half an inch or so. And it ended up being important because Horner struck out and then Breggman grounded out.

And Robleski and the Dodgers emerged unscathed. So Joe Davis called it the ultimate ABS strike, a double simultaneous challenge. I wish it were recorded that way. I think there's a decent case that it should be, and that if you do that, maybe you should pay a price. Maybe the umpire should have docked the Dodgers a challenge. And even though it was an accident and an instance of jumping the gun, maybe it should be ruled a double challenge. But unfortunately, it is not. But it basically was one.

Yeah, that's so wild. Yeah, we saw some momentous challenges. Your Mariners won on Sunday after pinch hitter Rob Reff Snyder stayed alive. After being, quote-unquote, struck out, he challenged. The strike call was overturned. He stayed up there. He hit a game-winning Homer. In the ninth, big win-probability swing. Good challenge. We also saw the first batter to have a bases-loaded walk changed to an inning-ending strikeout. Brett Beatty of the Mets on Sunday contributed to the Rocky sweep. So maybe there were more consequential challenges, but none more entertaining than this duel challenge

or challenge duel. We also saw sort of Red Sox adjacent. I just wanted to note for everyone that Kyle Harrison is off to a strong start for the Brewers, and I think he might be the new Quinn Priester. He might be this season's Quinn Priester, who was a Pirates prospect, who was sort of laundered through the Red Sox to the Brewers. The Red Sox had him briefly after he had failed to launch for the Pirates, and then the Brewers acquired him from the Red Sox, and he blossomed for them last season and turned into a real load-bearing support strut of their rotation and had a strong year. And I think Kyle Harrison is off to the same sort of start. Harrison, who was traded by the Giants to the Red Sox in the Devers deal and then was

flipped this past February by the Red Sox to the Brewers in the Caleb Durbin deal. And we talked a bit about Durbin's struggles at the start of this season. But Kyle Harrison, former top prospect for the Giants, he is having a very fine start. And this is actually his best stretch of five starts, I think, since the very beginning of his career. He kind of had a hot start when he came up a few years ago as a rookie. But since then, he has floundered a bit. And so this is the best that he has been, barely relative to any other stretch of starts. So maybe it's early yet.

It's a small sample. But be on the lookout for another. Did the Brewers fix a prospect who had failed to launch elsewhere? and then the Red Sox didn't have for long before trading him to the brewers. So another example, maybe. Yeah, maybe. And also relevant to our conversation because it's like, who you trading and who you keep in, you know? Indeed.

Yes. Yes. And speaking of the Padres and their success. So there was another Mexico City series. And there were a couple games played in Mexico City. and the second one was high scoring, as it seemingly always is, in Mexico City. And I just took a look at the data because it was, I think it was the Diamondbacks and the Padres were playing in Mexico City, right? And they played just a couple of games there.

Yeah, I think it was a two game set there. Yes, that's right. And the second one was kind of a classic Mexico City game, just a slug fest and a wild back-and-forth affair or the The Diamondbacks ended up winning 12 to 7. I think they scored like 11 uninsured runs or something after falling behind. The previous game was only 6 to 4, so not that abnormal. But we've seen the history of games at altitude in Mexico City. It has been high-scoring slugfest after high-scoring slugfest, as you would sort of expect.

So I just looked. Now, we have a sample of 16 major league regular season games that have been played in Mexico. And the site of those has varied. So initially they played in Monterey, and the stadium there was at high altitude, but not nearly as high as Mexico City. So the Monterey ballpark, I think, would be the second highest elevation ballpark in the majors, were it in the majors after Coorsfield, but higher than Chase Field. But it's only like, I don't know, 2,000 feet above sea levels, not super extreme. whereas Mexico City is higher than course. It's way up there.

So all of these games have been at a high elevation, but especially the Mexico City games, which are the most recent six of 16. So I just, I broke this down, 16 total games, and the average scoring in these games has been 13.4 runs, the two teams combined over that span.

So 13.4 runs. in all of the 16 Mexico games. It was 12.3 in the Monterey games, and in the Mexico City games, it's 15.3. So either way you slice it, it's been extremely high scoring, but especially high scoring in the higher ballpark, as you would expect. And this doesn't even count a couple of the... They've played some exhibition games there, too,

that were also extremely high scoring. So I wrote about this years ago at the Ringer because they had played like a 21 to 6 game. The Padres have been involved in a lot of these. I think this was Astro's Padres. So yeah, there was a 21 to 6 and there was an 11 to 1. But even disregarding the spring training exhibition games, it's been extremely high scoring. And I wrote about this because Rob Manfred had mentioned and has mentioned many times that Mexico City is a candidate for MLB expansion. And of course, he's getting serious about MLB expansion and wants to maybe have that worked out by the end of his tenure, which is coming up in a few years.

Do you think that this is viable? I mean, it makes sense as a market in a lot of respects, just in terms of distance and population and appetite for baseball and everything. But, boy, if you think that Cors is the moon, this is higher than the moon. I mean, this is, you know, this is like a couple thousand feet higher than cores and has produced correspondingly large run totals. Yeah, I think you're right that there is a lot to recommend it as a market for an expansion team. I think two things. One, I think that the environment is so extreme as to potentially be kind of problematic, you know, bad enough to be a visiting team, having to go there, but like, we can't crack, we haven't cracked Coors yet.

And we're going to. Yeah. Yeah. The Mexico City ballpark hangover would be. Oh, my gosh. And I will also say that I think that there are expansion markets within the lower 48 or Montreal. Or Vancouver. One of my favorite cities interested in mounting a bit. The Mariners aren't going to let that happen. But there's no way that they'll allow their territory to be encroached upon like that. But, I would make the Blue Jays games at Safe or T-Mobile. Never in my life will I get that right. Interesting because it's like, well, you just pop over to Vancouver. Are you satisfied with that?

Anyway, I think that there are cities in the U.S. and Canada that are less logistically complicated for that reason that are good sites for potential expansion, which doesn't mean that there can't be or shouldn't be a team in Mexico. I just wonder if Mexico City is the right place to put it. Now I appreciate the appeal of it from a population perspective. And like that is a huge metropolitan area with a huge economic engine and can support a franchise. But it does seem like it poses a real problem.

Like the way that the ball plays there just does pose a real problem. And I don't know if you want to embrace that potential thorniness when a, other cities also present an attractive expansion opportunity and you wouldn't be playing on the moon. Or maybe you should just, we could sell a team to Elon Musk and then we can play on bars. Quite a lot of travel. Yeah, that won't present any difficulties with gravity and lack of atmosphere, etc. But yeah, I mean, even if you rig up a humidor as they have everywhere these days, It's hard even because of the, I wrote about this back in the day, I'll link to this piece, but it would be hard even because of the humidity or lack thereof.

Like a humidor wouldn't help that much. It wouldn't have because the relative humidity during the summer months in Mexico City is higher than 50%. And so if you set the humidor at 50% relative humidity, then it has an effect on the ball. But if that's just the environment, that wouldn't work so well. So you couldn't just kind of keep cranking up the humidor I determined after talking to various people to correct for that. So, yeah, that would be like you'd make the ball too heavy. It would have to be like sopping wet, basically, not to fly there. So and then, yeah, there's the endurance issues and all the rest and the pitch movement and everything.

So, yeah, the numbers, though, like, so they've been playing these regular season games in Mexico since 1996. And I could have done a more rigorous version of this where I looked at the specific seasons and the specific teams and everything. I didn't. But I think it gives us a ballpark, so to speak, estimate. In MLB from 96 to present, the average run scoring both teams combined per game is 9.2 runs. In course field games, it's 11.8 runs. but in the Mexico games I cited earlier, in the Monterey ones, it's 12.3, so higher than cores. And in the Mexico City ones, it's 15.3 for an overall average of 13.4. And of course,

the Coors scoring has been depressed somewhat by the fact that the Rockies haven't had good hitters for a lot of that time. But even so, without correcting for which teams made the trip to Mexico, it's, yeah, it holds up as you would model it. The actual results have shown that, yeah, it would, even cores would pale in comparison to this sort of altitude. So it's a real stumbling block. Or if you want to juice offense and you want to get those batting averages up and everything, well, maybe that's one recourse. Just put a team in Mexico City. That'll help.

Yeah. And again, like, I don't want to discount the notion that there's a lot about baseball there that would be really appealing. But I do think that, you know, it's a non-trivial environmental consideration and one that would give me a lot of pause, especially when there are other places that have like a real interest in having a major league team that don't have quite so extreme and environmental consideration to deal with. Yeah. Also, you know how one of your bold preseason predictions was about, well, no, I know you

forget them instantly. But you did have one about Connor Griffin. Yes, I did. I remember that one. It's going great. It's going great that he would, what, match or surpass Mike Trout's rookie 10.1 war. Yeah, that was truly bold. He did hit his first home run on his 20th birthday, so congrats Connor. But he is still at zero war on the season, which I suppose means he is on pace for zero war. So it turns out maybe you should have made that prediction about Kevin McGonagall. I maybe should have. Yeah, because he's actually on pace for 8.4 war. He's not very far off the trout pace.

And Trout himself, the current model, is on pace for seven war. So that's exciting. But also, yeah, Kevin McGonagall, the number two prospect, but the one who started on the big league roster and has just hit the ground sprinting. I mean, he's been fantastic, as we talked about the other day. But yeah, on pace for an 11 homer, 8.4 war season. So that's fun. Bobby Whit Jr., by the way, is on pace for an 8.4 war season with six homers.

I don't think he will end up with both of those numbers. He might end up with the 8.4 war, but probably not with the six homers. But he has hit one, which is funny because it's like, let's bring in the fences. And then Bobby Whit Jr. has one home run, not working out so well for him. But he's still been good. Anyway, Kevin McGonigal, it turns out, was the guy that we all should have been, not that people weren't hyped about Kevin Mcgonical. I mean, he had a fantastic spring training and was one of the best prospects in baseball. But yeah, he's the one who has made it look easy thus far.

Yeah, he sure, sure, sure, looks like he belongs. And I will give you one quick little stat blast here prompted by some news this weekend. And the three are a minus or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interest he did but discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to dance. So did you see that Brandon Phillips signed a one-day contract to retire as a red? I did not see that. Well, you might not have expected that that would happen because you probably expected that

Brandon Phillips did retire already, given that he has not been in the big league since 2018. And, you know, we talked about the phenomenon, the tradition of players, quote-unquote, retiring long after everyone assumed that they had retired. Like, they just announced, I'm retired now and we all thought, weren't you already? But okay. But we talked about the tradition of the one-day contract. I think this was prompted by Nelson Cruz signing a one-day contract with the Mariners to retire as a mariner. So we talked about this on episode 2145 in March of 2024 when that happened.

And then we talked about the history of that happening. And we had some follow-ups about the longest gaps between actually playing and ostensibly not being retired and then actually retiring. So Brandon Phillips has not been in the big leagues since 2018. However, what some people might have missed is that he did continue to play professional baseball. He went to Indy Ball and he played for four more seasons after that. So he played into his 40s and played through the 2022 season. And he played in the Pacific Association even as well as the Atlantic League and elsewhere.

So Pacific Association legend Brandon Phillips. So that makes it maybe a. bit more understandable why he felt he had to declare his retirement because he had been more recently an active professional athlete than some people knew, I guess. And also there were people, he was inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame along with Lou Panella and Reggie Sanders and Aaron Herang Reds Hall of Famer this weekend. So I guess that was part of it. Anyway, whatever. I have no problem with players going back to get honored by their team. and their fan bases and take a last bow with that franchise.

Yeah, sure. Fine. However, I was curious about whether this happens as often as it used to, not the one-day contract part. I wish that we could stab last that, but that's a little tougher. But players who had a long run in the big leagues playing on after their big league careers ended. How long is the typical major league afterlife?

and how many major leaguers even have an afterlife, not the Iowa cornfield kind, and not becoming an archaeologist like Brad Lidge, but continuing to play baseball at a high level elsewhere. Because I know that this was kind of commonplace in the early days of baseball and professional baseball, because back then, while there weren't that many major league teams and the distinction between major leagues and other levels wasn't always that clear, plus you didn't make enough money to retire young. Right. So you had to keep doing something else.

And a lot of people, they had non-baseball jobs, but also some people, they kept playing baseball if they could. And so there are tons of stories of long-lasting big leaguers who then went on to just keep hanging on in the minors, or they just went to the Pacific Coast League or something. Because back in those days, before there were big league teams on the West Coast, the Pacific Coast League was almost kind of a quasi-executive. major league. I mean, it wasn't defined as such, but it had aspirations to be a big league. And it was pretty darn professional. And they played even more games per season because of the weather. And there

was a lot of support. And you had like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio would start in the Pacific Coast League before they'd become big leaguers. And then other guys, they might just go on to have a long lucrative career there. And maybe it was closer to their homes or something. And so they might actually prefer to play in the PCL in those days. then in the big leagues. But my sense was it was much more common. By necessity, players just had to keep playing baseball. They couldn't just call it quits and hang it up. So I asked Kenny Jacqueline at baseball reference if he could run the numbers for me because they have, I think, the most comprehensive public database of minor leagues and indie leagues and international leagues and

everything else. So I asked him if he could figure out. So I asked him to look by decade. So careers ending by decade from the 1900s through the 2010s. It's a little too early to run the numbers for the 2020s yet. But among players with 10 or more MLB seasons and not really MLB, but all major leagues, and then broken down by the decade in which their career ended, what percentage of them went on to play at least one additional season in some other league or less? level. So it has to be a whole new season, not just like they got demoted from the majors to the minors that year and they played on. No, it has to be playing beyond their final major league season in another league at another level. Any qualifying pro league, though I did specify to exclude winter ball just because, you know, that's still pro baseball and everything. But it's just a shorter commitment. And, you know, it's more common for guys to keep playing winter ball in their home country or whatever it is. So it largely the data kind of matched my expectations,

which is that this has gotten a lot less common. It is less common for guys to do what Brandon Phillips did because Brandon Phillips had a 17-year major league career and made something like a hundred million bucks in salaries and decided that he hadn't had enough. And I commend that. I kind of like it when a, you know, Dallas Kichel or someone just keeps bouncing around. and they'll go overseas and they'll play in the minors. And it's like, it doesn't matter if you had a long or distinguished career. They just, you know, it's for love of the game at that point. So I kind of romanticize it myself.

Then I guess there's the non-romanticized version, which is the guys who basically get blackballed from the big leagues and want to keep playing. You know, there's the Trevor Bauer kind of case or the Robinson Canoe case or the Henry Mejia, you know, not that he had as long a major league career. but if MLB teams won't have you anymore because of whatever it is. You know, you were suspended for various things multiple times, your persona non-grata, and then you keep finding places to let you play. So that's one way that this does still happen sometimes, but I think the Brandon Phillips route is rarer.

So the numbers, basically there was a change, I guess, like going into the 60s or so. So careers that ended in the 1900s. of the 94 guys who had had 10 year or longer major league careers at that point, 74 of them went on to play an additional non-MLB post-MLB season. So 78.7% of guys whose big league careers ended in the 1900s after a decade or more went on to play. That's a lot. So more than three quarters of them, they weren't done when they were done as big leaguers. In the 1910s, it fell to 60.8% still high.

The 1920s, it rebounded to 77.4. And I think there are a lot of factors that could affect this. Like, are there other rival leagues that they could go to and what was the pay like, etc.? 1930s, it fell to 52.5%, but still more than half of the retiring long-tenured major leaguers would go on to play elsewhere professionally. 1940s, 47.7%, 1950s, 50.3%. So basically, there was like a step change after the 20s into the 30s, and then after the 50s, it was hanging around like half of Big Leaguers would soldier on for a few decades. And then from the 50s to the 60s, steep drop off in the 60s, 25.5%. So a quarter of them would go on.

And basically, it's been there ever since. It has hardly. budged the 60s, 25.5%, 70s, 26%, 80s, 25.5%, 90s, 27.6%, 20s 30.8%, and 2010's 28.7%. So Brandon Phillips would be one of those. And it's actually about a quarter of guys, which is honestly more than I would have guessed, I think. But yeah, about a quarter of big leaguers who don't need the money, presumably at that point in most cases and have already had 10 years in the bigs, they don't hang it up. They decide to go on. So 143 of the 499 who retired, well, didn't retire, but were done as big leaguers in the 2010s continued to play. So that's, that's kind of interesting. And I also asked Kenny to break it down in terms of the average number of post-MLB seasons.

So in the 1900s, it was 2.9. was the average number of post-MLB seasons that these guys played. In the 2010s, it was 0.49. So in that sense, Brandon Phillips is unusual. And even Kenny also broke it down the average of all players and then the average of the ones who did play on. How long did they last? So in the 1900s, it was 3.8 additional seasons

among the guys who played on, which is basically what Brandon Phillips did. he did four more years. But in the 2010s, even among the guys who did play on, the average was 1.7 additional seasons. So he doubled that and played longer and at lower levels probably than a lot of guys would have been interested in doing. And another thing that I speculated about when I messaged Kenny and he confirmed, I think one reason why it hasn't declined even more, even though most long-lasting,

big leaguers probably don't need to play, financially speaking, is that there are more options now, or at least more high-level remunerative professional options, because they're just more international leagues and maybe also fewer minor leagues or fewer affiliates. And so Kenny sent me a table that breaks down where all the guys played by decade. And he says, more recently, there has definitely been a shift away from the minor leagues toward independent leagues and overseas. So now you can go to the Mexican League, you can go to Indyball domestically,

you can go to Japan, you can go to Korea, you can go to Taiwan, you can go other. I mean, other he broke down, that includes Cuba, Italy, Australia. There's a lot, right? So there are many options where you can still make pretty good money and it's still high-level competition

and it's a professional outfit. So I guess that has probably bolstered the numbers somewhat in that it's a more appealing proposition, even if you don't need the money quite as much. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so as I suspected, Brandon Phillips was indeed an outlier, but we have the numbers and the rates and everything, and I will share the information that Kenny shared with me. And just quickly, I will dispense with another question we got about this weekend from Patreon supporter James, who noted that in the Red Sox Orioles game, this was on Saturday. The Red Sox hit a grand slam, a three-run homer, and a two-run homer all in the same

inning. This was, of course, the famous last game of Alex Cora. Just before they laid off all the hitting guys, they almost hit for the home run cycle in a single inning. They just needed a solo homer to complete the one-inning home run cycle. And James wondered if any team has ever hit, a home run cycle in the same inning, and Michael Mountain confirmed that no, this never has happened. There are 115 instances on record of teams hitting four or more homers in an inning dating back to 1930, and all of them involved repeating an RBI count. Getting three out of four happens a few times this season, most recently September 2nd, 2025 by the Guardians at Fenway, and they actually lost that game, 11 to 7, which is a tough break.

And then another home run related question from Sam, Patreon supporter, who said I was thinking about Joe Adele's three homer robbery game and how much cooler it was than having a three homer game as a hitter. And Sam said, that got me thinking. I assume that home run robbery data is quite limited, but has anyone ever had the elusive five homer game, so to speak, by hitting three homers and robbing two, or I suppose any combination greater than four total homers? And I put this to Mark Simon at Sports Info Solutions, and he knew the answer.

No one has hit more than two homers in a game in which they had a home run robbery since 2004. But SIS, or then maybe BIS, kept partial track in 2002. So they have 34 home run robberies on record from that season covering May to August, but they didn't keep track in 2003. And so that's why they always cite the numbers since 2004. But they do have partial data for 2002. And in the game in which Mike Cameron hit four homers. he caught a potential grand slam against Maglio Ordonez right at the top of the fence,

and there was a newspaper account that called it a home run robbery, and Mark Simon had Mike Cameron on his Sports Info Solutions podcast, and Cameron confirmed that they got it right. It was going to be a home run, according to Cameron, at least. He said he didn't have to jump much for it because he had long arms, but he's convinced it was going to be a home run, and who are we to doubt Mike Cameron, as Mark said? So it did happen, at least that one time, I guess.

He hit four and he robbed one. So it's a net five homer game, I guess, for Mike Cameron. All right, then. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And we'll be back with Alex Spear of the Boston Globe to talk more about the Red Sox conflagration. How are you? I'm okay.

We got so much to do today. Break it balls and blaking snails And those stats won't blast themselves Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild Well two months ago today

We previewed the Boston Red Sox season And I think we may have omitted the part Where they laid off almost their entire coaching staff While it was still April And so So to rectify that oversight, we have brought back our Red Sox preview guest in one of our faves, Alex Speer, of the Boston Globe, to address why he did not predict that this would happen. Alex, how could you fail to foresee this? I'm terrible at predictions.

I've told you guys this for years, right? Like, I used to, you know, you know what I used to do with the little predictions, with my half-hearted efforts to predict what the Red Soxie. Sox record would be, and now I fully acknowledge the limitations of my ability to see into the future. I apologize for not having been one of the many writers who looked ahead one month into the season and envisioned the Red Sox amidst one of their worst starts in franchise history and amidst a wrecking ball with their coaching staff. Well, you did famously nail their wind total prediction a couple times back when we forced our preview guest to predict things, but I would have said you were silly if you had predicted

that this would happen when and how it did. Now, I know that you were on vacation when this bloodletting occurred, so that must have been interesting for you. But now that you have gotten back to work and gotten back up to speed, what can you tell us about why this happened in this particular way and at this particular time? I mean, I guess that like desperation seems like a reasonably good explanation for things. It's really interesting because I talked to Craig Breslo after the Red Sox had had a rough start to the season. This was back 12 games into the season. They'd gotten off to a two and eight start, which was tied for the worst in franchise history. They'd won the next two games. So they were four and eight at the time. And at that time,

I asked him, when a team gets off to a poor start that defies your projections, do you consider a shake-up to be a viable catalytic option. And his response at that time, this was about two and a half weeks ago was no, nothing has changed about how we view the coaching staff that got us to the postseason last year. And I think that oftentimes the decisions that you make, based on those emotions in the early stages of the season, have a chance to be, have a pretty good chance to be counterproductive and make things worse. That's a lot that's changed in two and a half. half weeks, right? Particularly when you consider that those two wins that the Red Sox had just had when I had that conversation with Breslow represented the start of a kind of improved stretch of

six and three baseball that took them into about 10 days ago, right? So you're probably not thinking at that time that there's going, you're probably thinking that maybe the temperature check has gone down a little bit over the course of that subsequent stretch of baseball. And then bang, you have essentially a really bad conclusion to a homestand in which the Red Sox lost a number of games to both the Tigers and to the Yankees while getting shut down by pitchers like Terrick Scoobal and Framberaldez and Cam Schlittler. Yeah, a bunch of scrubs there, really, if you can't get against those guys. Yeah, yeah, really.

That's usually the litmus test of a hitting staff of a group of hitting coaches. But it seems like this decision came together rather rapid. and the explanation by Craig Bresla was that we have 135 games now by making the decision now to turn things around and get things right. Kind of with a somewhat implied, like offer a different voice in the room, but without going into any real specifics. But, you know, I guess that the Red Sox had just seen, you know, were presumably concerned about the direction, about the lack of adjustments, their lineup that they were making individual. collectively, in the micro, in the macro, and decided that extreme change was the most logical response. But it defies what Craig Breslow said a couple of weeks ago, and it defies the way in which the Red Sox, who have really shied away from in-season coaching staff, never mind managerial

changes over the last 20-plus years. Like, this is very atypical behavior for the organization. Well, and as you're noting, not just voice in the room, but voices. in the room, right? The job of a manager is sometimes to get fired as a way of indicating that the organization knows they have a problem and is doing something. But I'm struck not only by how many people were fired here, the bench coach, the third base and outfield coach, the hitting coach, the assistant hitting coach, the major league hitting strategist. Jason Veritech got reassigned if he'll take a reassignment. Joe Cronin died 40 years ago and he got fired. But not only did they remove all of those folks. I'm also struck by who remains, right, that the

pitching coaches and coordinators have been left in place. So what can you tell us about the sort of further down the line coaching firings and why the guys who are left are the ones who are left? Yeah, it's a fascinating one because you could very easily make the case that the pitching has been has been the greater, has been subject to greater underperformance in this early part of the season. than the hitting, right? Because the Red Sox had declared themselves to be a pitching and defense team, and their starting rotation has been abysmal in no small part because Garrett-Curche has had a couple of derailment outings, and Ranher Suarez ended up, like, having a couple of derailment outings. Brian Beow has had a couple of awful outings. Yeah, the pitching in many respects has been

the group that has underperformed more significantly. Craig Breslo said that his confidence was very high, in the pitching group to be able to make corrections with the pitchers who are struggling thus far. So evidently, he did not feel the same way about the hitting group, which raises the question of, why did you sign Pete Fatsy to a two-year extension this past off season? If your trust in his ability to work with the hitters was going to be this thin. And, you know, there are surely a lot of behind-the-scenes dynamics that exist within a moment like this, right, especially because the Red Sox have a very young hitting group, which, by the way, means probably more volatile in terms of performance, right?

Like the idea of projecting Roman Anthony entering year two, projecting Marcelo Meyer in year two, is more difficult than it is to project someone with Wilson Contreras's track record. But at any rate, you can certainly imagine, and again, this is just speculation not yet reporting, that there are scenarios in which they wanted to have clarity of messaging along maybe one line of offensive philosophy as opposed to another. It is interesting that the hitting coaches that were gone were, you know, Pete Fatsy, who had predated Craig Bresol's tenure in the Red Sox organization, as well as, as well as Dylan Lawson, who was, who had come on board during Kian Bloom's tenure, staying as John Soderoplas, who had been hired out of drive line

during Haim Bloom's tenure, but who was appointed to the Major League coaching staff just this past off season in a, that was a Craig Breslow front office move. John Soderopoulos, again, is someone who cut his teeth at drive line. He's very highly regarded as an instructor. Yeah, you had the guys without the significant drive-line backgrounds were the ones who ended up leaving. And so you now have John Soteropoulos, Colin Hetzler, who was promoted from AAA. Lai Worcester is also someone who had previously worked to drive-line. So maybe there is a desire for more clarity, philosophical clarity about messaging when it comes to training,

especially the young players who are going to be an essential part of the Red Sox success, both in the near and long-term future. You can certainly imagine a scenario, and again, this is speculative, in which there was a lot of conversation about adaptive approaches to hitting versus having versus leaning harder into, you know, some of the drive-lines more overarching philosophical principles, although I do think that the idea of drive-line as a kind of like monolithic philosophy is exaggerated greatly. You guys are both well familiar with some of the nuance that goes into the driveline instruction. But I can imagine a scenario in which that was part of the rationale when it came to kind of like messaging and alignment and all that good stuff.

But nonetheless, it's the hitter. mostly people in the hitting group who took the fall. Yeah, I thought Andrew Bailey was just the designated survivor or something just to ensure the continuity of the coaching staff. But it's true, the starting pitching 27th in Fancraft's War and was projected to be best, I believe, coming into the system. So, yeah, that's a pretty dramatic underperformance. But so has the hitting been and maybe in a more dismaying way. Josian wrote about this in his newsletter last week. But it's been a breakdown in approach.

And there was the concern which we talked to you on the preview pod about, and you gave credence to the idea that there wasn't enough power or home run power on this team. And they are tied for last in the majors in homers with the Brewers and the Giants, and that's in Fenway. So that has happened. Although I just want to jump in on one quick disclaimer. That has happened in Fenway. Fenway is a hellacious place to try to hit for power in April. Like it's a brutal offensive environment at this stage of the season. warm there.

The ball doesn't quite have as much carry as it will in June, July, August. Yeah. But the swing decisions seem to have regressed and just the approach and lifting balls in the air, even if the balls aren't carrying that well.

They aren't even really putting themselves in a position to hit for power. And then you look at the young guys that this foundation, supposed to be the foundation of the franchise, Anthony and Meyer and Christian Campbell, of course. I mean, these guys are not in as good a place as they were a year ago. And so that may be portends something ominous for the direction of the franchise.

So I guess that's why you might say we need to step in to our message isn't resonating or we need a new message or whatever it is. So it's not that huge a sample, obviously. And yeah, I think all the questions that you raise about why now it's as opposed to, you know, it's tough to clean house after you make the playoffs. So I guess even if there were concerns, you kind of have to let it ride and go into the season. It's projected to be good. And then maybe do you think this is kind of these weren't Breslow's guys and he inherited them. And every chief baseball officer likes to have their own people in place. And so maybe he was waiting for a moment when it would be politically defensible to do this.

It's really, really tough to say because he had extended. every one of them. Including Alex Cora, who in his first year as the chief baseball officer, he gave a three-year extension to cover the 25 through 27 seasons and was prepared to give a five-year extension to. Cora at the time was like, I don't know if I want five years. I have family stuff like, you know, that I want to be able to, I want to be flexible in my family, in my family's feature. So let's just do through. Cool. They find that, you know, they find that middle ground. Multiple members of the coaching staff who were just fired had signed multi-year extension.

this off-season. So those were Craig Breslo decisions. So it is bizarre timing to make that decision one month into the season and to decide that you're going to engage in that kind of wholesale change. Unless you're concerned about a rapidly deteriorating development environment, right? Like you're trying to win, of course, but you're also trying to create an atmosphere in which young players feel comfortable in both failure in order to get to success eventually, right?

And I do think that the essential nature of figuring out a productive player or development environment for a roster that is very young, in which Anthony and Meyer and Caleb Durbin are all in their first full big league seasons, right? That's a pretty tricky thing. And it usually requires young hitters taking some lumps. Like you think back to, let's say, Gunner Henderson, having gotten a September call-up looked really good, then being a bad hitter, but a really good defender for his first, you know, two to three months of his first full big league season, and then becoming kind of

a perennial all-star slash MVP candidate. Like, there's an arc there. And on the one hand, I think that that argues in favor of giving time to everyone, including members of the coaching staff, to figure out, like, you know, to help them find their footing, right? Like, I don't think that it's a fair expectation to think that if Roman Anthony and Marcella Meyer are struggling in April with certain aspects, then it's a reflection on the coaching staff that might be a reflection of their youth rather than the coaching staff. On the other hand, it is essential to figure out the environment in which, you know, making sure you have the environment in which you think that these players who are still developing in an environment and in a clubhouse and on a

roster where experienced veterans are scarce. Like, you really have to think hard and strategically about how you're supporting the young players. Maybe that played into it. Again, it's kind of all speculative at this point, but you just kind of go into, you just think through what the logic can be. But then there's also just the extreme of, like, they decided that a shakeup was in order because they are, in their eyes, the team is massively underperforming their

projections. And so, you know, their hope is that, is that rather than drifting through, they might not have another week or two of media, of bad baseball to drift through if they want to maintain their playoff hopes. So clearly there was a decision made that, like, the need for a catalyst was immediate and urgent in a way that's very atypical, right? Like, the fact that they flew up in the middle of a series, in the middle of a road trip, without benefit of an off day to make this decision, to make, you know, this Saturday night, you know, wrecking ball to the coaching staff. Like, that's, that's wild stuff and suggests a level of urgency that borders on panic. Well, we should talk about the roster as it's constructed, I suppose,

because as you're noting, more will certainly come out about sort of the developmental aspect of this, you know, what was sort of the tipping point for Breslo and company. But Craig Bresla built this roster, right? You know, you talk about the development of Caleb Durbin. There's a reason that Caleb Durbin is their starter at that position. And some of it has to do with the vagaries of free agency and some of it has to do with decisions that Breslo made in the off season, right? So I'm curious sort of what you think this shakeup means for Breslo's future in the organization. because if things don't get better, well, he's the only guy left, apart from most of the pitching coaches. But, you know, in terms of like key decision makers, he sure shifted the focus to it being his club now, right? You know, what do you think this means about sort of his long-term viability with the organization? It is a great question in an organization where in an organization that hasn't had particularly long shelf lives. for the heads of baseball operations, right? Like, it's now well established.

Ben Charington, Dave Dombrovsky, Chaim Bloom all ended up being dismissed in the middle of season number four. Breslo is in the middle of season number three. There's not a lot of time to waste, particularly when you consider he hasn't won a World Series, which a couple of his predecessors had. And even Haim Bloom had gotten to an ALCS with the 2021 team.

So in answer to your question, of what is Breslo's long-term future in the organization? I guess that the rest of the season is going to tell us an awful lot about that. Sure. Because this is his organization now. There are a lot of people who had been in the organization for a long time across multiple general managers, and that's his players, that's his coaches, front office members, scouts, etc., who are no longer in the organization.

The organization has been significantly remade, you know, according to the vision of Craig Breslo, since he became the chief baseball officer in November of 2023. I think he recognizes that. I mean, when he was hired, he was well aware of the track record of his predecessors and the longevity of them or the lack thereof. So eyes wide open there. And again, this is, you know, we're kind of engaged in the speculative act of thinking about what a person's motivations are.

But perhaps that did kind of introduce a level of urgency in terms of thinking, well, you know, if I want, you know, I have this, this long-term vision for the organization, and I better get there pretty quickly. The short-term and long-term better intersect pretty quickly because there's not a lot of time to be able to have the organization in the image and form that I wanted. What do you think about how this was received by the players? Because it doesn't seem to have gone over great, you know? Sometimes when a coach's staff is like, oh, a manager's like,

like, oh, you know, rarely will a player come out and say, oh, good riddance, glad we got rid of him. But you can kind of tell whether they're happy or not. And in this case, it seems like most of the ire has been reserved for Breslo or for management ownership. And so the way that they came in and evidently talked briefly and mostly Breslo, although Kennedy and Henry were there sort of silently looming, I guess, for the most part. But Breslo, they didn't really take questions from the players. and the players seemed somewhat miffed about that, and Trevor Story had some comments about how he doesn't understand the direction of the organization.

And then the whole Coaches for Hire LLC depocke with the van, which, I mean, someone should probably be fired just for that, I think, just get in the van with everyone else. Yeah, call an Uber. Call an Uber, man. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the allegation that Breslow lacks feel, perhaps, has dogged him throughout his tenure. So what do you think of the way the players have responded to this? And also, Cora and the coaches, who seem to be just traveling across the country, taking buddy travel road movie photos of themselves with their thumbs up and Cora just talking about how happy he is, is that sort of a don't put in the newspaper, I Got Mad?

or is it like he's actually happy to be out of here? Yeah, it's all very bizarre, right? It's kind of playing out, you know, seeing the joyful pictures of like, you know, being treated like kings in the north end of Boston. Like, I'm reminded of like watching the photos, like seeing the social media pictures of like Mike Napoli smoking a cigarette and shirtless through different parts of Boston

after the Red Sox won the World Series in 2013. If you don't know what I'm referring to, look it up, kids. But it's been super bizarre. I do think that that speaks to Craig Breslo and Sam Kennedy described in their press conference this idea that, like, once they made the decision that this is what they felt they needed to do, they wanted to be bold and decisive and do it immediately. You know, there's a part of everyone seeing how that landed in the clubhouse, particularly given that hasty, I think Garrett Whitlock, said that Breslow talked for about two minutes and that Chad Tracy, the interim manager, who by the way is super bright, very talented,

and I think has a great future. I'm honestly surprised he hadn't been hired to be part of a major league staff before this year. But, you know, he talked for five minutes, and that was it, no Q&A. And I think that that raises the question of, like, why did you do that in the middle of a series rather than on an off day

when you would have had an opportunity for a less hurried interaction with your players. It doesn't seem, it does not seem like the handling of this was terribly graceful in terms of how it's being received by other parts of the organization. Yeah, I think that your point is, your point is a fair one, right? Like, there have been, there have been questions throughout Craig Breslau's tenure as the chief baseball officer of the Red Sox about the, you know, the kind of operating dynamic that people are working in. And I think that the way in which this news was received is doing nothing

to downplay that. I'm curious sort of, and again, we're sort of in the realm of speculation here. And I know that the story made a point of saying that, you know, they weren't going to hold what had happened against the folks coming in that he has familiarity with Chad Tracy as to several other members of the big league roster. But what kind of dynamic has the front office? that up for Tracy because, I mean, I know they won on Sunday, so I guess that's good, right? But you're in sort of an odd spot when it comes to trying to have a positive developmental trajectory with these guys when the last one was so unceremoniously dismissed and in a way the clubhouse isn't thrilled about.

Yeah, I think that the thing that benefits Chad Tracy is that he already has, because he's been the AAA manager since 2022, he has pretty solid relationships. pretty solid foundation with the vast majority of players on this roster. Many of them had excellent developmental tracks with Chad Tracy as their manager in AAA. And as well as Chad Epperson, who's their AA manager, who also got moved up to being their interim third base coach. He also got promoted to the big league staff as a kind of familiar and reassuring presence. So I actually do think that it's possible for the two things to be separate. right? Like there are, I do think that the players have a lot of trust in the people who are now on the staff who have been in their minor league system for a while. The interesting dynamic is going to come with regards to the hitting group, which the players on the active roster do not have as much familiarity with necessarily. At the top, there's Chad Tracy, Chad Epperson, and Jose Flores, who is already the Red Sox first base coach, who is now going to be,

their interim bench coach, but he had also been the AAA bench coach with Chad Tracy from 2022 to 2024. It's possible that they can have an atmosphere that's not a train wreck, as we've sometimes seen, you know, early season replacements with internal candidates, whether it was a guy like a Brian Snicker who had a lot of trust from people in the Braves organization, or Rob Thompson who had a lot of trust from people in the Phillies organization at the time that he replaced Joe Gerrari in May of 2022. You can get past it, but it ain't easy. So I think that Chad Tracy was good about being upfront and acknowledging the fact that it's a challenging circumstance to step into because he had a great relationship with Alex Cora as well. As soon as this news broke, people were

alluding to the history of people in Boston, just getting trashed on their way out of town, which is maybe not solely a Boston tradition. You hear that about the Mets a lot too, but I think there was an anticipation that, oh, boy, the dirt that's going to come out and it's going to be flying on both sides and maybe the coaches are going to be telling their side of the story and the front office is going to be telling its side of the story.

So we've been couching everything we've been saying in terms of, well, more might come out and we don't know exactly what everyone is thinking. As a long-time member of the Boston media, do you expect that there is going to be a lot of slinging of various stories and inside accounts and anonymous denigrating of other people's performance? Well, I don't know about anonymous denigrating of other people's performance. So let me pick apart a couple of different elements of that. First is, anytime someone is fired in a prominent position, usually there is a postmortem

that takes an awfully hard look at whatever. at like the decision-making factors that go into that. And, you know, that often means that you, that you end up flagging the things that were going that, that had been identified as going wrong to lead to a firing of someone, right? Like, that's, that's true in every market. And I think that there just tends to be, you know, because there's more media in Boston than there are in some other markets, although the disparity is a bit, is not as exaggerated as it once was, you know, there tend to be more people who are kind of chasing information and identify it, right? But, yeah, I think that there's always a post-mortem with anyone losing a job unless they decide that they're just, you know, going to walk off into the sunset.

Beyond that, do I expect there to be, to be mud flinging? No, I would think that with time, we'll be able to get to some of the key areas that Craig Breslow and and his kind of like narrow inner circle of decision makers, you know, alongside the top level of Red Sox ownership felt needed to be addressed. We'll probably get a little bit more in terms of the, you know, what prompted the decision and why they felt so much urgency. But I don't know that it becomes ad hominem stuff. I mean, you know, thinking back to the histories,

to the history of regime changes that I have covered when John Farrell was, when John, when they, quote, unquote, parted ways with John Farrell after the 2017 season. By the way, like, that dude, like, managed three first place teams in a five-year period in what a World Series and, like, has never sniffed another job in uniform and baseball. But, and is now happy as a lobster man. But I mean that literally. That's not a euphemism. He is a lobster man off the coast of Massachusetts.

But when he got let go, there wasn't, you know, there wasn't a lot of, there was, wasn't a lot of mud slinging. And in fact, it was only a couple years after his departure that I was able on earth kind of the significant and complete fraying of his relationship with Dave Dumbrowski that had played a significant role in the player development environment and making it a hard one for the Red Sox in 2017. It wasn't until 2019 that I was able to publish that. I don't think that the history of this history of mudslinging is quite as extensive as sometimes portrayed, but it is the case that usually firings aren't exactly happy events. And so there does tend to be some effort on the side of either those who are doing the firing

or those who are fired to give more illumination as to why they think it was a good or a bad decision. And that can take a number of forms. And I expect that we'll find more. I expect that we'll be introduced to more information in the coming days. What is your sense, and I'm sorry to keep asking, questions that you do have to speculate on. But you noted that there's sort of, in addition to it, not having been very much of the season, although a notable stretch because it's the only one we have so far, this is a roster with a lot of young hitters who might have developmental work yet to do, whose performance might be more prone to fluctuation and variance as they continue to adjust to the big league level, given that that is operating in the background here. And then you also have

just the reality of wins and losses, how do you imagine they are going to, as an organization, sort of assess the success of these moves? Because you might imagine that a team with this much underlying talent might just start winning anyway, independent of any sort of personnel decisions made on the coaching staff. Simply winning, it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, this group is, say, worthy of having interim tags removed and what have you. Them continuing to lose might speak to continued developmental needs, but it might not say anything about this staff. So how do you think they're going to assess, like, oh, we've done the right thing here.

We've sort of right at the ship. It's a great question. And one that I think it's sort of the, you'll know when you see it, maybe. I do think that they are a kind of like KPI, like, you know, business, you know, business world-speak-driven organization that does believe in identifying progress based on, you know, identify areas that need to be improved and on an individual level and then seeing if those areas improve. And if they are largely improving, then, you know, then off they go. And if not, then maybe it's not the, then maybe you determine it's not the right group. But I do think that ultimately a lot of this is going to be, that Craig Breslo said this yesterday. Ultimately, it's wins and losses.

And, you know, he said that he said that the expectations for this group remain unadjusted from where they were entering the season when they had described this as being a team that they viewed as being projecting as a playoff contending world series aspirin. So I do think that both in terms of Breslo's decision-making and in terms of the work being done with the group, if they're winning and if they're showing improvement, and I'm talking about top-line improvement, in addition to more micro-stuff related to individual players' chase rates or the degree to which X player is improving his discipline, you know, swing decisions on breaking balls, or why player is improving his in-game base running decisions. I think that all of that will end up being taken into account,

but at the highest level, it's all about improvement in seeing a lot of it in a pretty short period of time. And I guess really the only constant in this Red Sox era, I mean, going back decades at this point is just incredible variation from year to year and unpredictability. It's just, Neil Payne has written about this, has shown just very two teams, if any, have just had as variable results from season to season as the Red Sox.

And often it's when you think they're up, that's when they're down and vice versa. It's like they just go from last place to winning a World Series to the last place again. And you just never know. And I thought that they had a solid offseason. And I thought that they were a good team and that this would be a good exciting season for them. So they have confounded, defied expectations yet again. So do you think this is just pure randomness or is this sort of a there's something rotten in the state of the Red Sox kind of situation? Because I know a lot of Red Sox fans have that thought that, oh, John Henry isn't invested in the team the way he used to be, both figuratively and literally.

And the payroll is not top 10. And that's where they always were very close to the top. And maybe it's just, you know, Fenway Sports Group is interested in other holdings and franchises. And so maybe the problem starts at the top. But do you think that there's something to that that the wrong people were let go or that there's some sort of pervasive issue here? Because it just seems like fans feel that way going back to the Mookie trade and all of the other exodus. To what you said, the variation from kind of prevasion. projections as long predates questions about the about how much they were willing to spend, right?

So that's true. You know, I do think that there's going to be, you know, part of this is the fact that they were putting a lot on the shoulders of very young players. And they have been for a couple of years. Like they went essentially through a rebuild under Highen Bloom. While last year they thought they had come to the other side of that rebuild, they viewed themselves as being on the other side of it with very young players who are vulnerable to performance volatility. I do think that just in my experience of being around the Red Sox,

I do think that the big league development environment in Boston can be very challenging in ways that it isn't necessarily in some other markets where there is perhaps more permissiveness for failure or for at least struggle in that transition. period to the big leagues. Yeah, I think that young players take it very, very hard when they're struggling in Boston in ways that they can swallow them. You know, I've witnessed this before in 2014 when that front office group under Ben Charrington and Mike Hazen was really very introspective throughout that year and kind of reached the conclusion that they had done a disservice to their entire roster by not putting more veteran scaffolding around their young players

and what they had asked the young players to do was pretty unfair. I do wonder whether or not we're seeing maybe Alex Bregman was the Jenga piece that knocked over the tower. It was striking to me to be around the WBC at the end when Roman Anthony was talking very explicitly about like how much he, like how yes, of course he wished that Alex Bregman had been back with the Red Sox that this year and how amazing it was that, like, he had been able to talk about a swing with Bregman again while they were at the WBC together, but that now that's not what it happens. So now they had to move forward. And I was like, wow, I didn't expect quite that much candor about the kind of, you know, the ache that the void would leave. So there might be some of that where the performance volatility that goes into building around a young group is made even greater by the expectations and pressures of.

of a market like Boston, particularly one with a self-declared expectation of competing for championships. But, you know, that might also be BS. But, you know, it is the case that there have been feedback loops in other seasons that have led the Red Sox further and further away from projections. Bobby Valentine, having been one of those feedback loops, things get weird in Boston quickly when things start going badly. So perhaps the Red Sox were willing this time,

maybe mindful of that history, they were willing to do something that they hadn't been willing to do in the past, which is make an extreme course correction as opposed to in the past when they just thought that it was dangerous to introduce another variable to young players who were already dealing with so many of them. And lastly, I think Ken Rosenthal suggested that Alex Cora might not be out of work long, that as soon as there's another vacancy that maybe the Philadelphia, for instance, who are struggling to an even greater degree than the Red Sox.

Maybe he could just waltz in and take over there. Is your sense of Cora's reputation around the game that he will be much in demand next time there's a vacancy? Yeah, I would think that a lot of people will be reaching out to Alex Cora if they have openings. Yeah, I think that he still has a very strong reputation, particularly for a win- club. I do think that it's fair to wonder, like, you know, to step back and look broadly at Cora's track record as a developer, right? And to wonder, like, is he a good developmental manager or is he really good for more veteran players where you have more clarity about what

their strengths and weaknesses are? Yeah, I think that if there's a Win Now organization, he will enjoy a lot of consideration from those teams because he's won. And not a lot of people can say that. Well, Alex Speer is not a stiff. He is the furthest thing from it. And we're always happy to have him on the podcast. Nice to have you on, not on a preview pod. I mean, not nice maybe for the Red Sox, but nice that we had the opportunity to chat between previews at least. And now that you're back at work, we look forward to your output. Yeah, well, I'm very grateful for that, but, like, perhaps this is our great lesson that, like, I am useless at previewing anything, and I should merely join you for ex post facto analysis of what's happened. And, yeah, I'm nonetheless delighted for the opportunity to be

able to chat with you guys as ever. We can just skip the future Red Sox previews, and we'll just have a post-mortem at the end of the season. Or a month in, as the case is. Performing reviews. Monthly Monthly performance reviews. That's become the replacement. All right. A few quick follow-ups. One email from listener West in Alabama, who responded to our discussion of J.R. Richie and the first pitch homer he allowed in his big league career last week. This was on episode 2470. West says you have probably gotten this from other Braves fans who were watching J.R. Richie's big league debut. But the Braves probably went to go get the ball because J.R.'s dad mentioned in an in-game interview on Braves vision, wanting J.R. to have the ball. as a reminder of what it takes to be a big leaguer, huge baseball coach vibes off of him. Though I guess that's not so different from what Megan I said. So maybe we were giving off huge baseball coach vibes too.

I'm never not going to think of J.R. Richard when I hear or see J.R. Richie, even though it's spelled differently. Also, I mentioned last week the pursuit of the sub two-hour marathon and how big a role shoes were playing in that. Well, as you may have seen this past weekend, a pair of distance runners, each wearing a pair of shoes, very important shoes, became the first officially to break the two-hour marathon barrier. And they were wearing the Adidas Adi Zero Adios Pro Evo 3 shoes. So the shoe race in actual races continued. And it's kind of funny because Nike sort of jumped started this shoe revolution about a decade ago with its carbon fiber running shoes, the Breaking 2 project.

And then Nike didn't even produce the shoes that helped these athletes achieve this record. But yeah, these guys came in under two hours by 30 seconds or less. So with that kind of margin, the shoes might make the difference. Also got a couple email responses to our brief discussion at the start of our preceding pod about the home run Brad Lidge allowed to Albert Pooholes in 2005. And how I think it's almost too synonymous with Lidge. It's often the first thing that people think of when they think about Brad Lidge. But the home run wasn't as costly as a lot of other playoff pantheon homers because Lidge's team, the Astros, won that series over the Cardinals. Well, listener Jay wrote in to say, you mentioned that Pooholes's 2005 playoff homer off of Lomers.

has probably gotten too much attention, given that the Astros went on to win the playoff series. Even though I am a Cardinals fan, I agree. However, I must respectfully disagree with your explanation via Michael Bauman. You slash Bauman said people remember this because people assume this happened in 2004 when the Cardinals beat the Astros in the playoffs. I'm not sure that explains it. As someone who is quite a bit older, a hymn than you or Bauman or Meg, I remember the 1975 World Series, from which it seems to me, the most common image that still persists is

the home run by Carlton Fisk. But this came in game six of that series, and the Reds went on to win it in game seven, a very similar scenario. And nobody will confuse the 1975 Carlton Fisk Red Sox with the closest championship Red Sox team, the 2004 curse-busting gang. I don't have a good theory to replace the fan confusion one. Here is the best I can do. It's the optics, which sports editors are keen to latch onto. The image of Fisk jumping his way down the line while trying to wave the ball fare is a great visual. Similarly, there is something compelling about the image of Lidge and Poo-holes, both

watching the flight of the ball, with Pujols holding his bat like a muscular lumberjack, who has just felled an oak tree with a hand saw while walking off to take down another. But then I'm a Cardinals fan, so I like that image. Yes, I do think that's part of it. That's certainly part of it with Fisks wave off the body language, and it just barely staying fair. And as I noted, Poo Holes is Homer was an absolute tank. He crushed that thing. It was a hanger, but nonetheless.

So that's part of it, but I don't think that's all of it. And listener Matt gets at something else important here. He says everything that follows is in the spirit of pedantic baseball discussion. I'd push back slightly on the theory you in Bauman proposed that the moment's iconic status depends on people misremembering the context. I think it's remembered because it was packed with drama and felt monumental in the moment. For me, and I'm sure for many others, the accurate context, including the fact that the Cardinals ultimately lost the series and Houston went to the World Series is what makes it iconic. Lidge was an exceptional closer and had dominated St. Louis for a long stretch. That night, the Astros were at home, up three to one in the NLCS, leading for

to two in the ninth of a potentially decisive game five, they were won out away from their first World Series appearance. With Lidge on the mound, Houston's victory felt almost inevitable, then Albert Pujols came to bat and crushed that slider. Even though Houston won game six, that should not diminish Pujols' feet. In the moment, that swing was electric. Pujols dramatically beat a worthy foe. To me, this is more a Pooholes moment than a Lidge moment. Lidge was an excellent pitcher, and of course later had his well-deserved World Series win. But on that night, Pooholes finally beat him in an emphatic way. To me, that is what made it so iconic. And as I wrote, and as I'll say, that's all reasonable. And I agree, to be clear, I believe it was a big moment and it should be

remembered as such. I just think it looms a tad too large in Lidges' legacy, given that it didn't cost his team the series and that overall he had excellent postseason stats. So I hate for the memory of October Brad Lidge to be tarnished by that one dinger. Hey, Mariano Rivera gave up some pretty big postseason hits too. So that's all I'm saying. It was a big day. It was a big day. singer, to be sure. I just think it has a somewhat outsized status in Lidges legacy. And Matt agreed with that much. Reminder that you can register for the effectively wild meetup tool. If you're interested in going to a game in your area with other effectively wild listeners, John Joyce, who created the site, has improved it, added some additional leagues, including summer college

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Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you a little later this week. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big math equation. You're all about these stats. We've come back. Because you listen to Effectively Wild With Ben Lindberg and McRowley

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