By the title of the article, you
probably assumed I suggest John Farrell has no control over the clubhouse. You’re
not wrong. The latest of the “John Farrell has no control over this Red Sox
team” came yesterday afternoon when news broke that the team used an Apple
watch to relay signals from Yankee catchers to Boston players. According to the
news, club personnel used tapes to send messages to a team trainer’s apple
watch in which that trainer relayed the pitch signals to the players.
It’s a lose-lose for Farrell in this
situation. He either admits to the act, in which he gets labeled as a cheater, or says he had no idea, which paints him as having no clue what goes on in the
clubhouse. Both are bad for Farrell.
This type of behavior has been one
with Farrell for as long as he has been with the Boston Red Sox. Take a trip
down memory lane March of 2016 when reports came out that Jessica Moran
resigned from Comcast SportsNet amidst the news breaking that she had a
relationship with John Farrell. This event isn’t directly involved with how
Farrell runs the clubhouse but it sets the precedence of how others will take
to Farrell. Example: A player is messing around in the clubhouse, not doing his
job, not doing his warm-ups and what not and Farrell must and should step in and set the
player straight. Are they more willing to answer to Farrell after knowing that
Farrell cheated on his wife and is messing around with the beat reporters? It
makes it hard for anyone to want to take him seriously. It’s like the guy
telling you what the Patriots should do because he played high school football.
How are players supposed to listen to Farrell about doing the right thing when
he himself is not?
Then came the David Price incident
where Farrell completely failed at wrangling in the clubhouse. He neglected to
apologize for Price’s actions, didn’t take any responsibility for his player
and then did nothing to reprimand Price. To me, not only does this indicate
that Farrell sides with the players on the issue (which is the complete wrong
side) it reeks of Farrell not wanting to discipline players either, as if he
may be a little afraid to be tough on them. Maybe Farrell likes to run his
clubhouse as if he is one of “they boys,” as if he is one of the players.
But now comes the information that
the team was stealing signals and Farrell did, in fact, know. But yet,
Farrell did nothing about it. If you know it’s happening and you know it’s
illegal to use electronic devices in the dugout, how come Farrell does nothing
about it? It’s yet another sign that John Farrell has no control over the
clubhouse and that he likes it that way. See, Farrell does not want to
reprimand his players and personnel. He would rather let them do what they want
and stay out of it.
From a managerial perspective, it’s
no sound way to run any organization. I need to break out my sports management
degree for this one. I was taught that managers are used to hold workers accountable for
completing their work in a reasonable and timely fashion. There’s many
different theories on how to accomplish this, management by objective, leadership
as persuasion, etc. A manager’s task is to use these to accomplish the work at
hand. Basic, really. Can’t we say Farrell’s team is not accomplishing their
tasks and Farrell’s management philosophy is failing? The team is winning games
but the offense is extremely lacking. Match any projections vs production of
any Red Sox hitter and the production is consistently underwhelming to the
potential projections. Farrell isn’t holding players accountable to this lack
of meeting demands either. He likes to stay out of the disciplinary portion of
managing.
The latest news of AppleGate is just
another example of Farrell’s managing philosophy. His style is to stay out of disciplining when workers do not do their job. In return, they do what they please and disregard their manager. I'm not in the clubhouse, so I can't comment on whether players respect him or not today. But I know enough about managerial theories to say that Farrell's managerial philosophy has not historically worked. It's only a matter of time where these fissures turn into a complete earthquake.
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