PHIL PICKS
Red Sox fiasco takes heart out of Valentine
The Red Sox have done the impossible. They’ve not only diminished Bobby Valentine as a manager, they’ve taken the fight out of him, to the point where he has nothing to say.
Win or lose, I never thought Bobby V would be boring.
However, judging by his press conferences on Friday, before and after his Red Sox lost, 6-4, to the Yankees, Valentine seems to know he’s in a hopeless situation, stuck between a clubhouse full of players who don’t want to play for him and an ownership that has undermined his authority.
So here he was on Friday, a dead manager walking, but playing it straight down the middle as the media poked and prodded for signs of his former self.
He refused to play the part of the all-knowing, ever-defiant Bobby V, a role he perfected years ago. Instead he answered questions in manager-speak, a language practically foreign to him during his days in New York.
He wouldn’t take the bait when questioned about the difficulty of managing in Boston or how anyone could have done better, considering that Josh Beckett and Jon Lester essentially sabotaged the Red Sox season. But he also chose not to make the ca se, when a sked, that a big weekend against the Yankees could provide a spark.
Mostly he smiled through gritted teeth and said nothing that could be interpreted as a commentary on his job status, which has become such a hot-button topic in Boston this week that team president Larry Lucchino came out and said flatly that Valentine won’t be fired this season.
Of course, you’d have to say it’s at least as significant, and maybe more so, that Lucchino also declined to comment when asked Friday on Mike Lupica’s radio show if Valentine would be back for Year 2 of his two-year contract in 2013.
In any case, it was obvious on Friday that Valentine was well aware of the drama surrounding him, as revealed mostly by his short non-answers. Or as one of the Red Sox beat writers said after the man - ager ’s press conferences: “That’s about as terse as I’ve seen him.’’
It’s out of character for Valentine, but perhaps understandable. He surely brought some of his problems on himself, going all the way back to his controversial comments about Kevin Youkilis in April, yet it seems clear he never really had a chance. GM Ben Cherington didn’t wa nt him, and yet when Lucchino and the other Red Sox ow ners decided Va l - ent i ne wa s exactly t he no-nonsense sheriff needed to clean up the chicken-andbeer culture that emerged from last September’s collapse, they never gave him the clout he needed.
Back when Dustin Pedroia, in the wake of the Youkilis controversy, referenced Valentine by saying, “That’s not the way we do things around here,’’ someone in upper management should have put the Sox second baseman in his place and reminded him the old way embarrassed the franchise and got the player-friendly Terry Francona fired.
Had Lucchino or John Henry said as much at the time, telling Pedroia to shut up and play, the players may well have fallen in line for the new manager.
Pushing coaches on Valentine that he didn’t want was asking for trouble as well. The fact that Valentine tried to have Randy Niemann, the bullpen coach he was allowed to hire, sit in the dugout for a time to undermine pitching coach Bob McClure only added to the chaos that contributed to the players’ state of discontent.
Valentine surely didn’t help himself in some ways. Maybe he misjudged the Youkilis situation, wrongly thinking that because some players pointed at Youkilis as the whistle-blower on the chicken and beer affair, the manager could assert his authority and rally the club around him.
W hatever, it ’s Va l - ent i ne’s nature to rub at lea st some player s the wrong way with his cocksure approach to managing, but management knew that already. It’s exactly what the owners wanted, someone to tighten Francona’s loose ship that players abused last season.
Yet when players came looking to complain to them about Valentine, the owners served as enablers by meeting with them, all but sealing the manager’s fate in his own clubhouse.
Of course, it’s possible, i n the end, that none of this mattered all that much if Beckett and Lester, the Sox No. 1 and 2 starters, were going to pitch like bums this season.
Still, it’s also very possible the anti-Valentine sentiment among the players contributed in all sorts of ways to the Red Sox disappointing season. A t this point, it seems practically academic. Almost nobody around the Sox thinks Valentine will be back next season, and Bobby V is giving off a vibe that he knows it as well.
He just wouldn’t say such a thing, or much of anything else, on Friday. And for Bobby V, nothing could be more telling than that.
PHIL HUGHES’ numbers, where the Red Sox are concerned, have never been anything to boast about. Heading into Friday night’s series opener with floundering Boston, Hughes owned a 3-6 record (.333) with a 6.17 ERA and had allowed an Ollie Perez-like 40 earned runs in 581⁄ 3 career innings. T hose numbers ranked as his lowest career winning percent age versus any team, the most losses against any opponent and the second-highest ERA, besting only his 8.38 career mark vs. the Angels.
So when an early three-run Yankee lead suddenly became a one-run Red Sox lead thanks to a four-run third inning — helped by his own throwing error — Hughes could have been on his way to a third straight brutal outing. This time, however, Hughes was able to go on to pitch seven solid innings in the Yankees’ 6-4 victory at the Stadium.
“The third (inning) was tough,” Hughes said. “The guys give me a three-run lead and then I’m kicking myself for throwing the ball into center field. (But) you talk about bounce-back outings, I was just trying to bounce back after a couple of rough ones so it’s nice to get a win.”
The Yankees staked Hughes to a 3-0 lead entering the top of the third on homers by Nick Swisher, Curtis Granderson and Russell Martin. But that lead didn’t survive the third.
Mike Aviles led off with a single to center and went to third when Hughes picked up Scott Podsednik’s comebacker and fired it into center trying to start a double play. After an RBI groundout by Pedro Ciriaco knocked in Aviles, Jacoby Ellsbury walked and, one out later, the lead was gone after a three-run blast by Dustin Pedroia.
Just like that, Hughes was on the ropes for a third straight game.
“I knew (Aviles) was running on the pitch and Podsednik is quick and I was just rushing to get the double play,” Hughes said, “brought it out of my glove and I didn’t have a good grip on it and instead of just doing the smart thing and getting the out at first I fling it into center field. (Then) I just didn’t make a good pitch to Pedroia.”
But unlike his past two outings when he never got past the fifth inning, Hughes settled down and was near flawless the rest of the night. He allowed just two hits over his final four innings and set the Red Sox down in order i n both the sixth and seventh before giving way to David Robertson.
“He threw the ball real well,” Derek Jeter said. “He was outstanding. ... That’s the thing with Phil, he’s capable of shutting teams down.”
Hughes was just happy to snag his first win since Aug. 1.
“It could have been a big confidence blow losing that lead,” Hughes said. “It’s nice to bounce back after a couple of bad ones.”