Francona: The Red Sox Years (41 page)

It was a stunning show of support, one that had not been available to Alex Rodriguez months earlier when his name was leaked. When it was over, Ortiz walked back to the clubhouse with Francona and thanked his manager for standing by his side.

“Having Tito there meant a lot to me,” said Ortiz. “I had nothing to hide, and I didn’t want people to look at me like I was hiding. Tito did what a father would do for his son.”

“I was really proud of him,” said Francona. “First of all, that’s a lot of pressure and he’s speaking in a second language. I’ve been in Venezuela, and I know the feeling of people talking at me when I have no idea what they are saying. I have respect for guys who can do that in a second language. I think that whole thing had an effect on David. People were hammering him. I think it’s where he started getting a little bit wary of people. I think he felt like he’d built up enough where he should be off limits.”

The Sox manager disputed the notion that Ramirez’s drug transgressions and Ortiz’s appearance on the list of 2003 tainted the Red Sox championships of the 21st century.

“Baseball as an industry buried its head in the sand in the early, mid ’90s, and the consequences are that now we’re fighting a fight that’s not fair for anybody,” said the manager. “I wouldn’t want to be a writer voting for the Hall of Fame. There’s no right answer, and that’s the price we’re paying for the industry burying its head in the sand. I see how hard these guys work. I think about what it’s like for a guy in Double A who wants to make it to the majors. That’s a tough one. If I’m a 22-year-old kid who just had knee surgery and I want to be a good player, would I use? I hope my answer would be no, but you want to be good so bad. . . . I’m not saying I condone it, but I understand how it happens.”

The Red Sox owner responded angrily to the Ortiz episode. In an email with a
Globe
columnist, Henry termed the episode “a deliberate attempt by someone to harm David and to harm the Red Sox. . . . David is a gentle soul. He is a prince of a man who only gets upset when he doesn’t perform. . . . If anyone in Boston’s great history of sports deserves the benefit of the doubt, David does.”

The summer of 2009 was a happy time for John Henry. Fifty-nine years old and twice divorced, Henry married 30-year-old Lynnfield native Linda Pizzuti in late June, and the couple was seen at numerous social and charity events around greater Boston. Pizzuti had a master’s degree in real estate from MIT and was LEED-accredited. With two championships in his pocket and a ballpark renovation near completion, Henry was content to let his baseball people run the Red Sox while he built a dream home in Brookline and explored new ventures for the ever-expanding Fenway Sports Group. He stayed in touch with his field manager through late-night emails, usually asking why certain decisions were made that ran contrary to the imposing database maintained by the baseball operations department.

Henry’s army of stat savants detected significant flaws with the Red Sox defense. The Sox could not stop enemy base runners. It was never much of a concern during the Francona years. Joe Kerrigan hadn’t cared about enemy base stealers when he was pitching coach under Jimy Williams, and the philosophy was unchanged during the Grady Little and Francona administrations. The Sox didn’t order their pitchers to slide-step. Making good pitches was more important than holding base runners. It led to some ugly stats. In 2009 Red Sox catchers caught only 23 of 174 base runners attempting to steal. Varitek threw out only 10 of 108 thieves.

“It was kind of an organizational joke when I got there,” said Francona. “We’d be talking about acquiring a pitcher, and Theo would say, ‘He’s got a 20–2 record, but we can’t get him because he doesn’t hold base runners.’ They were making fun of me because I cared about it, but we didn’t teach it much. It was funny until it got to a point where we couldn’t stop people at all. It’s hard to win like that. In my philosophy, if you’re a pitcher and you don’t walk people and don’t let people run, they have to beat you getting hits. But if you’re just letting them steal second and third, it’s a tough way to win. It started to get out of hand with us, and it bothered me. We steadily got a little better at it, and our pitchers paid more attention, but we were never good at it.”

The defense on the left side of the infield was equally bad, but less quantifiable. Lowell’s hip surgery had limited his mobility, and Lugo (nicknamed “Huggy Bear” by teammates) was not the player the Sox thought they were getting when they signed him to his big contract. Lugo was released in mid-July, and Francona went with a shortstop rotation of Jed Lowrie, Nick Green, and Alex Gonzalez (reacquired in August).

The GM gave his team a boost at the trading deadline when he acquired switch-hitting All-Star catcher Victor Martinez from the Cleveland Indians for righty Justin Masterson and a couple of pitching prospects. The Sox were in Baltimore on the day of the deadline, and for Francona the most difficult part of the busy day was calling young Masterson into his office to tell him he’d been traded. Masterson was only 24 years old and had pitched brilliantly in nine postseason games in 2008. He was talented, wide-eyed, homegrown, and smart. He was exactly the type of player you wanted in your organization. But he could not help the Red Sox the way Victor Martinez could help the Red Sox.

“Theo just made a trade for you,” Francona started, as the two sat in the manager’s office at Camden Yards. “We are not disappointed in you. But we have a chance to win this year, and this is what it takes. We’re sorry.”

Fighting back tears, the ever-polite Masterson nodded, said he understood, stood up, and shook his manager’s hand. Then he was off to join the Indians, and Francona would root for him to succeed in any game he pitched that did not involve the Red Sox. (After being hired as manager of the Indians late in 2012, Francona looked forward to reuniting with Masterson in 2013.)

Martinez delivered for Boston down the stretch. In 56 games he hit .336 with eight homers and 41 RBI. He also forced Francona to make some new and difficult decisions regarding the deployment of captain-catcher Jason Varitek.

In mid-September, with the Sox still chasing the Yankees but looking like a cinch for the playoffs, Francona picked up a newspaper and saw that the Houston Astros had fired manager Cecil Cooper with 13 games left in the season. Francona called Astros GM Ed Wade. Wade had fired Francona in Philadelphia in 2000, but the two were friends. Francona told Wade he should interview Mills for his managerial vacancy after the Sox completed their playoff run.

The Sox did not catch the Yankees, but they won 95 games and clinched a wild-card playoff berth for the seventh time in franchise history. It was Francona’s fifth postseason bid in six seasons. The 2009 Red Sox played .561 (56–25) baseball at home, their best season at Fenway since 1978, when Don Zimmer’s 99-win team went 59–23 at home.

Boston faced the Los Angeles Angels in the Division Series. The Sox had beaten the Angels in the first round in 2004, 2007, and 2008, dominating each time (two sweeps and a four-game set in ’08). But Boston was not built to win in 2009. It was quite the opposite. The Sox were swept out of the playoffs in three straight games.

“They did to us what we’d done to them all those times,” admitted Francona.

Angel righties John Lackey and Jared Weaver beat the Red Sox in the first two games, with Boston scoring only one run in 18 innings. Youkilis and Ortiz went 1–16 with five strikeouts. Aces Jon Lester and Josh Beckett were the Sox losing pitchers.

It was not a good time for Francona. He suffered a bout of food poisoning in Anaheim and disputed the notion that he was panicking when the Sox said they’d consider pitching Lester on three days’ rest in Game 4 if they were able to win Game 3 at home with Clay Buchholz on the mound.

The Fenway finale looked good at the start as the Sox roared to a 5–1 lead through five innings on a splendid, crisp New England October afternoon. The Red Sox led Game 3, 6–4, in the top of the ninth with two out, nobody aboard, and the indomitable Papelbon on the mound throwing nothing but smoke. In that moment, Papelbon was working on a string of 27 consecutive scoreless innings in postseason play. The only pitcher in big league history to start a career with more scoreless frames in October was Christy Mathewson, who did it from 1905 to 1911.

“At that moment, I was thinking,
We’re going to win this series,
” said Francona.

And then it all went away. Erick Aybar singled on an 0–2 pitch. Throwing only fastballs, Papelbon walked Chone Figgins (0–12, six strikeouts in the series) on a full count. Old friend Bobby Abreu fouled off a 1–2 pitch, then banged an RBI double off the Wall. Francona ordered an intentional walk to Torii Hunter to load the bases. The next batter was Vlad Guerrero, and he ripped a first-pitch, two-run single to center to give the Angels a 7–6 lead.

Francona came out to get his closer.

“He knew I wasn’t trying to embarrass him,” said the manager. “I’m still thinking we can win the game and get him back out there for Game 4. That’s how I always felt. I always thought we could come back. But when you put yourself in a hole like that, you make a mistake and you’re going home.”

“I don’t think anything that happened in this series was completely out of the blue,” said Epstein. “We saw things that were reflected early in the season.”

There was a subtle, almost unreported front-office change in the latter part of the 2009 season. Janet Marie Smith, the popular architect-visionary who oversaw the renovation of Fenway Park, was relieved of her duties without notice or fanfare. A mother of three children, Smith commuted from her Baltimore home during her eight-year assignment in Boston and would stay at a Back Bay hotel while she performed her job at Fenway. She had an office just a few feet down the corridor from the offices of Henry, Werner, and Lucchino and held the lofty title of Senior Vice President/Planning and Development. Smith and Lucchino were the genius behind the building of Camden Yards, which opened in 1992. Camden Yards changed everything about the way ballparks were built. Smith was considered the best ballpark builder-renovator in the country, possibly a future candidate for the Hall of Fame. Her official job description in the 2009 Red Sox press guide stated, “She directs the renovation and area planning for Fenway Park.”

And then she was gone. The Sox no longer needed Smith’s services. It was curious, abrupt, and quiet. Henry and Werner never contacted Smith to thank her for her service. Only Lucchino bothered to say good-bye. Smith was hurt, but never went public with her objections. It would not be the last time a valued employee who served the Sox well was dismissed abruptly without getting a call from the owner.

CHAPTER 13

T
HEO EPSTEIN WANTED
to manage expectations for his 2010 ball club, but he knew it was almost impossible to do that in Boston. He knew that in the 21st century it was never okay for the Sox to speak of “rebuilding.” Rebuilding seasons were for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Florida Marlins. The Yankees and Red Sox were never allowed to rebuild. Fans recoiled at any suggestion that the ball club was less than championship-bound. Money and success had created the perpetual expectation. It was never okay for the Red Sox to slide backward while prospects matured. Lucchino believed in this as much as any Boston baseball fan. He was always about “winning today.” It was the way he governed the Red Sox. It was one of the many issues that constantly put him at odds with his protégé GM.

Francona never got involved in the Theo-Larry conflict, but he felt good about his place with the ball club as he looked back on 2009 and got ready for 2010. He’d already managed more Red Sox games than anyone other than Joe Cronin, he’d made the playoffs five times in six seasons, he had two World Series rings, and he had two more guaranteed years on a contract that would make him a rich man. He barely noticed when Theo started talking to the Boston writers about “the bridge.”

It was December 2009 and the Red Sox baseball brain trust was camped out at the Marriott in downtown Indianapolis for the winter meetings. The ball club was considering re-signing Jason Bay or investing in free agent Matt Holliday. The Sox were trying to trade Lowell. They wanted to tighten their infield defense and get a little younger. Francona was in the Sox suite late in the afternoon when Epstein routinely briefed Boston’s baseball reporters regarding Sox activity at the annual hardball convention.

“We talked about this a lot at the end of the year, that we’re kind of in a bridge period,” said Epstein. “We still think that if we push some of the right buttons, we can be competitive at the very highest levels for the next two years. But we don’t want to compromise too much of the future for that competitiveness during the bridge period. We don’t want to sacrifice our competitiveness during the bridge period just for the future. So we’re trying to balance both of those issues.”

Back in Boston, fans and media reacted as if Epstein was giving up on the 2010 season.

Tom Werner, on the Sox radio flagship WEEI, said, “I think he [Theo] made a very rare mistake saying that. . . . I think Theo would be the first to say it wasn’t his finest Winston Churchill moment.”

“By definition, it’s hard for owners to get it,” reasoned Epstein. “They don’t have to be on the front lines, giving a true narrative, planning for the future. It didn’t really bother me. Tom was generally supportive. That wasn’t a great demonstration of his support at the time, and it underscores the conflict between the approach we wanted to take in baseball ops and inherent tension with what the Red Sox became—the public image, the expectations, the dollars, the bigger-better-now mentality. It was a truthful moment, and I think it demonstrated how we’d gotten too big.”

“I felt badly for Theo on that one,” said Francona. “I knew exactly what he meant, and it got taken so far out of context. I completely agreed with it when he said it. It pissed me off the way that got twisted. He was saying that we’re going to find a way to win, but we didn’t want to commit money to players that weren’t worth the money. Theo was always trying to stay young, and I completely agreed. One of my biggest fears was getting old during a season.”