Red Sox manager Terry Francona joined The Big Show on Wednesday to talk about the status of his club, including the addition of Erik Bedard, an injury update on Clay Buchholz and Tuesday night’s 3-2 victory over the Indians.
To hear the interview, go to The Big Show audio on demand page.
There has been much speculation as to how well Bedard can handle the media in the national stage that is Boston. Edgar Renteria is a great example of someone who thrived with a small-market team, then floundered in Beantown, hitting just .276 with eight home runs and 70 RBIs in his lone season with the Red Sox. Francona, however, is only concerned with his newest starter’s on-field performance.
“You know it’s funny, I was looking back at some stats, trying to see where we were with him coming in. [Bedard's] numbers are almost identical this year to Buchholz’,” Francona said. “I mean identical. To the point of one guy gave up 10 home runs, one guy gave up 11. Walks per innings, it’s just about identical except Erik’s are probably a teeny bit better. Now again, his personality with the media might not be what people are looking for, so that may affect how fans view him, maybe the way the media views him.
“I don’t care if this guy goes on [the Jay] Leno [show]. We want him to get people out. We’ll handle the humor. Just go out and pitch and be on time and play the game right. And if he doesn’t want to do a ton of interviews I really don’t care.”
Following is a transcription of the interview:
Tito, in general we were talking about umpires before you came on and Steve Buckley wants to give me the unwritten rules of the baseball: what you’re supposed to do in the dugout, what you’re supposed to do at the plate. In general, I think managers are a different story. You can speak to both. As a manager, you probably know when you can approach an umpire and as a player, there was probably a time when you knew, ‘OK I can’t say anything to this guy.’
You know, the umpire thing, I think it was easier before. There are so many younger umpires now that you really don’t have a feel sometimes. Sometimes you go out there and you say something and you say, ‘Oh, I might have overstepped in a hurry.’ With the older umpires you used to be able to say a lot of stuff and get away with it. Then they’d tell you, ‘Tito, stop. OK, you either stop or you’re gone.’ Now you don’t have relationships with these guys where they trust you or you trust them so you’re kind of walking a fine line.
Jim McKean, Richie Garcia, those guys. You always knew exactly how far you could go with theoe guys?
That’s what I mean. Steve Palermo, all those guys. Randy Marsh. Randy Marsh threw me out of a game a couple years ago and then called me after the game to make sure I was OK.
So wait a minute. Why did he throw you out of the game?
He blew a call, obviously. Oh, I don’t know. It was something. I got all riled up. I’ve known Randy for so long. It’s not personal sometimes.
Sometimes it is?
Sometimes it is.
But most of the time it isn’t?
No. Sometimes I think it’s different for everybody. When I get thrown out, I guess I want to say something to hurt their feelings. That’s very mature, but you’re already thrown out so you say something. If you’re going to get fined, you might as well get your money’s worth.
It’s so damn entertaining though, to watch it. We were just talking about Earl Weaver and those guys. Tommy Lasorda, all those guys. They were trying to put on a show too. You never turned the cap around, did you?
No. Charlie Williams, when I was in Philadelphia, greatest guy in the world. Horrible umpire, greatest guy in the world. I needed to get thrown out of a game there. I had gone out to argue and I said, ‘Charlie If I leave the field without getting thrown out, these fans are going to kill me.’ And he goes, ‘I’m not throwing you out.’ And I go, ‘Charlie, you’ve got to throw me out. Don’t make me say something I don’t want to say.’ And he said, ‘Take your hat off and throw it.’ I said, ‘No, then all these fans are going to start yelling at me.’
We were talking also before you came on, was this one of those games, last night, one of the games where you kind of puffed your chest out a little bit? You had a pinch-running situation where [Jason] Varitek comes out of the game, [Jarrod] Saltalamacchia comes in, and Saltalamacchia scores the winning run. It doesn’t always work out that way. It doesn’t always work out that perfectly.
No, but for me, when you do a move like that, you don’t know [Jacoby] Ellsbury‘s going to get a hit. If Ells gets an out it doesn’t make it the wrong move for me. So it’s just kind of an easy one. Tek had eight innings under his belt catching. His legs were heavy. Salty’s not fast, but he’s faster and it gives us a better chance to win. You always run the risk of running out of players, but we’re late in the game. That was our best chance to win the game.
I saw you on the top step, watching the play intently like everybody else. What did you think of his chances as he was rounding third because I thought for a second, ‘Ah he’s not going to make it.’
I agree. I thought it was going to be bang-bang, and it was bang-bang. I thought [Tim Bogar] did a great job of waiting as long as he could. I thought Salty made a good turn and got in there. And again, it’s one of those where he could have been out, but in the ninth inning, send him.
First I want to back up to the umpiring real quick. Just one quick thing. Do you agree with my contention that if a player gets tossed from the dugout there is no wiggle room, he’s wrong? And I’m not trying to put you in a bind.
I don’t think that. I know we were kind of talking about that before. Like last night with [Kevin Youkilis], sometimes guys get thrown out. You say something and umpires here it and they have no choice but to throw you out. I also think that there are certain umpires who probably hear from than they should. So I think it’s probably different every time. Sometimes there’s pent-up stuff or things that have carried over and a guy’s had enough. And he hears something, and he’s not even sure who said it, but somebody’s going. And there are other nights, like last night where he and Youk were going back and forth. At some point youk was going to get thrown out.
I’ve been on vacation this week and haven’t had a chance to weight into [Erik] Bedard journalistically, but the big theme, you addressed it yesterday, was can he play in Boston? Can he deal with the pennant race and fans and all that? And Theo [Epstein] is fond of saying, I’ve heard him say it a zillion times, ‘We try to gauge whether or not a player can play in Boston.’ Yet, when I see that and I hear that and I read that, I see guys, they talk about J.D. Drew doesn’t have the right mentality for Boston. He shoes no emotions, but Adrian Gonzalez shows no emotions. Bill Mueller showed no emotions and he won a batting title here. So how do you gage that?
First of all, I don’t think we make our trades based on whether Gerry Callahan approves of our trades. I mean that would be a bad way to do things.
Good to see you’re reading the paper.
Somebody showed it to me. But I mean, I think you understand my point. You know it’s funny, I was looking back at some stats, trying to see where we were with him coming in. His numbers are almost identical this year to Buchholz’s. I mean identical. To the point of one guy gave up 10 home runs, one guy gave up 11. Walks per innings, it’s just about identical except Erik’s are probably a teeny bit better. Now again, his personality with the media might not be what people are looking for, so that may affect how fans view him, maybe the way the media views him. I don’t care if this guy goes on [the Jay] Leno [show]. We want him to get people out. We’ll handle the humor. Just go out and pitch and be on time and play the game right. And if he doesn’t want to do a ton of interviews I really don’t care.
Now you mentioned Buchholz and how Bedard and Buchholz, there numbers are pretty similar. How about Buchholz? I saw there was a statement yesterday from you that it may be a little bit premature to say he’s out for the season. What is his status as of right now?
Right now he’s down. He’s resting. He’s doing some exercises. He’s got to get some rest. He can do some exercising. There’s like a five-step plateaued development program and he’s got to pass these milestones. As he continues to progress, he’ll enter into a throwing program. But again, not until he’s ready to do that. I don’t think the season’s been ruled out. Now that doesn’t mean he’s going to pitch either. This thing’s got to heal. He’s already showing signs of healing, which I think is good. Everything we said the other day or yesterday was pretty accurate. We were excited the other day when he threw. And then he came back the next day and he wasn’t recovering as quickly as we thought he should. So we went and got him checked again, and I’m glad we did.
Were the Red Sox behind his seeing a number of specialists or is that his call to make?
No that was our call. We knew what was going on. They had that stress reaction so we wanted him to see actually three specialists. And we were told by every single one of them that this is an old injury. Treat the symptoms. He’s not going to hurt himself. So that’s how we went about it and that’s how Clay knew about it. He knew about everything. And he was coming along pretty well. Again. after he didn’t respond the next day after throwing we got a little concerned. We got it checked again and that’s when we realized there was the potential of a stress fracture. So we sent him out to [Dr. Robert] Watkins, he confirmed it. So now we’re going to throw down a little bit.
Tito, when I saw that there was wiggle room that you might be able to get Buchholz back this season, the first thing I thought about was rehab starts. And I don’t know what the Pawtucket and Portland playoff situations are, but if they don’t go deep into their playoffs or don’t make the playoffs, would you be able to replicate game situations in Fort Myers if there were no games being place in AA or AAA?
That’s a good question. That’s always kind of a tricky area. Pawtucket’s I think a game out of first place right now, so they’re actually getting ready to play in the playoffs. The other thing is I’m getting way ahead of myself. He doesn’t absolutely have to come back as a starter. Getting guys back at starter innings are difficult, especially what you’re talking about. But again, I’m getting way ahead of myself. We haven’t ruled out him pitching at some point in our season probably depends on how far we go too.
Well let me rephrase the question. Have you in your long career as a manager, coach and player had a situation where you’d been able to get a player up to speed without rehab. In other words by sending him down, having him face kids in, bringing together whatever kids you can?
I need to think that through. I believe we have done some. We brought some guys here last year from the Brockton Rox. There’s ways to do it. We’ve had certain situations where we haven’t sent guys down. David Wells. There was no reason to send him on a rehab start. He was going to throw strikes Let’s pitch him. But, there’s ways to do that. It’s probably not perfect, but we can figure it out. We sent players down to the instructional league before the World Series, trying to get them some at-bats. Instead of having them go with us, go there and actually get some work done.
Since you got way ahead of yourself, I’m going to get way ahead of myself too. With Buchholz, I feel like if the guy is talented, it doesn’t make sense to me not to pitch him if he’s ready to pitch, even if he’s a little rusty.
You got way ahead of yourself. You’re talking about maybe pitching a clinching game of a playoff, and that’s his first game back and you don’t know what you’re getting, that’s not fair to him. That’s not fair to anybody. If we got ourselves into a situation like that where we had to do that, we’re probably not doing something right.
Did you put any stock in Daniel Bard’s scoreless inning streak? Did it mean anything to you?
Well I got asked about it just about every day so I was aware of it. I just think that those types of things happen with good players. Whether it’s hitting streaks with [Dustin Pedroia] or the scoreless streak with Bard. He’s one of the better relief pitchers in the league and he was on a nice run. The fact that he gave up a couple of runs, he could have done that at any time. There were a few other instances where he had bases loaded and he pitched out of it. Sometimes you need to get a bit of a break or get lucky or have a ball hit right at somebody. This instance, he didn’t get a breaking ball down enough, gave up the home run. OK, the streak’s over, now go back on another one. He’s one of the better pitchers in the league and that’s part of the reason our bullpen’s so good, because we can pitch him in all those innings where the game’s on the line.
If you looked at the replay it was clear it was a home run.
Whether the ball is a home run or not, we’re looking at second and third with nobody out, so we’re in a little bit of a bind.
I look at this Indians team and I didn’t see their success coming at all and I still don’t see it. What did you see?
Well I don’t think we did. Remember when we went there at the beginning of the season and they swept us and everybody was so down on us and then Cleveland went on for about a six-week period where they beat everybody? They’re playing with confidence, they had a lot of young guys and as guys get confidence, especially young guys, they’re playing with a lot of passion, attention to detail. Then they went through a period where it caught up with them a little bit. They have such good starting pitching and they have guys in their bullpen that are really good. They stay in games. There’s some years when there’s always a team when they might not have a big run differential — San Diego last year — but they’re winning close games. Every team has a year when you have six or seven walk-offs. That’s been Cleveland this year. That doesn’t always happen.
I want to go back to Bedard for a second. Somebody said that there were players in the club house who said of all the pitchers mentioned in the trade talks, the players had the most respect for him. Do you ever go to a player and say, “This is who we’re thinking about acquiring”?
I probably have. I think Theo has too, for different reasons. There’s so much media now that there’s so much inaccuracy. I heard that Bedard was the fallback and it was the 11th hour thing. I know it got done late but I think [Epstein] has a great way of being able to keep his hand in everything. You read where some things fell through or some things got shot down, but he always keeps his hand going. And the one thing I was really happy about is I heard some of the players that were in these deals, and I wasn’t really happy about it because we have some good minor league players, and our guys have done a terrific job of bringing these kids up, they help us win. I didn’t want to lose them.
Are you looking at the back of the rotation at this point or are you just trying to get guys on four-days rest?
It’s so different trying to get to the playoffs and then once you’re in the playoffs. The playoffs, you can ride a one and two a lot more than you could before with days off. Things are so based on television and travel when you don’t need five starters. Sometimes you don’t even need four. But getting to the playoffs can be a little tricky. We’re in a tough division, the Wild Card comes into play. We’ve had our moments here. We’ve had some really good starts, we’ve had some that are a little bit inconsistent and we’ve had to go more than five for sure.
Any curveballs tonight? Any switches to the lineup at all?
I don’t think so, we’ve got a pretty normal lineup. [Jarrod Saltalamacchia]‘s catching, [Josh] Reddick‘s back in right. The one thing we’re going to do the next couple of days is have [Mike] Aviles play around in the outfield a little bit because we want to get him some time out there, because if he can do that it gives us a little bit different look because it almost adds an extra position player because he can play the infield.
What factors do you think have contributed to Saltalamacchia’s improvement this year?
First of all, [Saltalamacchia] is a really hard worker. I think the player always deserves the most credit. I hope it doesn’t get overlooked though, the [Red Sox bullpen coach] Gary Tuck factor. That guy is relentless with these guys. They believe in him, they trust him, he’s out there every day. I hope that doesn’t get overlooked, that’s why I’m saying it. He’s great with these catchers. He does a phenomenal job. Not just in Spring Training, but during the season. These guys continue to work every day.
I wanted to ask you about the situation between the Angels and the Tigers. Carlos Guillen hit the home run, basically skipped a little bit looking at Jered Weaver, and then Weaver threw at someone.
The next pitch was at that guy’s nostril.
In that situation, you know you’re going to be thrown out of the game, so why not just hit him in the hip and get your money’s worth?
I don’t know about that. I don’t think the league reacts so much to guys getting hit low, I really don’t. That’s a big deal. When they came through this spring to talk to us, that was one of the things they spoke to us about. If you throw behind people, if you throw up high, you’re going to get in trouble because that’s how guys get hurt. If somebody gets hit in the rear end, it hurts, but you take your base. When you throw behind somebody, your intention is to hurt him.
I thought Michael Gonzalez should have been suspended 15 games for throwing behind David Ortiz.
When you throw behind somebody, they have nowhere to go. Their first move is back and then you could hurt somebody. That’s why I thought they were doing a lot of talking and maybe I’d just kind of let it go because hitting someone in the rear end, [John] Lackey hit someone in the rear end. OK, big deal, you’re going to get a bruise. We talk to our guys about this because that’s a really fine line for managers and for me, I’m not comfortable. Guys are going to get hit, and we hit a lot of guys because we pitch in. We feel like you better pitch in or some of these strong guys that get their arms extended are going to kill you. Sometimes you have to kind of keep your house in order, that’s the way the game is. But our guys know, don’t throw high because that’s not good. Getting hit high is scary and I’ve seen too many balls come up-and-in lately on Pedroia, on Youkilis, and sooner or later somebody is going to get hit, and that’s scary. This spring, Bard hit [Corey] Patterson in the head. He wasn’t trying to do that, it was Spring Training, but it was still scary and it bothered me. And it bothered Bard.
I was going to ask you about Guillen.
That was one of the best I’ve ever seen. He never left the box. If I’m the next hitter, that guy’s going to have to hit me on the run because you know it’s coming.
I looked up left-handed throwing third basemen in the last 30 years, and it turns out you’re one of them.
I played against the Mets and Larry Bowa tried to bunt. How about that? And I actually had a putout and I made a couple of plays. But it was one of those situations where it was the last game of the year and a couple of guys didn’t want to play. And then when it got to a point where Jeff Reardon had a big save and he had some money riding on it, I asked Buck Rodgers to take me out because I didn’t want to boot a ball.