Cooking Up A Blame Pie

Is Shank going soft on the 2014 Red Sox? Where's the vitriol, or does that only apply to ownership and Larry Lucchino upper management?

NEW YORK — Before Wednesday night’s nationally televised Red Sox-Yankees game, John Farrell, manager of the last-place Red Sox, was reminded that the game would determine if he had a winning or a losing record. Despite winning a World Series in Boston in 2013, Farrell’s four-year record as a big league manager was 312 wins and 312 losses.

Smiling at the mention of his symmetrical won-lost record, Farrell asked, “Is that good, bad, or indifferent? It means maybe I don’t have any impact at all.’’

He was kidding, folks. Farrell knows he has a large impact on the fortunes of his ballclub. And like all of you, he knows that 2013 was fantastic and that 2014 is a disaster. Though it’s widely held that the affable manager of the local nine has gotten a free pass in this worst-to-first-to-worst season, Farrell is eating his share of the blame pie.

More like Shank's gently shoving it down his throat.

I get the impression that Shank's using kid gloves in this (and other Farrell) interviews as an angle to co-write another book with a former Red Sox manager when Farrell eventually steps down.