Red Sox to Hire Bobby Valentine as Manager

Now former ESPN Baseball Analyst Bobby Valentine has agreed to become the new Red Sox manager

God help us all. The Red Sox have agreed to hire Bobby Valentine as the new manager. Mike Lynch of WCVB-TV was the first one to report that they had reached a verbal agreement. ESPN's Karl Ravech reported earlier last night that Gene Lamont was out of the running for the position.

This team is either completely screwed or they have just made the best decision ever. There's really no happy medium with Valentine. Either things go perfectly and better than anyone could ever expect, or all goes to hell and Valentine ends up fired.

Valentine is one of the best analysts in the business, I have to admit that. He's got a great baseball mind and is one of the smartest guys ever to manage an MLB team. Hell, in case you didn't hear him a few months ago, he answered the question of why Crawford was doing so poorly. He basically said that Crawford's stance is too open and that he needs to get rid of that stance. He is truly brilliant, but his problem is that he can be a loose cannon and it's pretty much his way or the highway.

Now, the bad side. And when I say bad, I mean atrocious. His career winning percentage is .510. That's horribly mediocre. In 15 seasons as an MLB manager, he made the playoffs twice, won the World Series once (those god damn '86 Mets), and never finished higher than second place in the division. He then went to Japan, where he managed the same team on two seperate occassions and was fired from the same team on two seperate occassions. That's probably one of the worst resumes I have ever seen.

The upside? If he finds out about fried chicken and beer in the clubhouse he's gonna be taking guys into his office and beating the holy living hell out of them. He'd probably even throw haymakers in front of everyone. That wouldn't surprise me one bit. Also, the upside for me and the media is he's going to be extremely entertaining, and he's going to give me a lot to talk about.

Anyways, contract negotiations are taking place today I think. Or whenever it is Valentine gets back from Japan. They'll probably settle on like a two year contract or something, but don't ask me about money 'cause I have no idea what a manager is worth salary wise.