WEEI's Kirk Minihane opined in his piece this morning that the end may be near for Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine.
Via WEEI.com
What we have, on July 25, is a hugely underachieving team, coming off the worst collapse in baseball history, being managed by someone who isn't wanted by his general manager or many if not most of his players.
At first glance, isn't Bobby Valentine a perfect candidate to be fired?
On the surface, Minihane is right, Valentine hasn't adhered to conventional wisdom when its come to managing this team, but does that warrant a firing? I don't think so.
Managers are always easy scapegoats because it costs far less to fire them than it does the players who the fans are paying to see. The reality in this situation though is that the players have largely gone the route of the tantrum throwing six year old with the new, stricter babysitter, whining and crying that they liked the old one better and refusing to listen or do anything they're told by the new one.
Fans can opine about over-utilizing starters and line-up changes all they want, but the bottom line is that players like Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz, Josh Beckett and others never even made an effort to make this work. Maybe Valentine isn't the answer here, but he hasn't been given the opportunity to make it work because of a group of spoiled children who want their "binky" back, the one who let them walk all over him last year.