Curt Schilling, the legendary Boston Red Sox pitcher and now baseball analyst, shared his thought on the Sox' monumental collapse that has them tied atop the AL Wild Card with the Tampa Bay Rays with two games left in the regular season, saying that the blame lies with GM Theo Epstein and not so much manager Terry Francona.
"I think more of it's on [general manager] Theo [Epstein] than on Tito, anyway," Schilling said. "I would tell you that the environment around what they're doing now, the guy managing this team is the only guy that could keep them together. I would argue that with another manager in this position right now, you'd have some in-fighting, big-time in-fighting going on given what they're going through." (via WEEI)
Schilling did say that, if the Sox can turn it around and reach the postseason, they can use it as motivation.
"They can man up, find a way, someone can do something, they win a game, they win this thing, they roll into the playoffs and say 'OK, wait a minute. We just went through it. There's nothing we can go through that's worse than what we did,'" he said. "They can use that, and Josh [Beckett] and Jon [Lester] can turn it around, but they're going to walk away with at least their heads not held down."
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