The Boston Red Sox are on a season long tear. 11-5 at home, 9 and 3 on the road, 148 runs scored (that's tied for the most in baseball) 31 home runs hits by members of their team and the list goes on. 260 hits, 73 of which wen't for either for doubles or triples, and a team batting average of .273. For the first time in this new decade, the Sox stand alone as the best team in baseball.
Yet ironically through this 20 and 8 start, the craziest thing has not been the simple flood of wins, 1 month into the season the most mind boggling thing about this Boston team has been the sheer fact that in one off season the Red Sox came, without warning out of the doldrums of the MLB, leapfrogging the entire AL and NL on their way to the number one spot in the league. Or did they. Much like the Nationals did last year, the Red Sox entered the off-season desperate for a playoff berth and even as they tore up their roster last winter, not a single analyst or team payed any attention to them. Nonetheless the clues were there for those who looked, which with the Sox now holding 3 more wins than anyone else in the league, makes the job of figuring out how the Sox can keep this string of success going a lot easier.
First an foremost perhaps the biggest key to Boston's success this year has been it's pitching but ironically after last years overhaul the pitching staff was the part of the roster that changed the least. Looking back, perhaps the only thing that has changed with this starting rotation with the exception of Ryan Dempster who really has not played all that well, has been the manager: John Farrell.
Now in his second stint with the Sox, Farrell, got his first taste of the Majors as a player. But after pitching for 9 years Farrell saw his career as a starter threatened and eventually ended by a 1994 injury to his elbow. Yet even with the crushing truth of his demotion crashing over him, Farrell quickly made the decision to opt out of the big leagues turning away from the life of sweat and dirt that comes with being a player instead trading that in for the world of numbers and scrutiny (and some getting lost on your way to the clubhouse, looking at you Terry Francona) that comes with every managerial job on the face of the earth.
For 9 years Farrell bounced around, filling various coaching jobs across the board whenever they became available. First base coach, director of player operations and many others were all titles of John Farrell at one point. Yet it was a title not listed on that list that finally put Farrell on the map, and it was in Boston that that title was achieved. From 2006 to 2007, John Farrell was the pitching coach of the Sox guiding his pitchers to a high level of success and thus reinforcing the point made earlier that his presence may be what drove guys like Lester and Buchholz the first time around and is infusing them with success this time.
It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, weather it be Jon Lester or Clay Buchholz, both pitchers benefit greatly from Farrell's presence, as, for Lester he allows on average 1 fewer run per game and for Buchholz a little over .25 fewer runs per game.
29 games into his first year of managing the Red Sox John Farrell has dominated the entire MLB leading his team through nearly every opponent the Sox have faced this season. In the blink of an eye, the Boston Red Sox went from a team that finished 24 games out of a playoff spot to one better than any other in the league and, looking across the board, one finds its difficult not to attribute this to the recent arrival of a man who in my mind is without a doubt the saving grace of Boston's beloved ball club. John Edward Farrell.
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