Boston Red Sox
“I just feel like there’s so much kind of [expletive] that happened in Boston this year.”
A former Red Sox World Series winner and minor-leaguer sounded off on Boston’s leadership problems this season. Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
A pair of former MLB players who spent time in the Boston Red Sox organization offered their opinions on the state of the team in the aftermath of another frustrating season.
Anthony Rizzo and David Ross, who now work for NBC and ESPN, respectively, believe there are leadership and culture issues in Boston following the team being swept by the Yankees in the Wild Card series.
Rizzo, who was drafted by the Red Sox in 2007 and played in Boston’s minor league system until 2010, said the club’s unprecedented mid-season turnaround from the worst team in the American League to a playoff team was a temporary fix for a larger, deep-seated problem.
“I think a lot of their leadership stuff got masked because they went on that massive run,” Rizzo said on the “Ross and Rizzo Unfiltered” podcast. The Red Sox went on a 32-5 run between June 25 and Aug. 6, winning 15 consecutive games and another nine straight in that stretch.
Rizzo pointed to Boston’s decision to part ways with Alex Cora and a handful of other coaches in late April as an awkward situation, particularly for Chad Tracy. Rizzo noted that Tracy never played or managed in MLB and had to rally a group of players mid-season, many of whom were devastated by Cora and others’ abrupt exit.
“I was invested in the Red Sox this year because I got to interview Chad Tracy a few times. … Everything he was saying, I was like, ‘Man, I like this guy a lot,’” Rizzo said. “He gets thrown into an absolute [expletive] situation where they have to scramble for coaches. … His message to his guys was just like, ‘Give us a chance.’
“As a big-leaguer, you bring a minor league coach in and you’re like, ‘What the [expletive] is this?’ as a veteran. ‘You’ve got to earn your stripes up here,’ right? ‘Like we all had to.’ But he did such a good job at turning it around.”
Rizzo was a fan of how Tracy carried himself and the Red Sox this season, but he revisited several problematic moments involving players during the regular season that point to a bigger issue. He brought up Duran yelling at a fan in the Fenway Park stands in June, Contreras doing the same in August after getting booed for jogging to first base, and the bizarre moment between the two in July when Duran was upset about Contreras not trying to score on a fly ball.
Those moments — among others — were never properly addressed, Rizzo said, and are a small part of a larger lack of adequate leadership within the team.
“I just feel like there’s so much kind of [expletive] that happened in Boston this year,” Rizzo said. “They kind of just masked everything because they were winning. And now that you don’t win, this is when it all comes out under the hood.”
Rizzo and Ross looped in Sonny Gray’s comments after Game 2 about getting pulled early and Contreras’s quotes about the organization relying too heavily on analytics within their discussion about leadership issues. The pair — with Ross having won a World Series in Boston in 2013 — weren’t fans of the players publicly taking issue with Tracy’s decision-making.
“The culture stuff has to improve,” Ross said. “Maybe that’s an outsider’s perspective, because they did come together and have that turnaround. But all those comments at the end of the game kind of tell a different story.”
Last year, getting eliminated by the Yankees was brutal, but there was a sense of optimism within the Red Sox afterward. This time around, the season’s end brought forth no moral victories, and all of the team’s shortcomings are glaring.
Kaley Brown
Kaley Brown is a sports producer who covers breaking and trending news about the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox.
Get the latest Boston sports news
Receive updates on your favorite Boston teams, straight from our newsroom to your inbox.
