Lovullo

[gunnarthor]

I think most of us think the most important aspect of the next manager will be his ability to get the young guys playing well.  So I thought it would be interesting to see how well Farrell has done it as Lovullo has been Farrell's bench coach the last four years.  In those four years, Farrell's team under performed their pyth w/l record by a bit over a game a year but won the WS once.  

 

This year, Farrell's Red Sox were pretty bad.  They had a bunch of young players who did not perform.  Jackie Bradley jr is comparable to Aaron Hicks except he hit a lot worse. Bradley was universally a top 50 prospect coming into the season.  Xander Bogaerts was one of the few prospects who was rated higher than Sano coming into the year.  Despite playing in Fenway, he was basically a replacement level player and put up a .660 OPS.  His defense regressed.  Mookie Betts was their Danny Santana, although unlike Santana, Betts had been a top 100 prospect.  He played mostly IF in the minors but was put in the OF by the Red Sox.  He hit well and was on a 6 WAR pace in 50 games.

 

In 2013, Farrell had two rookies - Jose Iglesias and Bradley again.  Both had been top 100 guys but neither really shined.  Iglesias was in the Peavy trade and ended up in Detroit.  That team won the WS but  was absolutely carried by vets.  They had 12 guys with 2+ WAR and the youngest was 28.

 

His stint with the Blue Jays (11-12) didn't have many rookies but he had mixed results with some young guys.  Rasmus struggled under him but Brandon Marrow had two ok seasons, for instance.

 

So, I guess I don't really know what that suggests.  I'm not sure Lovullo has some insights to young guys that Molitor or Dougie Baseball doesn't have.  But I'm not sure it's fair to say that Bradley/Bogaerts didn't develop so Lovullo must not know what's going on either.  I don't think I'd hire him just b/c he was on the Red Sox 2013 bench either.