Tag: brian o’halloran

Red Sox offseason: Dustin Pedroia will have ‘the say in anything going forward with his career,’ GM Brian O’Halloran says

Though his future is undecided at the moment, the Red Sox have remained in contact with Dustin Pedroia over the course of the offseason, general manager Brian O’Halloran said Monday.

Pedroia, 37, has played in just nine total games since the start of the 2018 season on account of undergoing three procedures on his left knee over the last three years.

“We talk to Dustin and his agents all the time,” O’Halloran told reporters via Zoom. “I wouldn’t get into the specifics of any of those conversations, but I understand the question.”

The Sox reinstated Pedroia from the 60-man injured list and added him back to the 40-man roster in late October, but that does not mean the second baseman will be ready to play in 2021.

“Dustin’s not a healthy player right now,” O’Halloran said of Pedroia. “Anything with Dustin, first of all, we’d keep those conversations private. And Dustin’s going to have the say in anything going forward with his career.”

Entering the final year of the eight-year, $110 million contract extension he signed with Boston in 2013, Pedroia did not play at all this past season and has not been with the Sox consistently since Memorial Day 2019. At that time, the four-time All-Star decided to halt all baseball/rehab activities and return to his Arizona home to assess his future.

With all the uncertainty surrounding his status moving forward, Pedroia would seem at serious risk to lose his spot on the Red Sox’ 40-man roster, which currently sits at 39 players.

As the virtual Winter Meetings commence this week, one would thing chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is going to continue to reshuffle his team’s roster, and freeing up Pedroia’s spot could certainly help with that.

All that being said, Pedroia remains one of the more iconic figures in recent Red Sox history. The former second-round draft pick out of Arizona State has collected 1,805 career hits, a Silver Slugger Award, four Gold Glove Awards, an MVP trophy, and three World Series titles over the course of an illustrious 14-year major-league career.

Because of all those accolades and what he means to the franchise, Pedroia will certainly have plenty of influence on how his situation is handled by the team as the offseason continues.

“As a Red Sox great and someone who I have had the pleasure of knowing for many, many years now,” said O’Halloran, “we would give Dustin the respect of having input on everything that goes on with him and keep any conversations we have with him private.”

Dustin Pedroia’s Red Sox career could be nearing its conclusion

Dustin Pedroia’s time on the Red Sox’ 40-man roster could be coming to an end relatively soon.

The 37-year-old second baseman was activated from the 60-day injured list along with five others late last month, which brought Boston’s 40-man roster up to 37 players.

Clubs have until this coming Friday, November 20, to protect Rule 5-eiligible minor-leaguers from this year’s Rule 5 Draft, or in other words, add them to their 40-man roster.

As currently constructed, the Sox have three open slots on their 40-man with upwards of 50 prospects in need of Rule-5 protection. Obviously, the math does not check out here, and the majority of those 50-plus minor-leaguers will be exposed to the Rule 5 Draft come December.

There are however a select handful of Red Sox prospects who will need to be protected, as they are regarded as some of the more promising young players in the club’s minor-league pipeline.

Left-hander Jay Groome, right-hander Bryan Mata, infielder Hudson Potts, outfielder Jeisson Rosario, right-hander Connor Seabold, and catcher Connor Wong are the six key prospects in this scenario.

Groome and Mata, both of whom signed with the Red Sox in 2016, are regarded by MLB Pipeline as the top two active pitching prospects in Boston’s farm system.

The other four — Potts, Rosario, Seabold, and Wong — have all been acquired by the Sox via trade(s) within the last 12 months, so it’s highly unlikely the club would want to risk losing any of them.

There could be other, lesser-known minor-leaguers the Sox consider worthy of a 40-man roster spot, as was the case with lefty Kyle Hart last year. But, for the sake of this exercise, let’s assume that the Red Sox have six players they would like to add to the 40-man with only three vacancies to work with.

This means that, in some capacity, Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom will presumably look to reshuffle his team’s 40-man roster between now and Friday.

Players who are currently on the 40-man could either get traded, designated, or outrighted within the next five days, but those same players could also help another team if they wind up in the right situation.

There is plenty of risk involved in this process, but there is one route Bloom and Co. could take that could help mitigate that risk just a little bit. That being, take Pedroia, among others off the 40-man roster.

The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham reported last month that Pedroia and the Red Sox “are prepared to talk soon about a mutual understanding that would end his playing career.”

Though WEEI’s Rob Bradford later added on to that report by stating that “nothing” had yet to have been discussed between the two sides, a mutual agreement of some sorts here certainly makes sense from the Red Sox’ point of view.

Pedroia, a former MVP, has played in just nine total games over the last three seasons on account of issues with his left knee. He’s undergone three knee surgeries since 2017.

As he enters the final year of the eight-year, $110 million contract extension he signed with Boston back in 2013, it appears that the former second-round draft pick will be unable to play in 2021, or again, on account of how inactive he has been recently.

With that in mind, the Sox may look to reach some sort of settlement with Pedroia so that they can get out from some of the $12 million they owe him next year while also freeing up a 40-man roster spot for someone who can consistently contribute.

This is not exactly a fun scenario to consider, as Pedroia has proven to be one of the Red Sox’ undisputed leaders and all-time greats in his 15 or so years with the club, but it may be time to move on and have the four-time Gold Glover transition to a front office or coaching role within the organization, if possible.

Red Sox general manager Brian O’Halloran addressed this very issue in September, and he emphasized the notion that Pedroia will have a say in what the future holds for him as a Red Sox.

“I don’t think that any one particular roster spot is something I would focus on as a problem and certainly not when it’s Dustin Pedroia,” O’Halloran said. “We’re going to talk to Dustin and he’s obviously going to have the most say in where things go from here. No. 1 is making sure he’s as healthy as he can be for the rest of his life, really. And certainly we want to talk to him and see how he’s feeling and see where he wants to go from here.”

In short, Friday’s Rule 5 deadline will serve as a key indicator for where the Red Sox currently stand with Pedroia and the four-time All-Star’s status moving forward.

Other players are likely to get moved around, too, but Pedroia is without a doubt the most significant figure whose spot on Boston’s 40-man roster could be in jeopardy. We will have to wait and see what Bloom and Co. have in store.

Chaim Bloom felt Alex Cora was ‘right choice’ for manager in order to move Red Sox forward

Upon his hiring last October, Red Sox chief baseball officer got the chance to become familiar with Alex Cora, who he likely presumed would be his manager for the foreseeable future.

Instead, as a result of his involvement in the 2017 Astros’ illegal stealing of signs, Cora and the Red Sox mutually agreed to part ways in January.

That left Bloom with a rather sizable hole to fill at the managerial position in a relatively short period of time.

Ron Roenicke, Cora’s bench coach the previous two seasons, eventually landed the job in February, but he served as more of a stopgap as anything upon his dismissal from the club in September.

Again, Bloom was tasked with finding the Red Sox’ next manager, this time with a little more time do so and a greater number of candidates to consider.

One of those candidates, Cora, could not be interviewed until after this year’s World Series ended, so that left Bloom with about a month to contemplate who else may be qualified for the job.

“When we started the process after the season, we spent a lot of time coming up with a really good list of candidates,” Bloom said at Cora’s re-introductory press conference Tuesday. “We vetted them very thoroughly, we talked to a number of people.”

Still, even when interviewing external candidates such as Sam Fuld or James Rowson, Bloom knew he wanted to talk to Cora before arriving at any final decision.

“I knew at that time that I wanted to have some kind of conversation with Alex when it was okay to do so, which wouldn’t be until after the World Series,” he continued. “I really didn’t know then if he was, in my mind, in real consideration for the job. I just thought it would be good for me, good for him, good for the organization since we really hadn’t spoken since everything happened in January.”

So, Bloom, general manager Brian O’Halloran, and Cora talked. That dialogue, by all accounts, was initiated by Bloom, and it led to a group of Red Sox officials flying down to Puerto Rico to speak with Cora in-person at his home.

“When the time came time to speak with him, we had a lot of different things to work through,” said Bloom. “We were able to have some really intense conversations. Obviously, everything was happening quickly within the week-plus after the World Series, but we got to work through a lot of things. It was really just a question of trying to get as much information as I could to see Alex in full; everything that he had done, good and bad, and everything that he might do.”

Of course, Cora was viewed as one of, if not the favorite to return to Boston even before his suspension had ended. That was mainly due to how highly Red Sox ownership thinks of Cora, which led to speculation that the likes of John Henry, Tom Werner, and Sam Kennedy would overrule Bloom on this matter if the latter was not in on Cora.

Speculation aside, Bloom assured the masses on Tuesday that he had full backing from ownership regardless of the decision he made on this matter.

“First and foremost, it was important that they play a role,” Bloom said of Henry and Co. “They’re responsible for the entire organization. I respect that there’s a lot of different opinions out there on Alex on what he did and what that should mean for any organization that might think about employing him. And it’s obviously important, since [ownership] is responsible for the organization, for me to know how they felt. To understand that if it was something baseball operations saw fit to do, that it was something they would support.

“Obviously, if that weren’t the case, it would have obviously been a different process,” he added. “So, not only do I think that that was appropriate, I actually think it was necessary to know how they felt. They also made sure I knew that if I or baseball ops. felt differently, then that was okay, too… They were emphatic that it’s very important that this be a baseball operations decision and they would fully back whatever decision we came to.”

At the end of the day, or last Thursday to be more specific, Bloom and his team ultimately decided that Cora’s strengths, such as his ability to effectively communicate information to players, outweigh any red flags that come with the hire, such as history with the Astros.

“I felt he was the right choice to move us forward,” Bloom said of Cora. “The goal in this process for me was to find the right person to lead the Boston Red Sox.”

Cora has already shown that he can move the Red Sox in the right direction before, as evidenced by leading the club to a World Series title in 2018. The 45-year-old will now get another shot to lead a team that looks quite different from the one he initially left nine months ago.

How Cora and Bloom’s relationship continues to develop over the course of the offseason and into spring training should be interesting to monitor as well.

Former Red Sox Left-Hander Brian Johnson Opens up About Asking for Release From Team That Drafted Him

Going back to August 10, the Red Sox came into the week having gotten their 2020 season off to a disappointing 6-9 start even after a walk-off victory over the Blue Jays the day before.

Through the club’s first 15 games, Boston pitchers had posted an ERA and xFIP of 4.74, good for the third and sixth-highest marks in the American League, respectively.

Despite those early struggles, the Sox opted to give unfamiliar names a shot at the major-league level while keeping others with major-league experience down at the alternate training site in Pawtucket.

One of said pitchers who spent a good portion of his summer in Pawtucket was none other than Brian Johnson. The 29-year-old southpaw was less than two full years removed from serving as a valuable swingman who could make spot starts and pitch out of the bullpen when needed for the eventual 2018 World Series champions.

Injuries and illness derailed Johnson’s 2019 campaign, though, and with a new head of baseball operations at the helm in chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, the former top prospect was stripped of his spot on Boston’s 40-man roster and was ultimately outrighted to the minors.

Even with that demotion in his pocket as he reported to Fort Myers in February, Johnson looked solid in his spring outings and again at Summer Camp following the pandemic-induced hiatus.

Given the depleted state of the Red Sox starting rotation with Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez sidelined for different reasons, the Florida native appeared primed for a bounce-back year in 2020 while primarily operating as a back-end starter.

Alas, that possibility never came to fruition, as Johnson was not named to Boston’s Opening Day roster in late July and was instead sent off to Pawtucket.

A little over two weeks had passed since the 2020 major-league season had kicked off, and still nothing. Johnson found himself toiling away at McCoy Stadium, wondering if he was going to get another shot anytime soon with the team that had drafted him eight years ago.

When August 10 arrived, it was first reported that Johnson had left the alternate training site for an undisclosed reason, but it was later revealed and made official that he had asked for and granted his release from the Red Sox.

“Sometimes you need to go other places to have a better opportunity,” then-Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke said of Johnson at the time. “He asked for his release. Chaim did not want to keep him from an opportunity to get back to the big-leagues. Although we would like him here for depth, that’s the decision Brian wanted.”

Roenicke also cited the fact that Johnson was out of minor-league options and was off the Sox’ 40-man roster as reasons for why the southpaw had slipped down the organization’s pitching ranks.

Johnson himself recounted how things transpired over the summer, from not making the Sox’ Opening Day roster to asking for his release, when speaking with WEEI’s Rob Bradford on the most recent installment of the Bradfo Sho podcast.

“Everyone has a reason for doing things,” he said. “The Red Sox can do what’s best for the Red Sox, and Brian needs to do what’s best for Brian. They just thought going that route was better for them, which I understand. They wanted to see what they had in guys that Chaim brought over, which is totally understandable. I don’t hold any grudge or ill will. The whole process was very professional on both ends. There was no bad blood. I talked to Chaim and [Brian O’Halloran] throughout the whole process along with my agent. Everything was talked out at length and it was very professional on both sides.”

Arriving at the decision to request his release from the only organization he had ever known was no easy quest for Johnson. His path to the big-leagues was filled with adversity both on and off the field, and the Red Sox had helped him fight those battles.

“It sucks, because there have been so many ups and downs in my career with the Red Sox,” he continued. “I said this years ago, that they helped me so much in a lot of ways. So it was like I felt guilty doing it, but at what point in time do you have to do what you feel is right for you? I felt like I hit that breaking point to where I wasn’t doing what I wanted. So I made that decision.”

After not getting picked up by another club over the remainder of the 2020 season, Johnson is about to embark on something he has never experienced before: an offseason without a team to turn to, although he is receiving interest from a handful of potential suitors.

“At first I was nervous,” he said. “But now I do have teams calling to sign me for next year, so I feel more confident that that happens. Once those first few phone calls come in, you feel more confident… What we experienced this year, there’s never been anything to judge it off of, you’re learning as you go, so I was nervous.”

Whichever team winds up signing Johnson, presumably to a minor-league deal, should be something worth monitoring over the winter and into the spring.

2020 MLB Trade Deadline Will Be August 31st, per Report

With it looking increasingly likely that the 2020 Major League Baseball season will begin in late July, this season’s trading deadline would be on August 31st, according to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark.

This news comes as MLB and the players association continue to hash things out on a potential agreement for the coming season.

Per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the MLBPA  “has agreed to report to training camps by July 1 and play a 60-game season.”

The only thing holding up the finalization of this deal, as noted by Passan, is “one last health-and-safety hurdle to get over.” The hope is that this will be resolved by Tuesday night.

Regarding the newly-implemented August 31st trading deadline for this abbreviated 2020 season, clubs will have a shorter amount of time to determine whether they want to be buyers or sellers at said deadline.

If Opening Day was on July 24th,  teams would only have about 38 days make that crucial decision. And if a club were to acquire a player on an expiring contract at the deadline, they would only have control of that player for 27 days. A little less than four weeks time.

The Red Sox, under chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, have four players who are set to become free agents this winter in Jackie Bradley Jr., Kevin Pillar, Brandon Workman, and Collin McHugh.

J.D. Martinez, Mitch Moreland, and Martin Perez, meanwhile, have options for 2021.

With no baseball yet to be played this season, it’s obviously way too early to determine where the Red Sox will stand come August 31st. But, the moving back of the trading deadline, and the fact that there will even be one, is definitely noteworthy.

Red Sox Interim Manager Ron Roenicke on Not Having Any Games to Manage in Late April: ‘This Is so Strange’

In an ideal world, Red Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke would presumably be in his Boston home right about now, preparing for his team’s 26th game of the season against the Blue Jays on Wednesday night.

Instead, the coronavirus pandemic that has halted the sports world has led the baseball lifer to have no games to coach or manage at a point in time he would typically be doing so.

“I’ve been through some strikes, some lockouts, some crazy late starts in spring training, but nothing like this” Roenicke told NESN’s Tom Caron in a TV interview Tuesday. “This is so strange. I wake up every morning knowing and know I should be going to the ballpark and I’m at home. That’s just really weird.”

Roenicke was officially named interim manager by Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom on February 11th, so the 63-year-old had a little more than a month to make preparations for the 2020 campaign before Major League Baseball suspended spring training and delayed the start of the season on March 12th.

From that point, Red Sox players, coaches, and staff, for the most part, have all left the Fenway South complex in Fort Myers and returned to their respective homes.

Roenicke, a California native, still has to communicate with his players though, and that has been a lot easier to do now thanks to modern technology.

“With the players, it’s [mostly] texting and phone calls,” Roenicke told Caron. “I know Chaim and [GM Brian O’Halloran] are reaching out to some guys with some things on what’s going on. It’s a lot of text messaging. It’s hard for players also to be sitting at home during this time. Anytime we can be with them in a text or phone call, it’s helpful for them just sitting and wondering what’s going on.”

Although there is no set date for the start of the 2020 MLB season, Roenicke still believes three to four weeks is all his players need to ramp things back up.

“I don’t think we need to go longer than that,” the interim skipper said of the three to four week training period. “If MLB can give us a little bit of a heads up so guys can start getting at it more at their home or wherever they are, it certainly would help to speed this thing up.

“It’s the starting pitching, trying to get them stretched out,” said Roenicke. “If we can get those starters to start throwing some bullpens, even if they’re at home. Some up-downs. And we start up this thing, we won’t need those 3-4 weeks. It will shrink down, and if we can get them maybe three starts or something in a spring….That’s what some of the conversation we had with the commissioner, the managers trying to figure out what we can do and how we can get these starters back in shape.”

Per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, “Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke for one hour [Friday] morning with major-league managers” in which he “offered no specifics on how the season might begin.” That’s the conversation Roenicke was referencing.

Speaking of Manfred, Roenicke, like seemingly everyone else in the Red Sox organization, still does not know when the results of the league’s investigation into the 2018 team will be released.

“I don’t know,” Roenicke said. “I think there’s so many other things that I’m thinking about and just trying to think about getting the season started again. And also obviously concerned about what’s going on in the country with the jobs and with people losing their lives and the people that are sick. These things go on. Sometimes they’re easy for some people and sometimes they last for 4-6 weeks. So, hopefully we can get this controlled.”

That’s the same sort of sentiment Bloom echoed in an interview with WEEI last week, when he said, “It is obviously frustrating that we don’t have that outcome yet. But with what is going on in the last month I think it is understandable. I know the commissioner was on a timetable doing everything he could to wrap it up before the season. Sometime early to mid-March, the coronavirus took over pretty much of every ounce of everybody’s available time and energy. I think we’re still at that stage. We are hopeful at some point when everybody gets a chance to come up for air…I know the commissioner has said the investigation is complete and it’s a question of getting into the report. We’re hopeful there is time to do that so we can all see the results and move forward. I think you have to cut everyone some slack given our industry and everybody has been dealing with something we really haven’t faced before, something for which there is no road map and understandably it has dominated everyone’s attention for the last month or so.”

To watch the full interview between Caron and Roenicke, click here.

Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom, Team President Sam Kennedy Address Coronavirus Concerns That Led MLB to Delay Start of Season

Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, as well as general manager Brian O’Halloran and team president Sam Kennedy, spoke in depth Friday on where Major League Baseball is headed in the wake of the remainder of spring training being suspended and the start of the 2020 season being pushed back at least two weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak in the United States.

Earlier Friday, the league made it official that major-league players have the freedom to either remain at their club’s spring training facility, return to their club’s city, or go home themselves at their own discretion.

In a meeting between Red Sox executives, coaches, and players on Friday, Bloom and Co. echoed that same sentiment.

“We’ve just gotten word, and are getting the word out to our players, that since starting to discuss this, it’s been agreed that now our players can leave should they choose to, and go home or go wherever they need to go,” Bloom said in a conference call. “We’re trying to make sure that happens in a safe and orderly manner. We’re working on that as we speak. For players who want to stay here, we will have the facility available to them.”

The Sox have yet to gather a headcount on which players will be staying and which players will be leaving, but despite no official word from the league, they gave their minor-league players the same option as well. Although remaining in Fort Myers may be the most ideal route for them to take due to financial restrictions.

“We recognize, especially as we get into the population of minor leaguers, this may be the best option for them,” Bloom stated. “And we want to make sure that is a good option.”

Typically, the weeks leading up to April involve the movement of dozens of players, major and minor-league alike, in numerous transactions between clubs. But, with the United States now being in a state of national emergency and all, rosters may become frozen for the time being. Or in other words, no roster moves will be allowed until Major League Baseball can resume baseball activities. Nothing has been made official regarding this matter as of now, but Bloom did say that, “We are fully prepared that the next several days will include new information.”

There is also a possibility that rosters could be expanded from 26 players once the 2020 season does start to make up for less preparation time, although, according to Bloom, “There is no indication right now that anything will change.”

Because there is no definite date for a new Opening Day outside of April 9th, which is unlikely to happen, there’s a very real chance that additional spring training games will need to take place once the league resumes in order for players to up their workload once more.

“The short answer is, we don’t know,” Bloom said in regard to a later addition of spring training games. “We don’t have enough of a sense of what this will look like when we start up again.”

Regarding that point about players needing to increase their workload before the season starts, one thing that makes this outbreak-induced delay so challenging is that we simply don’t know when regular season baseball will be back.

As The Athletic’s Chad Jennings notes, “Bloom pointed out that spring training buildup is usually based upon working backward from a known point in time. Opening Day is usually on a specific date, and so players work to be ready on that exact day.

Right now, baseball has no idea when Opening Day will be, so there’s no working backward. The issue of building and sustaining is particularly tricky for pitchers as teams try to find a balance between sustaining their current status and not overworking for a start date that might be far, far down the road.”

How teams will prepare with no set Opening Day date in sight will be interesting to see, and according to Bloom, it will be “one of the tougher questions that I think every club is going to have to answer.”

Turning to some positive news, no Red Sox player has yet to test positive for coronavirus, and the club has even set up their own task force to deal with issues surrounding the virus, per Kennedy.

For the time being, JetBlue Park and the entire Fenway South complex will remain closed to the media and the public through Sunday, while all Fenway Park employees outside of stadium security have been told to work from home.

Fenway Park will also undergo a three-day cleaning starting Saturday morning where “every square inch [of the park] will be disinfected and cleaned,” Kennedy said.

In times like these, baseball takes a back seat as there are more pressing matters at hand. It may stink now, but baseball and the Red Sox will be back eventually.

 

Red Sox Officially Name Jerry Narron Bench Coach

The Red Sox have hired Jerry Narron to serve as the club’s bench coach under interim manager Ron Roenicke. The club made the move official following Saturday’s 4-3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays.

Narron, 64, had served as bench coach for the Diamondbacks under old friend Torey Lovullo for the last three seasons, but left the organization at the conclusion of the 2019 campaign after Arizona decided to promote Luis Urueta to the position.

If Narron’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he had previously been the Red Sox’ bench coach going way back to 2003, when Grady Little was at the helm in Boston.

It was a brief stint, but Narron said that he “had a great year here and enjoyed it.”

Prior to that, the North Carolina native managed the Texas Rangers from May 2001 until the conclusion of the 2002 season, where he posted a record of 134-162.

After spending the 2003 campaign with the Sox, Narron joined the Reds’ coaching staff as bench coach under then-manager Dave Miley before being named interim manager in June 2005.

That ‘interim’ tag was eventually removed, but Narron was fired by the Reds a little more than two years after his initial promotion. He went 157-179 while in charge in Cincinnati.

From there, Narron returned to the Rangers in 2008 to work as a front office consultant before being hired as the Brewers’ bench coach prior to the start of the 2011 season.

The manager who hired him at the time? Ron Roenicke.

Narron served as bench coach under Roenicke throughout his entire tenure as manager in Milwaukee and remained with the club even after Roenicke was fired midway through the 2015 season.

“He’s got a great baseball mind.” Roenicke said of Narron when speaking to reporters Saturday. “He’s a lot smarter than I am which helps me to go to him when I want to. All of that helps make things go smoother here.”

Upon being named interim manager earlier in the month, Roenicke was left without a bench coach, the role he had previously held under Alex Cora.

There was plenty of speculation that Roenicke, along with chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom and general manager Brian O’Halloran, were going to go with an internal candidate for the position. But, going with someone who is familiar with Roenicke and his style isn’t too bad, either.

“I wouldn’t do it just because [Narron’s] familiar with me,” said Roenicke. “I’d do it because he’s really good.”

Narron should also be somewhat familiar with at least one player on the Sox’ 40-man roster in J.D. Martinez, who spent the latter half of the 2017 campaign with the Diamondbacks after coming over in a July trade from the Tigers that year.

We should see Narron on the bench for the first time on Sunday afternoon, when the Red Sox take on the Orioles in Sarasota.

 

Red Sox’ Chris Sale Has Pneumonia

Red Sox ace left-hander Chris Sale has pneumonia, according to interim manager Ron Roenicke.

“He’s got the flu as you guys know,” Roenicke told reporters after the team’s first workout at JetBlue Park on Wednesday. “But it’s gone into a mild case of pneumonia. He is actually feeling really good. He’s had this for about a week and a half.”

Sale, who was absent from Wednesday’s workout, will be reevaluated on Friday, per Roenicke.

“it sounds probably worse than what it is,” the interim skipper added. “But he said last night he had a great night sleep. So he was really happy about it.”

Obviously, this is not the news you want to hear just as spring training begins. But, it does seem as if Sale will be good to go come the end of the week, which is promising.

The soon-to-be 31-year-old hurler is coming off his worst season in the majors last year after posting a 4.40 ERA over 25 starts and just 147 1/3 innings of work. He did not make a start after August 13th due to left elbow inflammation.

That inflammation was treated with a PRP injection from Dr. James Andrews that same month, and Sale was cleared to throw again in December. According to Sox general manager Brian O’Halloran, the lefty’s arm is “fully healthy.”

“We expected Chris to be ready to go,” O’Halloran said Tuesday. “He’s ill. He’s sick, so that’s going to slow him down. But other than that, he’s fine.”

The Red Sox will presumably ease Sale into things once he is healthy enough to fully report to camp.

The Florida native is entering the first year of the five-year, $145 million extension he signed with Boston last spring.

Red Sox Officially Name Ron Roenicke Interim Manager

The Red Sox have officially named Ron Roenicke as their interim manager, per the club’s official Twitter account.

According to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, the ‘interim’ tag in Roenicke’s new title could be dropped as soon as Major League Baseball completes its investigation into the 2018 Red Sox. That all depends on the results, though.

Roenicke, 63, had spent the previous two years as bench coach under Alex Cora and was viewed as one of, if not the top internal candidate for the position upon Cora’s dismissal from the post last month.

The California native was the only internal candidate interviewed by the Sox who had previous big-league managing experience, as he manned the helm for the Milwaukee Brewers from November 2010 until May 2015.

Roenicke denied any wrongdoing during his tenure as bench coach last month, saying that, “It would be concerning if something happened — that I knew I wasn’t part of — that I was brought into as part of that. I know what I do. I always try to do things the right way.”

If the ‘interim tag’ is removed from his title, Roenicke would become the 48th manager in Red Sox history. And with his promotion, the Sox find themselves without a bench coach for the time being. Perhaps Jason Varitek could fill that void.