Sources: Francona to manage Indians

[Chrispy]

Ken_Rosenthal
Sources: Francona to manage #Indians. Announcement likely Monday.

[Goober]

Francona lost control of the Boston clubhouse. It will be interesting to see how he handles the bad seeds in Cleveland. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the front office helps him out and gets rid of at least some of them.

[Guest]

I think Francona is actually a good players manager. The problem with the Red Sox is that you have guys who got older, already had experienced success and WS trips and also getting paid a lot of money. At that point, you've got to get a strong hand going or you will lose the players. That is what happened to Francona.

For a younger team that is hopefully hungry to win, I like his chances to succeed with them.

[NAHSTE]

Francona lost control of the Boston clubhouse.

Only if you believe planted stories from the front office's personal soundpiece, the Boston Globe.

It will be interesting to see how he handles the bad seeds in Cleveland. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the front office helps him out and gets rid of at least some of them.

Bad seeds? Are there a lot of them on the Indians? The only one I can think of is Chris Perez, and he's not really a bad seed he just sucks at baseball and public speaking. Just trade him or non-tender him, LOL.

The only other guy I can think of whom you may be referring to is Choo with the DUIs. I think Choo is really good at baseball, therefore Cleveland should keep him.

The rest of that team will be dependent on how much starting pitching they can get in there in the next few months. Kipnis, Brantley, Choo, Chisenhall etc. is not an entirely hopeless group of position players. There's hope for that to be a solid, if not outstanding, nucleus of hitters. The staff needs an overhaul though, it was set back a bit by the Ubaldo trade, and misidentifying him as a front of the rotation guy.

That's a winnable division every year, I expect both the Indians and Royals to go all in on acquiring starting pitching this offseason. Each has enough emerging young hitters to reasonably contend if either could ever find a couple decent arms.

[MVPete]

They need starting pitching, and I would hope that is the first thing they address this offseason.

[Warner2BruceTD]

read as "Francesa to manage Indians"

will build around Inge and McClouth

[Goober]

Nahste, you don't consider Ubaldo a bad seed?

[NAHSTE]

Nahste, you don't consider Ubaldo a bad seed?

As a person? I don't know enough about him or what he adds to the "clubhouse culture" there. I think he was misidentified as a good pitcher when he is decidedly less than that, and that it was a terrible transaction.

I think Cleveland should try to unload guys like him, Perez and [strikethrough]Fausto Carmona[/strikethrough] because they are bad at pitching and they need good pitchers. I don't really buy into the chemistry or "bad seed" stuff because more often than not winning cures that.

[Warner2BruceTD]

Ubaldo was not liked in the Colorado clubhouse, and has developed a rep for being a grade A asshole. On top of that, he stinks, so Cleveland should really just cut their losses at this point and rid themselves of the guy for whatever they can get.