Terry Francona Out As Manager of the Red Sox

After the Red Sox epic collapse, there was a lot of blame to go around. The hitter went ice-cold, the pitchers couldn't hit the strike zone with a bulldozer, there were no good arms available to pitch after injuries struck, and there were some weird managerial decisions made.

Which problem was the biggest cause? Hard to say, but probably the lack of pitching. Whose fault is that? The management, right? That's on Theo Epstein's doorstep. A few arms went down, they overspent on John Lackey and ended up with crap in the rotation.

So who takes the fall? Terry Francona. Explain to me how this works: How a manager can be a god early in the season, all of his players like him and the rotation is awful because the GM hasn't picked any good players, and yet the manager takes the hit.

This is why I prefer the management structure with teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers. They've had three coaches in 40 years: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin. If a coach has a bad year, you evaluate whether he had a bad year because of bad luck or bad coaching and go accordingly.

In this case, the Sox had a bad year because of bad GM-ing. Let's fire the manager instead! So much easier.