As Red Sox shake up coaching staff, will changes make a real difference?

June 12, 2024

As the Red Sox embark on an offseason in which they’ve vowed changes, they quietly made a few earlier this week.

The team does not plan to make an official announcement, but a team source confirmed pitching coach Dave Bush, third base/infielder coach Carlos Febles, Triple-A pitching coach Paul Abbott and Triple-A assistant hitting coach Mike Montville will not be returning for the 2024 season. The Boston Globe first reported the news.

With manager Alex Cora already assured by ownership he will be returning for the 2024 season, other changes in addition to a new head of baseball operations were bound to occur, though the team had yet to formalize any coaching decisions as of their end-of-season press conference early last week.

When asked at the press conference about someone he’d like to challenge entering 2024, Cora’s answer was telling. At the end of 2022, Cora challenged a player, Alex Verdugo, to step up his game. This time around, he took a different route.

“Us as a coaching staff,” Cora said. “We have to get better. We have to push these guys to be a lot better. It’s on us to do this in the offseason, do it in spring training and do it throughout the season next year. That’s my challenge next year. Me and the coaching staff, we have to do better.”

With that in mind, the Red Sox cut ties with a group of longtime coaches who had played a pivotal role in the success of several players, but ultimately also overseen the recent failures of the club.

Bush had been the Red Sox’s pitching coach since the 2020 season, but had served as a minor league pitching coordinator for the three previous seasons. This past year, Red Sox pitchers struggled through injuries and inconsistency and posted a 4.52 ERA, 21st in baseball. Bush also oversaw the big league development of pitchers Brayan Bello, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, Josh Winckowski and Garrett Whitlock, helping foster the organization’s homegrown pitching depth.

Febles had been a big league coach for the past six seasons, but had been with the organization for the last 17 years, serving as a manager and coach at multiple minor league affiliates while overseeing the development of Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers during his time. Yet despite continued efforts to rectify the Red Sox defense at the big league level, the 2023 team finished with a negative-51 Outs Above Average, third-worst of any team since Statcast began tracking defensive metrics in 2016. Febles was also in charge of the defense in 2018, his first season with the big league club, when they posted a plus-8 OAA, 82nd among 240 teams in that span.

Abbott spent 13 years as a pitching coach in the Red Sox minor league system at every level from short-season Single A through Triple A. He’d been the Triple-A pitching coach since 2020, working closely with every young pitcher that passed through the system. Montville, meanwhile, had served as assistant hitting coach in Worcester under hitting coach Rich Gedman since 2021.

Barring other changes or departures, game-planning coordinator Jason Varitek, hitting coach Pete Fatse, assistant hitting coaches Luis Ortiz and Ben Rosenthal, bench coach Ramon Vazquez, first base/outfielders coach Kyle Hudson, field coordinator Andy Fox and bullpen coach Kevin Walker will return.

Third-base coach Carlos Febles of the Boston Red Sox.

Carlos Febles had been with the Red Sox organization for nearly two decades. (Omar Rawlings / Getty Images)

At the press conference a week ago, Cora noted he’d just met with the coaching staff to lay out a plan for the following year.

“The tone of our conversation was: we have to find ways to improve our players,” he said. “You have to be willing to adjust what we have tried to do the last few years for them to be better. Is it batting practice? More batting machines? Trying to put our infielders in uncomfortable situations so they can be better defensively? Working on first steps? Stuff we have done the last few years with (Devers) and (Bogaerts)? There’s a lot of things we can do as a staff to be better and improve.

“I know people talk about the coaching staff, but the people that followed us the whole time, you guys saw it, we did a lot of things we don’t usually do. It didn’t work,” Cora said. “It’s not lack of trying, lack of effort, lack of knowledge. You’ve just got to keep trying to find ways to be better and it’s on us.”

Ultimately the decision came to bring in new voices to jumpstart the defensive and pitching routines. Who they bring in and how those people implement those changes to the system will be a key aspect of how spring training evolves.

But how much of a difference will coaching changes make if the players themselves largely remain the same? The infield is set with Devers and Triston Casas at the corners and Trevor Story at short. There’s potential for change at second, but also discussion of continuing with existing second-base options. The outfield could see considerable change defensively. On the pitching front, the Red Sox are desperate for a few top-notch starters, but will still have Chris Sale, Nick Pivetta, Bello, Crawford, Houck and Whitlock in the mix.

Cora knows this is all a reflection on him, too. In the final days of the regular season, he was candid with his own failings as a manager and hinted at ways in which he hoped to improve his own communication, planning and implementation entering next season.

“I have to be better. I have to improve,” said Cora, who just completed his fifth season as manager. “The vote of confidence (from ownership) is great, but what are we doing? What am I doing to put these guys in a situation to be successful? … I feel like I haven’t done my job the last two years. I have to improve in a lot of things. I’ll keep that personal, that’s for me. I’m working on it.”

The Red Sox insist they have no timetable for bringing in a new head of baseball operations, but changes are already being made with assistant general managers Eddie Romero, Raquel Ferreira and Mike Groopman leading the way along with senior vice presidents Brian O’Halloran and Ben Crockett. Striking the balance between waiting too long and falling behind without a key leader as the offseason progresses should be a concern. Interviews were expected to be underway by this week, still, some potential outside interviewees working for playoff teams are expected to interview after their teams are no longer in the hunt.

(Top photo of Whitlock and Bush: Barry Chin / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

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