The easy thing to do, at this point, would be for Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom to select his new manager from within the organization.
Bloom could choose from among bench coach Ron Roenicke, third base coach Carlos Febles and special assistant Jason Varitek.
Each has a list of accomplishments and selling points. Roenicke has spent his adult life in baseball, having played eight seasons in the big leagues. He was both a manager and coach in the minors, spent time as a coach with both the Angels and Dodgers and managed four full seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Febles played six seasons with the Royals and has managed through the Red Sox minor league system, with stops in Lowell, Greenville, Salem and Portland. During that time, he managed many of the players currently on the Boston roster. He's also bilingual, always a bonus.
Varitek has never managed at any level, but has worked both in Baseball Operations and as a catching instructor post-retirement. And if fan reaction at both the Boston Baseball Writers Dinner and Winter Weekend is any indication, he is the clear favorite of a sizable part of the team's fan base.
Perhaps one or more of these gentlemen could grow into becoming the next great Red Sox manager and, in time, become the fourth manager in the 21st century to lead the franchise to a championship. Certainly, their presence over the last few years and knowledge of the organization would provide the Sox with some welcome continuity and turmoil.
These are tumultuous times for the Sox. It's hardly typical to be conducting a managerial search in late January, and the specter of an MLB investigation continues to hang over the club. A familiar face could go a long way toward reestablishing some order and credibility at a time when both are badly needed.
And yet, that's not the way Bloom should go. Nor, I sense, is it where I think this search is headed.
Think of it this way: When Bloom took this job back in October, he had no reason to expect that a managerial search would be in his near future. In Alex Cora, he was inheriting a manager who, only a year previous, had directed the Sox to 108 wins -- a franchise record -- and a World Series in his first season on the job.
Cora had plenty of attributes: bilingual, media-savvy, good communication skills and a willingness to embrace analytics. There was every reason to believe he was going to be the Red Sox manager for a long time and Bloom, though largely unfamiliar with Cora prior to his hiring, was fine with that.
Then came the sign-stealing scandal that swallowed the Houston Astros whole, and with it, Cora, too.
So Bloom gets a do-over. He gets to hand-pick his own manager and determine with whom he's going to partner over the next five or so seasons.
Given that opportunity, it's difficult to imagine he would go for expediency. Yes, Roenicke (or Febles or Varitek) would make for a smooth transition in a few weeks' time in Fort Myers. There would be no awkward introductory meeting with the players needed, and no crash course to learn where Field 2 is at Fenway South.
Yup, the first few weeks would be seamless.
But understand that Bloom is not about to make a decision based primarily on the first few weeks of his first spring training. He's being paid to play the long game, to develop a winning -- and key word here -- sustainable organization. So after the February honeymoon is over, after "winning'' the introductory press conference with a familiar face, Bloom would have to ask himself: Is this guy I want running my team in 2022 or 2023?
And the answer, in regard to Roenicke, Febles and Varitek, frankly, is almost certainly ''no.''
Bloom doesn't have a blank canvas here, given the calendar. There will undoubtedly be some people he would like to interview that will be unavailable to him (Tampa Bay bench coach Matt Quatraro, for one) thanks to the time of year. The Rays aren't about to be left scrambling to find a replacement bench coach two weeks before their own pitchers and catchers report to spring training, and they damn sure aren't about to do so to help out a division rival, one which already poached Bloom himself.
But he does have an unexpected opportunity to expand his list of candidates beyond Fenway Park. Already, names like Sam Fuld, Eduardo Perez and Hensley Meulens have surfaced in connection with the Red Sox' job.
Each is (relatively) young and played in the big leagues. Perez has been a major league coach and has plenty of media background. Meulens was a longtime coach with the San Francisco Giants and has interviewed for both the Yankees and Mets' managerial openings. And Fuld works in the Phillies front office and is considered one of the sharpest young people in the game. (As an added bonus, Fuld has a connection with Bloom, having spent three years with the Rays as a player).
Undoubtedly, there are additional names on Bloom's list which haven't publicly surfaced -- people with whom he has come across, gotten to know, who share his philosophy.
The executive/manager relationship is more important now than it's ever been. No longer is there an invisible wall between the guy in the clubhouse and the guy in the upstairs office. They're expected to collaborate, to communicate on a daily basis and find themselves on the same page.
Could Bloom find that sort of simpatico with someone already in the employ of the Red Sox? Without question.
But with a chance to put his own stamp on the person in the dugout, find someone of his own choice, it's impossible to think that he'll limit himself to such a small field of potential candidates. Instead, it's far more likely that he'll cast a larger net and find his manager elsewhere.
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- Voter transparency is essential.
- The run of first-timers getting elected is coming to an end.
- For all its faults, the voting process is by far the most transparent.