Hot Stove Lunch: With spring training fast approaching, Red Sox feeling sense of urgency

It's getting late early for the Red Sox.

Exactly two weeks from today, pitchers and catchers are set to report to Fort Myers for the start of spring training. Days later, it will be time for the position players, and then, the first full-squad workout.

And yet, the Red Sox remain without a manager.

To be fair, they're not alone in this predicament. The Houston Astros -- their partners in sign-stealing crime, as it were -- are still conducting their own search.

But on the baseball calendar, winter is winding down and spring is only 14 days away.



The Sox are wise to be thorough in their search. This is a critically important hire for Chaim Bloom, who never expected to be conducting a managerial search when he was hired as the Red Sox chief baseball officer last fall. It's surely Bloom's intent to hire a manager with whom he'll work for the next five or so seasons -- minimum.

As such, it would be foolish to speed through the process for the sake of having it completed.

The Red Sox don't have the luxury of having gone through the process only months earlier, the way the New York Mets did. After moving on from Carlos Beltran -- another caught up in the sign-stealing scandal -- the Mets already had other candidates they had interviewed on staff and quickly chose Luis Rojas.

The Sox, by contrast, are starting from scratch. And they're doing it while trying to determine whether to trade their best player, Mookie Betts. Talk about multi-tasking.

They should be thorough and make a hire with the utmost of confidence.

But they also need to watch the calendar.

Elsewhere....

AL EAST 

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AL CENTRAL

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AL WEST

Nolan Ryan weighs in on the Astros' mess.

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Here are five free agents for the Mariners to consider.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

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