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Red Sox find first scapegoat, fire pitching coach Juan Nieves

By Stanford Crissey

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Red Sox pitching coach Juan Nieves has been fired amid a poor start.

The Red Sox are 13-15 and in last place in the AL East. Despite the fact that last place was the exact spot they occupied last year, expectations were higher for 2015, and amid the slow start, the team has found its first scapegoat: pitching coach Juan Nieves, who was fired Thursday.

The Red Sox have sunk to last place behind a rotation that has posted a 5.73 starting-pitching ERA which ranks dead last in the big leagues. None of the five starters (Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly, Clay Bucholz, Wade Miley, and Rick Porcello) have an ERA better than the league-average. In fact, Porcello is the only one even close, with a 93 ERA+ (where 100 is the league average). No one else on the team has better than an 80, and Wade Miley and Justin Masterson, in particular, have alarmingly high walk rates.

But Ken Rosenthal and his bow tie are right: is it really Nieves’ fault that the club couldn’t bring in a number one starter this offseason? Justin Masterson was terrible last year, is it Nieves’ fault that he couldn’t fix him in five weeks? Can we also blame him for Mike Napoli’s low OBP, or for Hanley Ramirez’s injury?

Much like the firing of Brewers Ron Roenicke earlier in the week, it seems a little silly to start finding scapegoats so early in the season. Things can go wrong, and there’s nothing one coach can do in a month that could have fixed Masterson, Wade Miley, or the lack of Cole Hamels or Jon Lester on this team.

The Red Sox offseason philosophy, pitching-wise, was to find pitchers who could put together great years. Clay Bucholz, Masterson, Rick Porcello, and company are high-risk, high-reward players, but when the reward fails to materialize ,suddenly it’s the pitching coach’s fault?

Nieves has been the team’s pitching coach since 2013, the year they won the World Series while posting the franchise’s lowest ERA since 2002.

He wasn’t a problem back then, when Jon Lester and John Lackey were around, but suddenly he’s the scapegoat.

The Red Sox can fire all the coaches they want, but it’s not going to change the personnel on the team. They went into the season with a high-risk strategy that hasn’t paid off, and until they make some changes to the players involved, nothing is going to change.

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