Monday, the Red Sox announced that they would cut ties with manager Grady Little. The decision wasn’t a big surprise; Little wasn’t fired as much as he wasn’t re-hired, given that his contract was just about to expire. Little was never the choice of the revamped Red Sox front office. He’d gotten the job as something of a little-known compromise candidate in early 2002 and guided the team to a 93-69 record in his first season. He was inherited by the new, performance-analysis-driven front office a year ago, and kept the job as much to provide some continuity as because of any particular skills to brought to the position.
I think too much is being made of the influence on this outcome of the last major decision Little made. Little isn’t unemployed this morning because he left Pedro Martinez in too long in Game Seven of the ALCS. Certainly, that decision will stick in memory for years to come, but I doubt there are a half-dozen cases in history where a manager lost his job for making one wrong move. I expect more from Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino, and to say that Little isn’t the Sox manager today because of that decision is to give them far too little credit.