Terry Francona

Red Sox manager Terry Francona joined the Dale & Holley show Wednesday from Anaheim for his weekly chat. Francona said he trusts general manager Theo Epstein will do what he can to help the team before Saturday’s trade deadline.

“He’s trying his best, just like we do,” Francona said. “We’ll see what happens. … If it makes sense for the organization, I know Theo’s going to try to do something.”

Francona also said he’s focused only on the players he’s coaching, not on possible additions.

Below is the transcript of the conversation. To hear the interview, visit the Dale & Holley audio on demand page.

You have to feel that every time your team takes the field, your starting pitcher gives you a pretty good chance to win right now.

Oh, man, that’s what we’ve been talking about for a long time. If you have that feeling, that’s what you’re striving for. You can get beat up. You cannot score runs. Things happen. But when your starting pitcher keeps you in the game, you’ll always have a chance. That’s a good feeling.

What makes you think guys like Jon Lester and John Lackey can handle pitch counts around 125 while other guys can’t?

Well, they’re big, strong. They’re durable. First of all, they’re effective enough to do it. A lot of times if a guy has that high of a pitch count, obviously they’re pretty deep into the game, but you have to be able to command the game. There are a lot of times where once you’ve given up runs you’ve got to come out. But they stay in their deliveries. They’re strong.

The pitch count thing can be a little bit of a misrepresentation. It’s certainly a tool to use, but if a guy’s coming out of his delivery, he puts more of a chance of getting hurt or getting hit early on. But as long as he’s staying in his delivery, you’re fine. But again, each pitcher has sort of a number where we start keeping an eye on him because that’s just what happens. They start coming out of the delivery. They leave the ball up. That doesn’t help you win games.

When you go to take a guy out, do they know or acknowledge that they were coming out of their delivery?

I don’t think it’s exactly like that. When John Farrell makes a trip to the mound, there’s some reason. Sometimes it’s just to the slow the game down so we can get a guy up, but a lot of times when you see him pop up in the middle of the hitter, he sees something mechanically. He wants to talk it through with him, and they’ve got checkpoints and things they talk about where they can try to get back to balance point for the most part. You don’t want him thinking too much, but if something’s going on, if they’re leaking out over the front or something, their arm’s dragging, we certainly want to fix it.

In Sunday’s game against Seattle when you replaced Daisuke Matsuzaka with Daniel Bard, did you feel at that point that Daisuke was coming out of his delivery? Is that why you made the move then?

No, no. I think he was at 110, but he had a bunch of walks. We were going to get Bard up. If you’re going to get Bard up and if Daisuke goes out and walks somebody or gives up a hit, we’ll bring Bard in anyway. So we figured we’d let Bard start the inning clean, and with the hope that maybe he goes two. He started out looking real good. He only had three pitches, two outs. He got strung out a little bit so he goes out for the eighth, and when he gave up the hit, we knew that he wasn’t going to get through the inning.

We have a responsibility to not hurt this kid, and I told him that. It’s not matchups. If it was, I’d leave him out there all day. We’re trying to work it where we can get through it better, and we tried to help [Hideki Okajima]. It didn’t turn out real well. Daisuke actually wasn’t tired. I thought he had more, just again when you send a guy to lead off and he faces the nine hitter, we wanted Bard because we thought he could attack it, which he did.

Is this one of those situations where you are looking at pitch counts in Bard’s case?

It’s workload. You can say it however you want, but we really watch the workload. Bard won’t pitch today. [Jonathan Papelbon] won’t pitch today. So they’ll get today, and they’ll also get tomorrow. That’ll get them right back where they need to be. We want our good pitchers pitching a lot, but we don’t want to pitch them too much.

Do you guys follow the Verducci effect, i.e. not raising a pitcher’s workload too much from his first year to his second, with relievers like Bard?

We keep an eye on all that stuff. I know they call it the Verducci effect. I have a feeling that John Farrell’s probably on that or a little bit ahead of that. Yeah, we’re aware of that. Workload with young pitchers is certainly something that’s always on our mind, and we monitor it a lot. You hear it all the time: health and production. If you’ve got both of those, you’ve got a chance.

What happened with J.D. Drew, and why wasn’t he able to play for you?

About five minutes before the game, he came running up, well not running up, and he said he couldn’t get his legs loose, and it was his left hamstring. He thought he could. Couldn’t do it so we were kind of scrambling. We moved the lineup around a little bit, got Darnell McDonald out of the clubhouse and went ahead and had J.D. looked at by the trainers. Now, we’re trying to arrange an MRI for J.D. this morning. It’s just not that easy. You’re kind of at the other team’s mercy, but hopefully we’ll get him looked at this morning before we head back because we have this off day. Maybe we can use that to our advantage.

Did you have any idea an hour before, two hours before that he was having trouble getting loose?

Oh, we knew he was tight for the past couple weeks. We know that stuff, I was surprised, everybody was surprised. We don’t make changes five minutes before the game if we can help it, that’s a bad scramble. Again, a guy can’t get loose he can’t get loose, look to make a change.

Were you planning to stick with Drew at the No. 2 spot if he were available?

Well, he was hitting second last night. We ended up having to kind of scramble and we moved [Jed] Lowrie back down and put [McDonald] in there and actually the guys that played did a pretty good job.

Darnell McDonald I felt had one of the biggest at-bats of the game. What did you think of his at-bat in the seventh inning, down 0-2 and working his way back to earn a walk?

Well, I’m glad you brought it up because I agree with that. That was a great at-bat. The inning could have been over, it could have been a quick inning. We did that a couple times last night, where in a few of the innings we didn’t score, we would get two outs then we would prolong the inning and make [Jered] Weaver at least work. His stuff is so good, especially against left-handers, and we made him work hard. When you dent it and finally get on the scoreboard, and the way we did was probably the only way we were going to win that game. He was completely stifling us and all of a sudden we’re up, sometimes it kind of knocks you back for a minute. It’s happened to us and you just hold on.

I know we’ve joked about Dustin Pedroia being a pain in the rear end while he’s injured, but it sounds like Dr. Yocum got his attention yesterday when he told him to slow it down?

Yeah, he did a good job. I think we all felt like it was good to have another voice. [Pedroia] is certainly aware of his reputation. [Yocum] has a great way of talking to players. I think the message was basically the exact same thing, [Pedroia] just wasn’t maybe hearing it quite the same or maybe didn’t want to hear it. I thought Dr. Yocum did a good job of explaining it. We’ll get him back Friday, we’ll get another scan, see how the healing is going and go from there.

Where does [Jason] Varitek stand in his attempt to come back as well?

He will also get a scan on Friday. So both guys will get looked at and we’ll see where they are.

Are there limitations on a guy like Victor Martinez who is back? Can you just put him in there and play him everyday life before, or do you have to ease him back into the lineup?

As far as easing him in, I guess if you can call hitting sixth easing him in, we did that. He wants to play today and I told [Kevin] Cash to be on alert, but if Victor shows up and he feels good, we’ll play him. We have a day off tomorrow, but if [Victor] comes in and he’s feeling it a little bit, we’ll put Cash in there.

Does it surprise you that Victor’s indicating that he can play?

No, not really. He’s been working so hard, so no it doesn’t really surprise me. It’s part of what’s going on here and I hope it’s not overlooked. I mean, it’s easy for guys to do their work and come back and play. This guy works so hard that his first couple games back, his body is not all that sore and it’s amazing to me, just because he and Gary Tuck did so many simulated drills that shoot, he’s ready to go. I’m proud of him.

What do you expect of Jacoby Ellsbury? Is there a timetable on when we can see him in a major league uniform?

We have a couple scenarios written out that we’ll see. It all simply comes down to what he can tolerate and be productive, as it’s been all along. The one thing we did tell him was we wanted him to play nine innings or a full game in Florida before he leaves Florida and goes to Pawtucket. The reason being is because we don’t anticipate him being in Pawtucket real long but we don’t want him going up there and playing half games and things like that. Hopefully he’ll play a full game or two and get out of Florida and come to the lights and get a lot closer to playing here.

Do you think everybody is on the same page now when it comes to Jacoby Ellsbury?

Yeah, I think so and I can’t answer whether he’s on the same page with the media. We’ve been through this too many times. I can’t help what you or Dan Shaughnessy write, that’s not my area. Everybody’s got an opinion. I actually think Jacoby and I have had pretty good communication through this whole thing but I can’t stop what other people think, so I thought I would just quit trying.

I saw the box score and Mike Lowell had three home runs in Toledo last night. Have you heard anything about how things are going for him?

Somebody in about the seventh inning of our game, the guys come down in between innings and they’re doing their normal routine and stuff, I heard someone had a three-run homer. I turn around and say, “Mikey Lowell hit a three-run homer?” They said, “No, he has three home runs.” I couldn’t believe it, I was thrilled. I have not seen a report yet on the game but that’s pretty awesome.

You said he could be back with your club on Friday, is that still on track?

Yeah, we’ll see. I think that’s certainly possible. Shoot, it would be possible for him to be playing today. I don’t think that would make a whole lot of sense to have him rehab a game, fly out to the west coast, be activated for a day game, fly back to the east coast. I think we were all kind of in agreement on that. We told him when we left for this trip to go through that road trip with them, when we get back, we’ll sit down and kind of figure this out.

You’re a few days away from the trade deadline and you’ve got a team to manage. What’s your approach when talking to Theo Epstein?

I’ve been around Theo long enough to know that he’s hustling and he always does. We certainly talk about a lot of stuff because I think we’re supposed to with how things fit and things like that but I don’t need to know every phone call. That’s not none of my business but I don’t need to know. It’s like him asking me during the game why I’m hitting and running. I’ve been around him long enough to know he’s trying his best, just like we do. We’ll see what happens.

What’s the mood for your team and maybe some teams you’ve seen right before the trade deadline hits?

I think it’s different with every team. It’s a tough week for a lot of players. Especially in this day and age, not so much back when I was playing, but now because of the internet and you guys probably agree, there’s a lot out there that’s speculation and with the blogging. Ramon [Ramirez] saw his name going to the Mets and we can’t stop that but it’s out there, so you have to deal with it. If you feel like you have to deal with it, you do. Most players are smart enough to understand that this is part of the game nowadays and you have to deal with it. Everybody will feel better when the trade deadline’s over.

We know you like this team, you’ve made that very clear. Would you still like to get some help before this weekend is over?

Well, again I kind of have to be cautious in how I answer that because I do like our team. By saying that, I think you’re kind of saying, “Okay, I want somebody else I don’t want somebody here.” I don’t feel like that. I think my responsibility is to try to get the most out of who we have here. I know how the job goes, we’re always trying to get better, that’s part of the game. At the trading deadline we’ve been a pretty big player a lot of times. If it makes sense for the organization, I know Theo’s going to try to do something.

There was a situation last week between the Mariners’ manager Don Wakamatsu and Chone Figgins. Figgins was taken out of the game and charged the manager. The next day, Figgins was back in the lineup, unlike a similar situation in Tampa Bay where B.J. Upton was punished for not hustling. Without criticizing either manager, how do you handle such a situation?

Well, that’s like an interview question. It’s kind of hypothetical which is very difficult. I come back to we try to create an atmosphere where players want to do the right thing. Every manager is different and I’m sure every manager that has a different scenario is different. I can’t tell you what Joe Maddon or the history there is with Wakamatsu, it’s none of my business. I know how we feel here and how we try to handle our stuff here. I have no business managing someone else’s team. Again, there’s a difference between punishing somebody and punishing your team. We just always do what we think is right, short term and long term.