Terry Francona

Red Sox manager Terry Francona joined The Big Show on Wednesday to talk about Dustin Pedroia‘s hitting streak, small ball and giving days off. One of the more pressing concerns for the manager is what to do with starter Andrew Miller, who has made it out of the fifth inning just once in his last four starts.

Listen to the whole interview, on The Big Show audio on demand page.

“There’s a lot to like about this kid and certainly we’re walking a fine line between now, the future and what he can do [and] performance,” Francona said. “The saving grace is we’re 6-1 in his starts. I understand what’s going on, we’re in our bullpen a lot and things like that. There’s a lot to like about this kid. I think [pitching coach] Curt Young thinks this guy is going to be in our rotation next year. It’s something to think about.”

Francona added that it was a tough call to make because the Sox like his upside. “I know at times he needs to be better and I think he realizes that,” Francona said. “At the same time if you panic or lose confidence a little bit early you possibly lose out on something really good and we don’t want to do that either.”

Francona said he will give Carl Crawford the night off after the outfielder went 1-for-11 with six strikeouts in his last two games. This comes on the heels of a hot stretch where Crawford went 10-for-24 after returning from a hamstring injury.

“My big concern when he came back was not being healthy because I saw how he worked, I saw he was running really well,” Francona said. “But you think, ‘OK he’s going to take some time to get his stroke back,’ and he came out of the chute so well. And then the last couple of games it’s been a little bit tough for him. You can see he’s real early with his stride, he’s late on his swing, kind of how he looked earlier in the season. We’re going to give him a blow tonight. Kind of let him regroup a little bit. I think that will do him so good because the last 10 at-bats have been tough.”

Here’s the rest of the transcription:

Congratulations, 1000 victories.

Thank you.

That’s a terrific accomplishment. But, I understand there’s some controversy with the ballclub right now.

Isn’t there always?

Well after last night… You haven’t heard?

No. What am I missing?

Let’s take you to the postgame show from last night.

Oh boy.

[Pedroia audio on the post-game show.]

Pedroia (joking): I think we should fire Tito now and make you the manager because I like what you’re saying. When I get put in that situation, if Youk’s down, I just try to do my job. If I have to drive in runs, or get on base or do whatever the team asks.  I have to do that.

It sounds like you have a player calling out for you to be fired. Maybe you’re not going to get to 2,000 here.

Ungrateful. You know what, compared to what happened in the clubhouse, that’s not bad. We were up in the weight room and Pedey was giving my eulogy. I laid there on the floor and he gave my eulogy. The premise of it was if I would get out of the way and not manage, we would have already won two more World Series and a lot more games this year.

You shouldn’t have said that. Sounds like some of our callers. We just had one the other day who wanted you to play small ball. But I will say this …

We tried to play small ball.

How did that work out for you?

(laughter)

Yesterday, I said on the air that I think Tito has lost his mind, not just with Pedroia batting fourth, that’s not a big deal. He’s done that before. But Darnell McDonald in the leadoff spot with Jacoby Ellsbury given the day off. What was the logic behind putting McDonald there Ellsbury on the day off?

Well, Jacoby I thought needed the day off.  Sometimes it’s hard to do when a guy’s playing that well, but he’s been kind of, not beat up, but just, you know, he’s on-base, he’s diving, we’re playing some long games and the idea was to maybe not give him the whole game off, but to give him a little blow. And we kind of wanted to align it where, when they brought a righty in, we would have Jacoby ready to hit. Which would end up working where he could hit for [Yamaico] Navarro No. 9, we could have [Drew] Sutton going No. 1, and end up being a big inning. And again, it just gave him a little bit of a blow. We’re doing the same thing with [Carl] Crawford tonight.

I was wondering what you were doing that last night because I almost thought you were panicking in the sixth inning when suddenly you’re down by a couple of runs and get Ellsbury into the game. So that was your intention, not necessarily to sit him out for the whole game?

No. I just wanted to give him a little bit of a blow and the game set up so well. Once they had their lefty out of there, they had one lefty. Once he was out of there, it really set up well for us. We could hit for Navarro who has been struggling a little bit against righty’s. Then we get Sutton in there, where we’re going to take Mac out because we want to leave Ellsbury in the game and it really worked out well.

Can I ask you about the small ball though? We did get a caller. It’s funny. We got a call two days ago, and we get these calls all the time. I always take the position, I believe with your lineup that you have, it’s difficult to sit there and take the bat out of a guy’s hands and suddenly  say, “Just move a guy up” or whatever. Obviously you’ve got a couple guys up, you’ve got no runs, you’re going to move guys up into scoring position. That seemed to be a strange move the other night. Obviously it’s stranger because it doesn’t work and there seems to be a miscommunication along the way. But why were you doing it at that time?

Are you talking about the squeeze? Or the potential squeeze?

Yes. The potential squeeze.

We don’t do them very often, as you know. Normally, the only time we do them is Spring Training when we’re ready to go home. One way or the other we’re going to go home. There was action, a botched play, in my opinion, is a great time to do something. Hit and run, steal, a lot of things are going on. They’re a little bit angry. They’re trying to figure out what to do. [Marcos Scutaro] not been driving runs in from third. This guy had a funny angle.  So I go, ”OK. We’re going to get out of here right now.”

And we surprised everybody, including [Scutaro]. I thought, [Tim Bogar] did a good job of giving the sign. He backed [Scutaro] out. Because that’s my big worry, is that the guy won’t get the sign. Reddick got it right down. I thought [Scutaro] had it and he didn’t, and boy that hurt. It just crushed us. It crushed [Scutaro] too. We probably won’t squeeze again until spring training, but I do think he’ll probably get the next sign because he was really broken up about it.

Just in terms of this whole small ball thing, you don’t have the roster where you have to do that. Terry, don’t you feel, I won’t ask this question.  I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Do you feel that teams that do that, who play that way, do it because they have to?

I don’t know. I know I do what I think puts us in the best position to win. Last night we bunted Sutton because I thought, there’s a lot of factors. It’s not just, [runners on] first and second, nobody out, the book says bunt. Who’s coming up? Who are your runners? If you do bunt, are they going to walk the guy you hit? I mean that’s a big deal. We’ve got some hitters who we want to swing the bat. There’s times when we could steal second base, but then they’re going to walk somebody. And we don’t want to do that either. So again, there are things to think about besides just what the book would say or what somebody did in college. We have good hitters. We want them to hit. When you get first and second and nobody out, you die for those situations. Now, all of the sudden, you want somebody to bunt and if things work out perfect, you’re giving up an out. And that doesn’t mean it’s going to work.

But doesn’t that make you nervous in that you don’t do it, as you said, on a regular basis? You hadn’t done it in a long period of time. To expect players to suddenly pull it off, I mean, let’s look at [Mike] Aviles. They do it more than you guys certainly do, and Aviles, I don’t think that was the intention to hit the ball over [Adrian] Gonzalez at first base and yet it turned out well.

Sometimes you’ve got to be lucky more than good. That’s a triple play. I mean, they’re running all over the bases and it’s a horrible bunt, and we’re going to get out of that inning. And the chips, and again we had our chances to win. There’s times you’re unlucky. There’s times you’re lucky. Over the course of the season, they’ll even out. We had our chances to win that game many times and we didn’t.

You played for a lot of managers in your career. Did you ever argue with them, even silently, over the book? I mean, some guys are by-the-book guys and some guys are say well it depends on the situation.

No. I didn’t argue with anybody because I was day-to-day for nine years. So I was not the first to argue. The thing I never understood was, when I came up, and Dick Williams was a big proponent of this, the no doubles. Where you play on the line late in the game and they put you, he wants your foot on the foul line. And I remember thinking, “I’m covering foul territory here.” How many times, a ball would go by me for a hit to start off the inning, I never did understand that. And guys have gotten away from that pretty much the last few years, but I never did understand that.

Alfredo Aceves last night really bails you out because you’re down by two runs, you used most of that bullpen up, all of the bullpen the night before, and he keeps you in the game long enough to get the bats popping.

Yeah, he did a great job. He’s done that a lot of times. It’s such a unique role. Julian Tavarez used to pitch length for us, but they were in a lot of situations when the game was out of control and he could take some innings for somebody else. This guy’s coming in games where we have a chance to win and he’s staying out there. Not only is he saving our bullpen but we’re winning the games.

What was the longest hitting streak that you’ve ever seen?

I don’t remember now who had the longest. I mean Paul Molitor was probably — I wasn’t his teammate. In fact, I was with John Farrell when that happened. Farrell broke it up. With that stuff he was featuring, he stopped it. I really don’t remember. There were a lot of good players, though.

Have guys said anything to [Dustin] Pedroia about the hitting streak, or is that kind of in the no-hitter category?

No, but he says enough about it himself. No, he doesn’t care. He’s so loud during the game that nobody else is going to have a chance to say anything anyway if they wanted to.

Have you seen anything different during this hitting streak or is it just Pedroia locked in?

That’s exactly what it is. He finally got locked in. He was fighting it so much during the first thee months and he’s still a really good player but it was a fight and you could tell. And now he’s got it going and if anything he can keep a hot streak going about as good as anybody.

He almost had the cycle last night. It looked like that last one was a home run.

I thought he did too. If he wasn’t 5-foot-5 and 140 pounds he probably would have had a home run.

How are you going to do it tonight? What’s the lineup?

Pedroia’s hitting cleanup, we have [Jacoby] Ellsbury back in there, [Marco] Scutaro hitting second and then pretty much normal after that.

John Lackey, the last three efforts have certainly been a lot better. Did he ask you to make himself available to go back into the game? Because he went out to the bullpen the other night in the extra inning game.

Well, we were struggling, obviously. We were down, we had Aceves left and he had thrown 46 pitches the night before, which is no good. Lackey went in, got his spikes, came out and he said, “Hey, I’m ready.” Now, we weren’t going to do that but the fact that he was willing to do that, that’s probably why when things aren’t going well or he’s giving an interview that people aren’t real thrilled about, when we’re defending him, because we see that side of players and I really appreciate that.

Do you ever get to the point where you think a position player will pitch in a game?

No, not in a close game. That’s a tough one. We were going to stay with Randy WIlliams until he couldn’t go anymore, and then we were going to go with Aceves before Lackey, because as much as we appreciated what Lackey said, then we’re still looking for a starter [Wednesday night]. And then you’re talking about making a roster move, and that’s no good.

When you manage a team that looks almost certain to make the playoffs, how do you balance time off for players with minor injuries and aches and pains versus competing for the division title over the wild card?

I think that question’s a bit premature. We’re in July, we have a long way to go. If we get to that point, our biggest thing is health. We’ve seen it. In 2004 we had a chance to win the division and the last week of the season the Yankees claimed the division and that was probably the best thing that ever happened to us. We set up our rotation and we went right through the playoffs. In 2006 we had to fight like crazy and we pitched to the last day and the White Sox swept us out of the playoffs. So we’ve seen both. The one nice thing is if you have home field advantage, it helps, but I think more than anything being healthy leads to guys being productive, which is what we’re shooting for.