I Really Wish John Farrell Wasn't the Manager of the Red Sox

Despite the best efforts of their bumbling manager, the Boston Red Sox were able to salvage the final game of their three game series with the Toronto Blue Jays.

I could go through the list of reasons why John Farrell shouldn't be the manager of the Boston Red Sox (his bench coach is better, he banged a reporter, he generally sucks at managing baseball, etc.), but I'd rather concentrate on how his insanity impacted Sunday's game.

The Red Sox went into the game knowing that most of the important guys in their bullpen were unavailable. But luckily, they had their ace, David Price, on the mound. The goal was to get as much out of Price as possible, and then piece together whatever's left with whoever's available in the bullpen.

Price was cruising into the 7th inning. He retired the side in order in the 6th easily. To start the 7th, he gave up an infield single to Carrera, who then moved the 2nd on a Thole sacrifice bunt. No big deal. Price was only at 105 pitches, still looked strong, and with a taxed bullpen you'd think he'd stay out there to finish the 7th.

But for reasons known only to John Farrell, he pulled Price and replaced him with Hembree.

Hembree got out of the 7th, but then in the 8th he remembered he was Heath Hembree and gave up a game tying home run to Encarnacion.

A good manager lets Price finish the 7th, matches up with Hembree and Ross in the 8th, then uses Koji in the 9th. Not saying it definitely works, because admittedly sometimes you can do everything right and still have it blow up in your face, but I'm pretty confident this is the way a good manager plays it.

It didn't kill them this time, as they were able to get a scoreless inning of relief from Clay Buchholz (CLAY BUCHHOLZ!) and win it in the 11th, but eventually Farrell's incompetence is going to start costing this team games.

I'm willing to accept the theory that I'm biased against Farrell because of how awful the team's been the last two seasons. Maybe he does some things well and I just don't see it.

But here's my concern:

Much to everyone's surprise, the 2016 Red Sox are a pretty good team. They're almost definitely a playoff team. What if they're a wild card team? If the Red Sox need to win one game to get into the Divisional Round of the playoffs, do you trust that John Farrell isn't going to fuck it up?

Me either.