Bobby V: I Could Have Reached World Series If Red Sox Had Kept Me

The brief Bobby Valentine era is one Red Sox fans want to forget as soon as possible. He's currently the AD at Sacred Heart University while new skipper John Farrell and the Red Sox are in the World Series, so that probably helps. But Valentine thinks that if the Red Sox hadn't fired him, he'd have done as well as Farrell.

Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe caught up with Valentine to get his thoughts on this season's team, and what Valentine said could be classified as sad and delusional.

“I’d like to think that if I came back for my second year that, given the changes and improvements, I would have been able to do the same thing,” Valentine said. “Ben did a great job this offseason rebuilding the team. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before. Usually a team will go after one or two free agents and hope they work out. When you’re signing seven or eight guys and they all work out and blend in together as well as they did, that’s amazing to me. The entire organization should be very proud of what they did. They should take a bow. It was amazing work.”

As Cafardo points out, there are 12 Red Sox players kept from Valentine's season: Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Felix Doubront, Franklin Morales, Junichi Tazawa, Craig Breslow, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Daniel Nava, Will Middlebrooks, and Jacoby Ellsbury. Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino were crucial additions over the offseason, while the rotation bounced back from injuries and whatever made Jon Lester shitty. That's a nice core of guys to have, but Valentine's theory has a big hole—it's assuming that the 2013 Valentine-led Red Sox would have no recollection of what occurred the previous season, including all the repeated instances of a poor choice of words, possible mutiny, and, oh yeah, Bobby Valentine's past.

Maybe the remaining players could have overlooked Valentine's circus of a 2012 campaign and bought in on one more season to set things right. Maybe Napoli and Victorino, two free agents who had other lucrative options, could have ignored the reported locker room cattiness. Maybe, with all of Ben Cherington's moves panning out, Bobby V could have reached the World Series. Those are some big maybes, though.

[ Boston Globe]