The Athletic Names John Farrell Red Sox Manager of the Decade and it Kind of Makes Sense

Jen McCaffrey and Chad Jennings of The Athletic cover the Boston Red Sox, and they decided to put their heads together and come up with Boston's team of the decade during some downtime, including the managerial position.

As you can imagine, a lot of the picks are self explanatory (David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Chris Sale) and easy to come up with, but who was Boston's manager of the decade?

There were four managers in Beantown over this period of time, including Terry Francona, Bobby Valentine, John Farrell and current manager Alex Cora. You can already eliminate Valentine, of course, and Cora is only in his second season. Francona is beloved in Boston, but the latter part of his tenure wasn't great.

That's why they decided to go with Farrell, who seems to be a shocking choice on the surface, to say the least.

Longevity matters when making these decisions, and it just so happens that Farrell spent half the decade as the Red Sox skipper. Over his five seasons in Boston, Farrell posted a 432-378 record with three division titles and one World Series championship.

Of course, there were two last place finishes sandwiched in between all the success. But he's a champion. Francona's a champion (from the previous decade). Cora's a champion (but he just started).

It's wild, but it...kind of tracks?

There is no doubt that Boston had a good reason to let Farrell go and bring in Cora, but he did a lot of good things as the manager of the Red Sox. If the 2019 season wasn't so mediocre, to put it kindly, you could make a better argument for Cora. However, one historic season doesn't make you manager of the decade.

It's weird to say it, but it looks like they got it right by choosing Farrell.