Without Betts and Cora, Ron Roenicke Embraces Red Sox’s Challenges

It was a big deal, of course, and it will reverberate for years. How will the prospects develop? How will ownership use the financial flexibility they have deemed so essential? The players’ impact can at least be quantified, but what will the clubhouse miss about Cora, a young leader who had seemed to fit so well?

“Everything,” catcher Christian Vazquez said. “He brings a lot of good things to this team in his two years. He’s a great person; he’s my friend forever. I knew him before Boston, we’ve got a good relationship. But this is baseball.”

And these days, baseball is more complicated than ever, with the explosion of data emerging as a force for innovation but also temptation. Roenicke is less known for analytical savvy and more for a breadth of experience few peers can match. Only three major league managers — Baker, the Los Angeles Angels’ Joe Maddon and the Atlanta Braves’ Brian Snitker — are older.

Roenicke played for two World Series teams managed by Hall of Famers: Tommy Lasorda’s 1981 Dodgers and Dick Williams’s 1984 San Diego Padres. He coached for the Angels’ championship team in 2002 and nearly won a pennant in 2011 with the Milwaukee Brewers, whose cornerstone, Ryan Braun, was later found to have failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs.

“I really enjoy challenges,” Roenicke said. “The experiences make it way easier to get through the challenges. When I was in Milwaukee, going through the Ryan Braun thing with his suspension, that was half a year of basically every day answering questions about it.

“Knowing what the players feel like, going through different trials helps me to talk to them. The good thing about the players is, when you’re younger, you’re pretty resilient and you get through things way easier,” he added. “You all know how I feel about Alex and I’ve said a lot about that, and these players certainly feel the same way. But they’ll bounce out of this pretty quickly. They’re so focused on what they need to do to get their game right that the outside stuff doesn’t worry them.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/sports/baseball/ron-roenicke-red-sox.html?emc=rss&partner=rss