Bobby Valentine’s coaches ignore him as the season goes along and the tension on the staff creates an uncomfortable working environment for the players & Valentine.
Led by manager Bobby Valentine, the 2012 Boston Red Sox were one of the most dysfunctional teams in the franchise's storied history.
The group got off on the wrong foot right away as Red Sox players disapproved of Valentine as the choice to replace Terry Francona. But it wasn't just a lack of chemistry with the players that contributed to Valentine's demise. He also failed to jell with the rest of his coaching staff.
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The Red Sox still had coaches under contract when Valentine was hired, and the new skipper was forced to keep them on staff. That proved to be a major mistake by the front office as there was little to no communication between Valentine and a group of coaches who weren't "his guys."
"I had no information flow, as to what was happening," Valentine said in NBC10's "The Bobby Valentine Experience" documentary. "I got a lot more information when I'd go out to dinner at night from waiters and bartenders than I got internally, which was interesting. I was an outsider."
The dysfunction of the coaching staff was clear to the players throughout the disastrous 2012 season.
"I definitely felt like there was some miscommunication," said former Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. "They weren't working together. Whether it's your guys or not your guys, you're still going to have to be able to find a common goal and work towards that. So I definitely felt some tension there."
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"Did I feel tension once I was on the bench? I don't know if tension was the word, but there definitely wasn't a connection," said then-Sox rookie third baseman Will Middlebrooks.
By the middle of the season, Valentine had coaches giving him the silent treatment.
"Timmy Bogar one day wouldn't talk to me for the entire game," Valentine said. "He's my bench coach. I'm doing a whole game with a coach who's not talking to me. It was very uncomfortable."
Valentine also had a falling out with bullpen coach Gary Tuck over how to use pitcher Daniel Bard.
"I don't think he spoke to me the rest of the year," Valentine said. "Like, when I said, 'Hey, Gary. How you doing?' I'm not sure if I got a verbal response."
The skipper's relationship with his coaches, or lack thereof, was made clear during a radio interview with WEEI.
"We used to talk to him every week on the radio, which was very entertaining. You just never know what he was going to say," Holley said. "One week we asked him flat-out, 'Do you trust your coaches?' He said, 'No.'"
Hear more about that wild 2012 Red Sox season by watching chapters 1-5 of NBC10's "The Bobby Valentine Experience" below. You can watch the full documentary here.
