Website design By BotEap.comTerry Francona is a great manager, but only if the people he manages are self-confident and driven.

Website design By BotEap.comLet’s face it: athletes tend to be the most confident people in the world, even to the point of being arrogant. It is a necessary fuel that powers their collective competitive engines. Athletes also tend to be driven, spending hours every day as kids, teens, and young adults repetitively practicing the skills they need to make it to the big leagues. So with this in mind, Terry Francona should be a great manager on just about any major league team he manages.

Website design By BotEap.comMany people say that their current group of ballplayers needed more of a “boots-in-the-pants” approach to the game. They say Terry needed to push them hard, kick a water cooler here and there, use the Ozzie Guillén “They want fear, I’ll show them fear” approach.

Website design By BotEap.comSorry, this does not go with reality.

Website design By BotEap.comThe solution lies not in human psychology, but in the very probability distributions Theo Epstein and other numbers-based GMs use to assess talent. In any given year, there is a small but positive chance that a team with a nine-game lead on September 1 will not make the playoffs. The fact that it has never happened before is an indication of how low that probability is.

Website design By BotEap.comThe reason such a low-probability event occurred was that several low-probability events came together at the same time: These include the Tampa Bay Rays having an extraordinary run, virtually all of Boston’s pitchers having poor performances during September, and during games, the proverbial “timeouts”, which are low-probability events themselves, did not go the way of the Red Sox. The net result? An epic collapse. Was it because of the leadership offered by Francona? Hardly

Website design By BotEap.comThe solution lies more in quantum theory, where there is a small probability of everything happening in the universe, than in human dynamics and the psychology of leadership. Bad things happen, no matter who is in charge. Sometimes a lot of bad things happen, and sometimes overwhelmingly bad things happen. This is the same for baseball as it is for tornadoes. There is a chance of being hit by a tornado. It’s not big, but it could happen over a long period of time. So while he’s not likely to lose a big lead in September in MLB, it will happen. In fact, someday, maybe next year, maybe another hundred years from now, some team will lose a 10-game lead. They will fire their manager, even though leadership had nothing to do with the problem.

Website design By BotEap.comThe Red Sox should have kept Terry Francona, dumped John Lackey and Carl Crawford (and eaten a large chunk of both contracts), and did everything they could to sign either Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder over the winter. That would have been the right thing to do for people interested in using numbers to win.