Making tweets to the lineup? by Jared Carrabis
A tweet from Bobby Valentine's ESPN analyst past could predict his Red Sox managerial future


One of the great things about Twitter is that you can essentially archive your thoughts and feelings on a certain topic at a specific point in time.

For newly hired Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, his Twitter account, which was created to voice his opinions as an ESPN analyst, gives us a little bit of perspective as to how he is going to handle his new lineup. The Red Sox lineup, of course, was a major issue with Terry Francona, especially with Carl Crawford, as the left fielder was penciled in to every spot in the lineup besides cleanup and ninth.

In a tweet from Valentine that was sent out to his followers on April 9 (analyst said, "Good to see Crawford batting leadoff. I do not believe in the stuff about a guy batting a certain place in the order because of comfort".

Does that mean that Crawford will bat leadoff come hell or high water under Valentine's reign as Red Sox manager? Not necessarily, but I'll bet you that Valentine and Crawford will have a discussion as to where the outfielder feels he is most productive, rather than where he is most "comfortable," and work from there.

It'll be highly unlikely to see Valentine bounce Crawford up and down the order in 2012 like Francona did with the former Tampa Bay Ray in 2011.

For what it's worth, Crawford was at his best while batting out of the seventh spot, with a .315/.364/.551 batting line in 141 plate appearances, his second most plate appearances out of any spot in the batting order in 2011. Crawford also belted six homers and drove in 27 RBI from the seventh spot, which, again, are the highest totals for any spot that he batted out of last season.

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Published on November 30, 2011

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