(Published June 1, 2009)
My husband's best buddy is a baseball scout. When the two of them get together, the conversation is sure to get around to the Red Sox's prospects for the year. They know the prospects all the way down to the Rookie League.
From what I understand, listening to them, we do not as yet have a likely successor to our captain/catcher, Jason Varitek. The most likely prospect we have as a catcher is still down in A-ball. It's going to be difficult to replace our captain. Not only is he very good at his position, but he's also the glue that holds the team together. This was made most evident a couple of years ago when, due to injuries, management had to bring up a lot of baby pitchers who were not quite ready for the big time yet. However, as long as our man Varitek was behind the plate, those youngsters did just fine. But when Tek ended up on the DL (disabled list) himself, the poor kids just fell apart. The Sox management could have done a better job of succession planning; it's not good being too dependent on just one player. What does your succession plan look like?
There's no getting around it. Tek's starting to get up there in age for a major league player, and when his current contract expires at the end of this year (or possibly next — the contract allows for an optional one-year extension), we're probably going to need to replace him. And unless our youngster down in the High A League is ready by then, we'll be up a creek without a paddle.
We had a likely successor at one time, but we traded him for a center fielder. The thought at the time was that we still had both Varitek and Mirabelli; we didn't need Shoppach, too. But Mirabelli's arm, or maybe knees, gave out, and he wasn't hitting too well, so there we were. We tried some others, but we couldn't find one that could both hit and play defense. That's been Tek's value; he can play offense as well as defense (well, most years he can — what player doesn't have an off year occasionally?). That's the trick, of course; not just finding the talent you need, but keeping it. You don't want to lose your talent to the competition because you can't utilize them, like we lost Shoppach to Cleveland.
It's not that we don't have catchers. We have a perfectly adequate back-up catcher. But he's a back-up catcher, not ready for prime time. The same goes for our AAA and AA catchers. They just don't have the talent that Varitek has, particularly for training the baby pitchers. The organization will certainly have a use for him; I'd love to see him as a pitching coach. But when it comes to bringing in someone to be Tek's successor, the organization simply has made a series of bad choices, and we haven't had time yet to grow our own.
Do you have all your key positions covered? If someone ended up on the figurative DL list (FMLA leave, retirement, etc.), do you have someone ready to take over? It's a fine line to walk. To continue the baseball metaphor, you want to have enough depth coming up from the minors to cover you, but at the same time you don't want players who are ready to advance and have no place to go taking advantage of free agency either. The Sox management may have waited too long to replace one key player. Don't make the same mistake.
Catherine Bannon is an HR consultant in Marshfield, MA (catherine.bannon@gmail.com). Bannon worked for 10 years in HR management before starting her consulting practice.
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