Game 127 Open Thread: Indians at Texas

The manager’s axiom of not criticizing players in public existed long before the cliché about throwing people under the bus. Even in the days when games were mostly covered by newspapers and radio, managers who talked about the weaknesses of their players soon heard about it from the verbally wounded player and whatever friends he had on the team.
Still, there comes a time when a manager concludes the loudest, most assertive way he can make a point to a player is to let him hear on television or talk radio.
I don’t know if Terry Francona and Mickey Callaway intended to make their criticism of Danny Salazar a public issue, but it worked out that way. They talked about his inferior between-start routine as a possible reason why he has faltered since his stint on the disabled list. I’m confident there were other details, both technical and motivational, we will never learn about.
Josh Tomlin also has been hard to watch recently. Francona was willing to talk about him with reporters, but with a slightly different tone.
“When guys have a tough time, I don’t think we want to run from them,” Francona told Jordan Bastian of MLB.com.
The words were a bit different but the tone and overall message was similar. Francona and his pitching coach know there is a problem, they seem to think it is at least partly mental and they are working with the players in a sympathetic style.
If there are to be any tongue-lashings, we are not likely to hear them. It’s the part of managing that relies more on human than mathematical stills.