Baseball - BASEBALL Red Sox

John Farrell has been hired by the Boston Red Sox as their pitching coach on Monday. This announcement just took place after the staff completed this year with the fifth-worst ERA in the majors last season.

Farrell, 44, worked for the past five seasons as Cleveland's director of player development. He will replace Dave Wallace. The Red Sox decided not to renew Wallace’s contract after Boston finished third in the AL East after a streak of eight second places. General Manager Theo Epstein announced that Dave Magadan is a candidate to replace Ron Jackson as hitting coach. Boston did not renew Jackson’s contract too. Magadan has been fired on June 15th in his fourth season as San Diego's hitting coach. He is expected to start working for the Red Sox next month.

During his career, Farrell spent parts of five seasons as a pitcher with the Indians before retiring after pitching in just two games in 1996 with Detroit. He also pitched for California in 1993 and 1994. He had a 36-46 career record with a 4.56 ERA and primarily as a starter.

In Boston, he will inherit a pitching staff that has to deal with inconsistency, injuries and inexperience. Young Manny Delcarmen and Craig Hansen had to pitch more than the team would have liked and went through difficult stretches because the team has poor pitching by veteran relievers. As a team, Boston's 4.83 ERA was 26th in the majors and its 4.51 bullpen ERA was 21st. Relievers had 22 blown saves, sixth most in the majors.

Farrell will join Terry Francona, who is currently Red Sox manger, his team-mates on the Indians in 1988. Both men also spent time together in Tucson where Francona lived and Farrell stayed the first three months of the year preparing for and attending spring training with Cleveland.

Boston led the AL East for most of the season before falling to second after a loss to Cleveland on Aug. 1st, starting a month in which they went 9-21. The Red Sox started the season with Al Nipper as pitching coach while Wallace underwent hip surgery.