Curt Schilling has friends on the Red Sox, and when he talks to them he gets the impression that Bobby Valentine's act is not going over well in the clubhouse.
Schilling, former Red Sox ace and current ESPN analyst, checked into WEEI's Mut and Merloni show on Tuesday.
"I like Bobby. I like him a lot," said Schilling, who worked with Valentine at ESPN. "I thought that the manager that managed the Mets that I was not a big fan of was now going to be a different manager, and I don't think there's anything different at all. And I don't think that that is going to be conducive to doing well here. There's a lot of things I think that are happening not just from his perspective, but when you talk to these guys -- and I'm still talking to some of these guys -- I don't think this is going well. And I think it's going bad quicker than I expected it to."
Schilling explained that in baseball situational managing -- one of Valentine's strengths -- isn't nearly as important as managing personalities.
"It's little stuff. One of Terry Francona's strengths I think was understanding that to be a great big league manager, you don't have to know when to hit and run, bunt and change pitchers as much as you need to manage people. I think the major league manager has so little to do with wins and losses, more so in baseball than just about in any sport.
"I think it's about managing people. Because you're looking at an eight-month schedule. You're interacting with your players on a very different level, on a very different scale. And I think that becomes the most important trait, characteristic of a manager. And I always -- kind of like I felt with Tony La Russa in a sense -- I always feel like Bobby's trying to re-invent the game. I don't think players have ever responded well to that.
"The point I made the other night was that he's doing a lot of things right now that are forcing his players to extend their media involvement to answer questions about him and the situation when it's already a challenge enough to do it, to play in this market and to win."