Henry: Farrell, Cherington's positions are safe

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BOSTON - It feels like the Red Sox can't do anything right on the baseball field right now.

But that feeling carries over from the field to the dugout, where John Farrell stands, and all the way up to the front office, where Ben Cherington watches.

It surely continues to the owners suites where John Henry and Larry Lucchino are (It looks like Tom Werner is busy with other things…).

Farrell is in his third season with the Red Sox, and after winning a World Series in his first season with the team, he finished in last place in 2014 (71-91), and currently has his team in last place this season (22-29). Over the three seasons, Farrell is 190-185.

Cherington has made a number of moves both during the 2014 season and over the last offseason that now deserve eyebrow raising - though ownership has a big hand in those moves, too.

Henry, clearly feeling obligated to address his team's poor performance on Tuesday, went to bat for both Cherington and Farrell and made one thing clear: neither are going anywhere. He feels like those two are the guys that can make the Sox winners again.

"Because I've worked with a lot of people over the years," Henry said, "and these are two people I really like working with, respective of they're committed, they're I believe very good at what they do. John has provided the kind of leadership that we need through a really tough period and I just don't think you can blame the manager for this. I've watched these games; they've been painful games to watch. To me it's not the manager's fault the way that we've been playing. I just don't see that."

Henry doubled down on Cherington's future with the team. Everybody knows this ownership - at least Lucchino - is extremely hands-on. It's their philosophy on pitchers entering age 30 that sent Jon Lester packing last season. It would wrong of Henry to blast Cherington when ownership is basically just as responsible for what goes on with player acquisitions.

"The general manager is going to be the general manager of this club for a very long time," Henry said. "I have nothing but respect for him and the job that he does. I think we've been on the same wavelength. So you have to blame ownership as much as you can blame the general manager. Because we have a certain philosophy. We've talked a lot about adjusting that philosophy and as I said earlier I'm not sure it's just the players who need to make adjustments, in fact I'm sure about that - there are adjustments that we need to make as an organization. Ben will make those adjustments and he'll lead that process. But I think he and his people are the right people to do that."

So if it's not Farrell's fault, and it's not Cherington's fault, who's fault is it? There's no blame pie going around right now, but Henry did admit that it's fair to question whether the team's money was spent in the right places (i.e. the signings of Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval over bigger-name pitchers) over the offseason.

"At this point you can question that," Henry said, "and you should, we should question that. But as we look at it, we're 50 games in, that's a lot of game, but in baseball if you look over history, the 50-game mark is not necessarily representative of where you end up. So we feel confident about the rest of it. We have over 100 games to play. But they're going to have to prove it on the field, that we made the right decisions. They'll prove us right or they'll prove us wrong."

So far, they've proved them wrong. But it appears that the GM down to the players are going to have the opportunity to get out of this mess.

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