Red Sox name WooSox’ Chad Tracy as interim manager

Is he any good?

I will happily die on the hill known as *Mount None of Us Actually Knows Whether a Baseball Manager is Any Good.* Baseball is not a sport like basketball or soccer, where coaches develop certain tactical schemes and distinct styles of play. It’s not football, where the head coach is often the final decision-maker on roster moves. Baseball is ultimately a players’ game. Modern managers are tasked with keeping the roster focused and engaged for 162 games while implementing the front office’s player personnel plan. Having said that, there obviously are managers who are better or worse than others when it comes to creating and maintaining a winning clubhouse culture (Terry Francona on the former hand, Bobby Valentine on the latter). Tracy has a few things going for him to suggest he could be a good fit for this Red Sox team. First and most importantly, he has a ton of experience coaching a lot of players on this Red Sox roster. Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Connelly Early, Patyon Tolle, Brayan Bello, Connor Wong, and Jarren Duran all spent significant stretches playing under Tracy at Worcester. Notably, all of them arrived at Fenway as developmental successes. Secondly, he does have a winning track record. Tracy’s WooSox teams went 323-295 during his tenure. Win-loss records in the minor leagues don’t *really* mean anything, obviously — winning isn’t the point in the minor leagues. But you’d certainly rather have a manager used to winning rather than losing. Tracy won enough and was respected enough that his managerial peers voted him as the International League’s “best managerial prospect” two years in a row in 2023 and 2024. And finally, it’s often said that great players make poor coaches, the theory being that baseball came so easily to them that they struggle to communicate how to play the game to players of lesser talents. If there’s any truth to that, then perhaps the inverse is also true. Tracy spent eight years grinding in the minor*s* and came tantalizingly close to reaching his dreams, only to, like Moonlight Graham, watch them pass him by like strangers in a crowd. Perhaps his particular background makes him a better baseball communicator than most.

What’s he doing in his picture up there?

He appears to be praying, only with a baseball subbed in for the rosary. And that’s the perfectly romantic image of a minor league lifer, isn’t it?

What’s his role on the 2026 Red Sox?

That’s the big question. Right now he has the interim tag attached to his job title and we haven’t yet heard whether Craig Breslow will attempt to find a full-time manager during the season. Tracy may end up being a mere placeholder. But Tracy is someone who was almost certainly going to become a big league manager one day. And as he prepares to make his debut this afternoon, he’s well-positioned to succeed, managing a roster he’s familiar with that should be performing a lot better than it has so far. If the Sox are able to get things in gear over the coming weeks and months, then maybe Breslow won’t need to post an opening on the Red Sox LinkedIn page after all.