Bronson Arroyo's been gone for six years, but he still remembers what it's like playing for the Red Sox.
So he knows what this current group of Sox is going through in light of September's collapse.
"Until you play in a Red Sox uniform, you don't know what it means to the people of New England and you don't know how much pressure there is on that ballclub," Arroyo -- who pitched for the Sox from 2003-05 and then was traded to Cincinnati prior to the 2006 season -- told CSNNE.com's Danny Picard on Picard's Web-based talk show, 'I'm Just Sayin'. "Having experienced that . . . I could feel for those guys because I know how harsh the fans and media can be in that enviornment."
Arroyo -- who "was totally surprised they blew the lead" in the wild-card race -- says he doesn't know what will happen with general manager Theo Epstein.
"I would assume everything is exactly the way he wants it," Arroyo said of Epstein. "He's a New England guy, he grew up in the Boston area, and I would think he wouldn't want to go anywhere else, probably for the rest of his career.
"But I've seen stranger things happen. Sometimes the inner workings of baseball's organizations, we don't know a lot of the things that go on . . .And so you just never really know.
"But I would definitely be surprised if he left, because . . . I get the feeling that between owner John Henry and Theo Epstein and CEO Larry Lucchino and the guys that are in Boston, they have built something over the last eight years . . . I would think they would want to keep this run going for a while . . . But, you know, you just never really know."
Boston Red Sox
Not does he know what was behind Terry Francona's departure.
"I don't know if we know the true story," Arroyo said. "You wonder if ownership put so much pressure on him where they basically forced him to want out . . . or if he genuinely was going to walk away regardless.
"Either way, I definitely was a little surprised because, you know, being there eight seasons and having as much success as they've had and especially winning two world championships, I thought . . . they'd definitely give him a pass on one bad season like this.
"Which wasn't really a bad season; it was just, obviously, a terrible September."
Danny Picard is on twitter at http:twitter.comDannyPicard.