Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe spoke with Red Sox owner John Henry, who refuted the part of the report from Jeff Passan in which players specifically demanded that Bobby Valentine be fired:
Well, someone’s lying then, because Passan’s sources told him that players did, in fact, say they no longer wanted to play for Valentine.
I have no idea who’s telling the truth. Passan’s source has whatever his motivation is. Henry clearly has a motivation to restore some semblance or order to the proceedings.
It’s interesting, though, that Henry also spends a lot of time talking about how no one has ever revealed the substance of those sorts of meetings, which they’ve had often over the years. Well, they’re doing it now, truthfully or otherwise, so even if his claims that all is rosy are mostly true, something is amiss, it would seem.