Lucchino: Don't know if McClure was leak

Red Sox CEO/president Larry Lucchino, in an appearance on the Dennis & Callahan Show, discussed the reasons for the dismissal on Monday of pitching coach Bob McClure. Lucchino focused on the struggles of the pitching staff (the team has a 4.32 ERA that ranks 23rd in the majors, with the rotation now carrying a 4.89 ERA that is 26th in the big leagues).

"This is a performance-driven business," Lucchino said. "The instability of the starting pitching, the ineffectiveness of the starting pitcher has been our basic problem. You put that next to the epidemic of injuries, I think those are the two obvious points that one would turn to. So it was a question of performance. Now, in retrospect should we have done it earlier? Perhaps. But we did it when we came to the conclusion that the performance did not justify him remaining in that spot."

Still, while the pitching staff has struggled, Lucchino was also asked whether the team suspected that McClure was one of the individuals who leaked information of a meeting between Red Sox owners and players on July 26 to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports (for this article [1]). McClure was the pitching coach in Kansas City for six years; Passan formerly covered the Royals.

"I have no way of knowing who that person was [that leaked the story]," Lucchino said."The person did break a code of confidentiality understanding we've had for many years. The reference to the round table is that this meeting was of course, somewhat different. It followed the same code of confidentiality we begin at round tables and we began this meeting in New York with this statement, 'What we say in the room, stays in the room.' And I say it every time. I don't think there's been a meeting with the players, round table, whatever you want to call it, that has not begun with a statement from me or someone, generally from me, about how confidential these things are.

"There's no way of knowing whether Bob McClure or whoever . . . of course, Bob McClure was not in that meeting," said Lucchino. "I'm well aware of the overlap in Kansas City. That's not a surprise to me. That was called to my attention. But, again there's no way of knowing so I'm not going to make any baseless acquisitions."

For more Red Sox coverage, visit weei.com/redsox [2].