Hey, we've finally got the bold move Larry Lucchino promised 33 days ago.

Bob McClure out, Randy Niemann in as pitching coach.

That should solve everything, right?

First: As Ben Cherington said on Monday, this was a "performance based" decision, and the numbers state very clearly that McClure did not do his job. The Sox have a 4.30 ERA this season, fourth-worst in the American League. On its own, that's enough to justify making a move.

But it's more complicated than that.

This is the real world. If Cherington made all his moves based solely on performance, Josh Beckett would have been released months ago. John Lackey would have been released last year. Daisuke Matsuzaka would be making meaningless rehabilitation starts for some other franchise. And if Bob McClure made $15 million a year and those guys were making a couple hundred grand I'll let you guess who would still be around.

Rob Bradford wrote about the firing Tuesday, and as always it's worth a read. McClure was probably miscast, though I wonder what was his fault and what wasn't. Should McClure be held accountable for Beckett showing up this season in the exact same physical condition we saw last September? Did Clay Buchholz struggle early in the season because McClure is a moron, or has he been brilliant over the last two months because McClure is a genius? Jon Lester has been awful this season -- worst year of his career by a mile -- and the pitching coach has to take a hit for that, of course. But Andrew Miller, Scott Atchison and Matt Albers (while he was here) were having career-best seasons with McClure. Daniel Bard and Mark Melancon were disasters but what about Felix Doubront and Franklin Morales?

It comes down to what is screamingly obvious: Bob McClure is out of a job for the same reasons Curt Young was forced out last year, the same reason why Terry Francona is working for ESPN this year and why Bobby Valentine will be working for ESPN next year. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, which actually works out well because I'm not a rocket scientist.

Josh Beckett and Jon Lester. 

They can keep changing pitching coaches (when Randy Niemann is fired -- and  Randy Niemann will be fired, if they really wanted to give him a chance to succeed they would have made this move two months ago -- the next guy will be the fifth different pitching coach in four seasons) and managers and tell us everything will be OK and blame the media all day long but no one is buying it anymore. Keep protecting Beckett -- Cherington called him a "foundational part" of next year's rotation on Sunday -- and see how that plays if he's back in 2013, 30 pounds overweight with a 90 MPH fastball.

How many more coaches need to be fired before everyone realizes that the full responsibility falls on the players and the people picking the players? I think we have enough evidence. Bob McClure wasn't perfect -- as Curt Young wasn't and Randy Niemann won't be -- but he's taking the fall for the epic failures of Beckett and Lester and Cherington and Theo Epstein and Lucchino and John Henry. No other way to look at it.

The Red Sox have treated their fans like dopes over the last couple of months. Emails, spin, all the greatest hits (raise your hand if you really believe that Adrian Gonzalez knew nothing about the content of a text message sent to ownership from his own phone). But they cannot try and sell the idea that firing McClure is really part of the solution. 

Put it another way: If the Red Sox, after all that has happened over the last year, bring all the players back next year with a new manager (again) and new coaches (again) we'll know that they've learned nothing.

"There's a lot of performance upside simply with the guys here without adding anything to it," Cherington said when asked about the starting pitching -- ranked 25th in the majors in quality starts -- on Monday.

Time for the spin to stop. There have to be major, major changes to both this roster this offseason. Some actual bold moves, not imagined ones. The Red Sox, 65-83 since last September 1, cannot come back with the same group of pitchers and the same management structure and tell us that things will be different just because they think the fans will believe it.

The firing of Bob McClure is either the start of the solution or more of the same. We'll have to wait for the offseason to find out the answer.