While there are plenty of Red Sox roster mysteries to be answered this winter, the team did announce a finalized coaching staff for the 2010 season after bench coach Brad Mills departed for the Astros' managerial job.
Mills and manager Terry Francona had been together in Boston since the Red Sox skipper's first season in 2004, and Francona insisted on making any coaching hiring internal once there was an opening.
So longtime Red Sox minor league manager Ron Johnson, who managed the Pawtucket Red Sox for the last handful of years, was appointed first base coach.
Tim Bogar moved from first base to third base, and DeMarlo Hale was promoted to bench coach. Hale is one of the brightest managerial prospects in the game, and he seemed a natural fit once the organized, ultra-prepared Mills moved on.
After all, Hale had stabilized a third base coaching job that was seemingly in constant tumult through the last 10 years with Mike Cubbage, Wendell Kim and Dale Sveum, who tried with varying degrees of success to read the baserunning tea leaves as balls bounced around nooks and crannies of Fenway Park.
"It's the toughest market to be at third base and the toughest field, and you never heard people talk about him, so that was a huge compliment to him," Francona said of Hale. "Part of the reason, a big reason you never heard about him, was because he did such a good job. He will take that and do the same thing as a bench coach."
In addition, minor league fielding coordinator Rob Leary was promoted to the major league staff in a role patterned after Bogar's previous coaching position with the Tampa Bay Rays prior to joining Boston.
Leary's job description will range from advance scouting and spring training workouts to administrative duties that will free up the rest of the coaching staff to instruct the players.
"While he doesn't know the American League yet, that won't get in the way because he's not getting asked to sit in the dugout during the game," Francona said of Leary.
"He'll get a chance to learn the league and learn our team, and we can use his strengths in the meantime, which are plenty. He'll help us prepare our scouting, he'll run our spring training and he has a chance to really help our staff round into shape."
Johnson also will be learning the major league ropes after years spent riding buses and managing in the minor leagues. But the Red Sox will also take advantage of the unique relationships that the affable Johnson has built with the many homegrown Red Sox players who have come up and developed through their minor league system since Theo Epstein and Co. took over the organization.
"I can't tell you how excited I am about it," Johnson said. "I think it means more to me because it is the Boston Red Sox. To have an opportunity after all these years, to get an opportunity to go to the big leagues with one of the premier clubs in all of baseball, to me makes me even more proud."
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