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The Red Sox have fired pitching coach Juan Nieves after 28 more-or-less disastrous games from their starting rotation.
In fairness to Nieves, hired as part of John Farrell's new staff before 2013, this is probably not entirely his fault. Maybe not much at all. The Red Sox gambled on just about every member of their rotation, and that they have lost quite so many of those gambles (as well as some in the bullpen) is a bit improbable, but obviously nowhere near impossible. If there's a real knock on Nieves, at least in the form of one pitcher, it's Wade Miley, who has bounced from mediocre to good in years past, but never been anywhere near as bad as he's been early in 2015.
Still, Miley alone does not prove fault, and under Nieves, the Red Sox won a World Series behind a resurgent Jon Lester. Clay Buchholz was the best he's ever been in those first couple months with Nieves, and while he hasn't managed to approach that level since, he's got some unreal peripherals thus far in 2015, and there's always that injury to blame. Rick Porcello's ERA is not what the Red Sox would like it to be, but it's on the right track as his home run numbers normalize. If things are bad, they are not as bad as they might seem, and only so much can be laid at Nieves' feet.
If you're expecting this to save the rotation, you probably shouldn't get your hopes up. Not based on this, at least. It's possible that the Red Sox rotation will see a resurgence simply based on Buchholz' peripherals shining through, and Porcello continuing his trend. If whoever the Red Sox hire as their new pitching coach--and there's no indication yet of who that might be--can get Wade Miley right, then it will be a worthwhile change. But it's also entirely likely that Miley fixes himself. He just isn't this bad of a pitcher.
Whatever the case, though, if Nieves was not the real underlying cause for all this misery in the rotation, he also wasn't exactly fixing it. Given that, the Red Sox had little enough to lose by making a change.