The Boston Red Sox have fired pitching coach Bob McClure, the team said Monday. Assistant pitching coach Randy Niemann will serve in that role for the remainder of the season.General manager Ben Cherington said the decision to relieve McClure of his duties for the remainder of the season was solely "performance based" and had nothing to do with McClure's relationship with manager Bobby Valentine, which reportedly was strained."This is a performance-based decision," Cherington said. "As I said (in New York on Sunday), and I think Bobby has said, there's been a really good effort on the part of the staff to work together and iron out any communication issues that existed previously and this decision had nothing to do with that. We simply felt we needed to make a change to put our pitchers in the best position to do what they needed to do in the next six weeks. Source: ESPN Boston
