According to Major League sources close to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports, Terry Francona is expected to leave his position as the manager of the Boston Red Sox as soon as Friday.  The Red Sox hold a club option for Francona for 2012 and 2013, so the team basically would not exercise their options for those season.

Rosenthal speculates that the Chicago White Sox and the Cubs could be possible destinations for Francona.  The latter option would require the Cubs to fire incumbent manager Mike Quade.

Red Sox GM, Theo Epstein, said that “nobody blames what happened in September on Tito.”

“That would be totally irresponsible and shortsighted,” Epstein said. “As an organization we have to look at our successes and failures, and what happened in 2011 — we take full responsibility for it. All of us collectively look at it as a failure. I’m the general manager, so I take more responsibility than anybody.

“But I know we don’t believe in scapegoats, particularly blaming Tito for what happened in September. We all failed collectively. We’re all together in this; we’ve got to live with that. We’re not pointing fingers at any one person in particular.”

Image by charliekwalker under the Creative Commons License.