More McLaren firing rumor mongering
According to someone who speaks regularly with Mariners people, McLaren possibly could soon be removed in coming days, perhaps as early as next week.
Um, that’s pretty thin. That’s deli “so thin I can see through it” thin.
If it is soon it’d likely be after the Angels series, before the next road trip.
Even if McLaren should survive in the short term, it’s going to be extremely difficult for him to dig himself out of the hole of abject underachievement. It’s a shame, too, since the well-liked McLaren waited 20 seasons for the major league managerial job that finally came during the middle of last season, when Mike Hargrove suddenly retired. McLaren responded by leading the team to a 43-41 record the rest of the way.
It’s a shame that he’s not much good at the job he waited so long for? Yeah, that is too bad.
Or it’s shame that he might be fired from that job he’s not good at? I’m not so sympathetic here.
Thing is, the M’s aren’t as bad as they’ve played so far, no matter what cause you want to attribute it to: chemistry, lack of clubhouse leadership, unwilling to win-ed-ness, organizational tolerance for losing… whatever the locker-room theory of the day is. So any change is almost certain to produce better results from the point of the change on out, and then the change will be credited with the improvement and whatever.
Anyway, Heyman’s not a particularly good source, and it’s the only place we’ve seen “could be removed in the next few days” appear so far.
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40 Responses to “More McLaren firing rumor mongering”
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Don’t look for anything to happen until after the season.
Um, okay! I won’t.
hahaha, glad to hear.
The higher up you go, the more responsible they are for this mess …
The players are playing the best they can (even if they suck).
The manager is simply playing the players given to him (and even if he’s not the best, it shouldn’t matter THAT much in the entire scheme of things).
The GM is responsible for handing players to the manager.
The President, CEO, and ultimately upper level ownership, are responsible for the GM.
IMO, Bavasi and Armstrong’s heads need to be put on sticks. Throw Lincoln’s on one too for good measure.
Then turn to lower levels.
What sucks is that if he is fired, its for the wrong reasons. Not because he can’t manage a bullpen and is not qualified to be a major league manager, but it is because the team is playing like crap right now. This season is done, getting a new manager won’t change anything.
#4: (applause in agreement)
The manager is responsible for lineup cards, rotations and bullpen usage. He can’t even do that competently. Very early in the season McLaren did not let Felix finish off a gem in Baltimore. Using useless Cairo at 1b and having him bat 2nd? Or how bout the Bloomquist pinch hit? Decisions that just boggle the mind. McLaren is simply NOT a major league manager. And I’m sorry but I can’t agree that the players are playing the best they can.
I would agree that FO is the real problem here. And when they fire McLaren, the same bunch of moronic cronies will continue to hire the wrong guy.
Larry Stone has a short article about how the Red Sox do things now (in stark contrast to the M’s). The differences in front offices between Boston and Seattle are immense but I really think the key he hit on is the development of home-grown players. This blog will go batty in a few weeks during the amateur draft and reading all of Dave’s observations. The connection fans make to their organization going out and identifying, selecting and ultimately grooming an athlete to represent the team/city is emotional. I still think Bavasi ripped a big hole in our connection to the organization when he gave up Adam Jones and those young pitchers. And now that gaping hole left in the bullpen is just salt in the wound.
Forget clubhouse chemistry for a minute and consider fan chemistry. I’ve been loathe to even watch the Mariners this season. I’ve slid further and further away from this team with each day Bavasi has been on board. I miss caring about what happens with Seattle Baseball.
Meh – McLaren should be fired. It’s interesting to see that they are going to do it. Still, it is too bad that he’s being fired as a scapegoat rather than because he is terrible at his job.
Actually maybe that’s not too bad for him. Fired as a scapegoat is far more likely to land you a job than being fired for sucking.
With regards to every other comment that has been posted and will be tomorrow, I think we all agree that the entire front office staff (Latin American scouts not included) needs to be replaced, but until there are signs that it is going to happen, I think it would be more productive to discuss things related to McLaren, like his managerial abilities or who his replacement would be, or something. But that’s just my two cents.
The biggest potential downside of firing McLaren (and he does need to go) is if the team somehow starts playing better, say, .500 ball. What message does this send to the front office? “Hey, it was the manager. Congrats, Bill, and here’s 2009 to try it again.” That’s what I can easily imagine them concluding based on past decisions, anyway.
Sports Illustrated? Paying attention to my Mariners? I’d be impressed if it wasn’t just your typical dirt mongering.
John McLaren definitely deserves to be fired. I can think of way too many reasons for it, except one: the Mariners record. I can only give him so much guff for it before I look at this team and say “well, yeah…”.
I didn’t say McLaren shouldn’t be fired, however, he’s really no more than a deer in the headlights … a scapegoat … who really hasn’t done that well, but the people above him are the ones ultimately responsible for this season.
The players are lowest on the list. The manager next up. The GM next up. The President next up. The CEO next up. The ownership group next up.
Why can’t we get someone from Microsoft to buy out the old man from Nintendo?
someone from Microsoft is the 2nd greatest shareholder of the Mariners. That hasn;t had much effect.
This comment does not apply to 99.9% of the readers.
To the reader who has a gazillion dollars, could you please buy a majority share of the Ms and put Dave or DMZ in charge? Pretty please?
“I still think Bavasi ripped a big hole in our connection to the organization when he gave up Adam Jones and those young pitchers. And now that gaping hole left in the bullpen is just salt in the wound.
Forget clubhouse chemistry for a minute and consider fan chemistry. I’ve been loathe to even watch the Mariners this season. I’ve slid further and further away from this team with each day Bavasi has been on board. I miss caring about what happens with Seattle Baseball.”
amen, brother. these incompetent bastards need to be put out of their misery. clearly the season can’t be salvaged, but the franchise can be aimed in a new direction. hire a young GM with fresh ideas and modern methods and start Spring Training ’09 immediately.
I’ll be glad to see McLaren go. Sure, he’s only part of the problem, but he’s also one of the most easily replaced parts. Listening to him speak or reading his interviews it’s clear he’s basically a pushover. Whatever magic a manager can bring to the team’s attitude and approach to the game is absent from his repertoire.
If he’s fired my guess is that this organization bumps up one of the other coaches to “maintain continuity.” My money is on Perlozzo, but I suppose Stottlemyre is a possibility since he’s so highly regarded and has been successful in his role in the past.
There are three or four people from MIcrosoft in the ownership. There’s also John Stanton (wireless) and the Real Networks guy.
If they wanted to pool their petty cash and buy out Nintendo, they could.
The real source of the Mariners problems is above Bavasi. Part of the reason he has made trades like the Bedard deal is that he is given instructions that the team must try to win THIS year. In fact, until this year I think he has done a decent job rebuilding the farm system given his orders to compete THIS year. I don’t think he is a particularly good GM, but things may have been very different now if he was originally instructed to take the time necessary to build a team that will be competitive for 10 years.
should we count it as East Coast Bias that the national rags are focussing on the Mets, and no one (aside from Heyman) is writing about the complete collapse of the Ms?
Which retread on the bench will replace McLaren? I hope its not Riggleman–his pinch hitting Bloomquist for Clement should mean he forfeited any chance of becoming a MLB manager ever again.
Should McLaren be fired? Absolutely. He was an interim manager after Grover left and I’ve yet to see or hear anything from him that makes me view him as a “real” manager. His handling of players and the bullpen, and…well… yes, absolutely.
The problem then becomes who will hire his replacement…not who will BE his replacement. I think it’s very unlikely that Bavasi and the front office would find and hire that someone who would re-energize the players and put things on the right track at the manager level. More likely we get someone else who goes along with the program.
McLaren needs to go, but he should go as part of a larger house cleaning that goes at least as high up as Bavasi.
What’s going to happen is, McLaren’s going to get fired, and the club is going to get better, not because of the manager but because they will regress, er, progress towards the mean, and that slight improvement will be attributed to the new manager even though it’s nothing to do with him, and Bavasi’s job will be saved.
Boo hiss.
This team will ALWAYS choose the wrong path. ALWAYS.
Because that’s their team philosophy. They are stuck in the 20th Century and refuse to consider that the times have passed them by.
Perotto’s spreading these rumours now, too. Except he expects a joint McLaren/Bavasi firing.
#19. The same sort of thing supposedly happened to the Red Sox in 1995. Duquette got lucky on a whole bunch of cheap pickups and the Sox won the AL East. But they had a crappy team and weren’t anywhere close to having a championship team. But, as the story goes, John Harrington, the defacto owner then wanted Duquette to go for it and win now. The rebuilding of the farm system was never really done. That 87 win season last year might have been the worst thing that could happen to the Mariners.
Sure, I’d like to blame ownership for not taking a more active role and not firng the FO. We need guys who can properly evaluate talent, not guys who value BA, perceived defensive efficiency, and “intangibles”.
I also blame them for shoving Kenji down our throats, I don’t mind the extension, but if he’s old, and in a big suckfest, no need to give him 3 years and $8 million per. If they love Japanese players so much, why didn’t se try harder for Fukudome, Matsuzaka, Kuroda, or any of the relief pitchers who seem to be doing so well?
Obviously Mclaren is one of the worst managers in the majors, but this team probably wouldn’t have made the playoffs anyways. Especially if we keep signing the Washburns, Silvas, Batistas, and Vidros of the league.
I don’t care who’s the Mariners manager now or who might be the M’s next manager because even while Lou Piniella was here the field manager was destined to fail because of the rest of the organization behind him.
Lou knew that, got frustrated, and got out; Mike Hargrove finally got a clue and he got out, too, before he went crazy. You can see that crazed desperate look in McLaren’s eyes now, too. Unfortunately for him, because this is his first opportunity for managing at the MLB level, he’ll have to be fired…have the uniform torn off his back…before he concedes defeat.
At least that’s my opinion… 🙂
Karen, while I agree with your point in general (including why Lou left), I wouldn’t say Piniella was destined to fail. He had a pretty good stretch between 1995 and 2001 (anyone remember when this same organization won 116 games? I know, I can’t hardly believe it myself). Lou is a great manager, one who knows a helluva lot about baseball AND how to push the right buttons and manage clubhouse chemistry, if that’ what you want to call it. That’s why he’s pretty much continuously been employed as a manager league manager for 20 years, and why he will be enshrined in Cooperstown someday.
Lou took a team with no history of success and turned things around. He didn’t win the World Series, but I wouldn’t call it “failure” based on that. They should put a statue of Piniella outside Safeco. What I fear is that, based on the FO we have, we may never reach those heights again. Or maybe when I’m 80. 🙁
My .O2.
#23 Agreed, this is the most likely path.
At least to the end of the season, the best we could hope for is a manager change, which is by no means enough, but since its all we will get, I’ll take it.
The season is lost. If replacing the manager makes no significant difference and they end the season well below 500 THEN we may see some changes that might go toward actually fixing the problem.
But realistically, who could you put in the front office that would make any significant change? There are no stat-head friendly FO guys available that I can see, and as long as the M’s keep running the farm system to grow trade-bait there is little prospect for significant change.
If you mean the kind of new-breed all-the-information-I-can-get-including-stats GM candidates, there are a ton. They’re just not bandied about as openly as the retread guys.
Look at Tampa: that whole front office is composed of people who got almost no ink ever, and they’ve done a great job turning that team around.
You can find good people if you know what to look for.
Well I did qualify my statement with “That I can see”.
These guys are invisible to Joe Random Baseball Fan, and probably to the ownership as well.
In the unlikely event several of these guys were interviewed and/or selected the press and the entire fan base (except ussm) would do a collective “WHO?”.
You hit the nail on the head: nobody knows what to look for. I don’t. And you have offered no names…. (hint).
Yeah man. Make the front office looks like chumps lol (more than they already do)
“We aren’t firing anyone”
Later that week…”We decided to let Mac go” ROFL. That would be just sweet. I hope they don’t stop there though. Kick out bavasi, Armstrong and Lincoln too. Obviously Lincoln is the hardest to fire, but Bavasi and Armstrong aren’t, so get them out of here too.
I dunno if anyone is thinking about replacements…but what about Jay Buhner or Mark Maclemore. Obviously niether have any experience which bit us in the butt with Mac. But man Jay Buhner would just be awesome.
Oh, there have been names. The most-desired possibility has been Chris Antonetti out of the Cleveland organization, but there have been others mentioned as well.
Mclemore*
Interesting quote from McLaren in Usatoday:
“It’s not a real good feeling knowing there’s a target on our back,” McLaren said Monday in a telephone interview. “I don’t even read the computer anymore. Those blogs will eat you up, no matter what.”
Meaning, I guess, that McLaren used to read the blogs. Weird.
He is probably reading the official MLB blogs. I think more people in baseball should, keeps you in touch with the fan base…and thats good.
34- I saw the USSM article on that. What are the chances the Lincoln would hire him? Realistically?
I’m sorry, but… what possible insight is McLaren going to get that will help him do his job better from reading the “official MLB blogs”?
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