Pocket guide to McLaren firing dates
DMZ · June 4, 2008 at 6:54 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Dave helpfully pointed out they wouldn’t be firing him tomorrow if only for PR reasons, so I worked this out. Assuming that they want to do the traditional Viking funeral, where they set the manager on fire and the team off on a road trip away from fans, here are your next two opportunities:
June 19th, after the Boston/Toronto road trip and Washington/Florida home stand
July 6/7th, after the Toronto/Detroit home stand, with the team heading to Oakland-KC (handy side benefit here: it’d be a week long road trip followed by the All-Star break, and the new manager doesn’t have to hit Safeco until July 18th)
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I hate McLaren as much as the next Ms fan… but who do you guys want to be the next manager if McLaren gets the axe here pretty soon?
I’m sorry but I just puked in my mouth. I think canning him now is less of a PR ordeal than continuing to expose fans to his droning and moaning.
Viking funeral…Derek has been killing it lately (unless that is part of baseball lore and I just never heard about it)
I don’t really know or care who should succeed McLaren, I honestly just want to see some heads roll. Is that petty of me?
Bavasi should go first!
I understand the thinking behind the “viking funeral” tradition, but if it were me I’d rather fire the old manager at the end of a road trip so that the new manager doesn’t show up at Safeco for the first time with a 2-7 record.
June 19th is too far away. I’m going to need to see blood within about 48 hours if the Ms spend their first pick on a relief pitcher.
Obviously that won’t be Mac’s fault, but I’ll take what I can get.
My daughter’s favorite Care Bear is “Cheer Bear”. I think as he next Ms manager, she (Cheer Bear) would fit into the culture of the Ms organization very well and her rainbow belly badge not only says she’s full of bright, colorful cheer, but it could also help with another recent PR disaster….
Is there any chance at all that there is an organizational purge? Attendance dropping, coupled with the record payroll has to translate into a drop in profits.
Granted, Lincoln has a lot of history with ownership, but I would think there would be limits to their patience. In reading Thiel’s book, its not hard to see that Lincoln has been the primary cause of most of the Mariners problems…are we just going to have to wait 30-40 years for him to retire, or for some passionate local owner to buy the team?
And if Bavasi blames it on Sexson and Washburn and Batista and Vidro and so on then we can get rid of them too
Fire him tonight for embarrassing the organization!
Mac goes from crying at post game interviews to a total profane melt down…
I love the smell of change in the morning…
We need to raise a lot of money for USSM/LL. We should start NOW.
What’s the PR reason for not firing him tomorrow, vs. some other time down the road? Seems to me that speculation about his firing is starting to ramp way up. Seems like the PR issue will be worse if he stays around.
One of the hesitations I have to firing McLaren is the fact that this Blog and other predicted the Mariners would finish 3rd or 4th in the AL West based on intense statistical analysis.
If they factored the manager somehow into that statistic, then I had no idea and will shut up.
Otherwise how could McLaren be first to go?
The draft is tomorrow. They’re not going to hold a joint press conference where they announce that they’ve picked some awesome kid to help the future, and, oh yea, we’re firing the manager too.
Just have to buckle down and get after it.
Man, though – that’d be pretty funny.
“We think this kid could be a big part of our future – but we’re sure John McLaren is not!”
How can you fire McLaren based on Richie striking out 55 times out of 161 AB’s with miserable other stats (baring power)?
How can you fire McLaren for Turbo, (he’s tried many spots)
How can you fire McLaren for having to use Wash, Silva and Batista?
Putz blowing those saves can’t be McLaren.
I mean this team flat out can’t do anything and McLaren’s head will go because of it. Which is wrong.
I don’t think McLaren will be fired at all this year. I think he AND Bavasi will be gone after season’s end, and all the public posturing of backing McLaren and Bavasi is just that- public posturing. As such, rather than have a manager wait for the axe to fall, might as well take them both out at the same time.
(Alternately, someone like PErlozzo will be an interim manager, will fail to do anything noticeable, and will also get 86′ed at season’s end.)
BTW – Hate? That seems needlessly personal to me. I don’t hate him; I just think he’s a completely hopeless manager who is totally out of his depth. Given his length of experience, that suggests he’s not bright enough for the role. It’s a tough world; baseball is chock-full of borderline retarded managers who are paid millions to mismanage better teams than this. McLaren is just not that lucky.
Oh duh. Totally spaced on the draft. Yeah, that would be a bit awkward.
And the reason why I believe that- anyone remember Bob Melvin’s contract extension in 2004? Which the M’s promptly ate come October?
bratman – no
McLaren is a terrible, clueless, directionless manager. In addition to being lumped with a declining, listless team, he has made tactically poor choices time and time again: e.g. letting Cairo take that final AB in a two-run game, when he represented the tying run at home plate, while Sexson and Wlad sat on the bench; starting Cairo at first; starting Raul in left field; DHing Vidro.
No manager can turn a sows ear into a silk purse, but they can play the percentages a darn-sight better than John McLaren.
#13. I don’t know that he should be first but the total lack of comportment shown by publicly ranting at the players, as though Miguel Cairo would hit like a new millenium Killebrew if he was just given sufficient negative reinforcement, makes him seem in over his head. It smells of substitute teacher.
I don’t think he’s a hopeless manager, he’s just got an unbelievable pile of horse dung that he needs to make smell like roses.
It wasn’t Mac that signed Sexson, Vidro, Silva, Batista, Cairo, Washburn, Bloomquist, and what’s looking to be a giant flipping headcase in Bedard, et. al., he’s trying to throw down in a poker game with a three of diamonds, a seven of hearts, a jack of spades, a green reverse uno card, and a packet of airline peanuts….
He’s going to end up taking the fall and it’s a damn shame. We had another “ineffective” manager in Bo-mel, and he’s looking pretty damn good right now….
Howie: “Chuck, what’re we gonna do?”
Chuckie:”About what?”
Howie:”About a new GM and manager!No one wants to come here!”
BillyB: “I spent good money.”
Chuckie: “Mmmmm(slurp slurp) That was a good milk shake!
McLaren: (pacing back and forth in the background, arms up ala The Great Cornhoilio) “…and so on and so forth…and so on and so forth…arrraararraaarrr”
BiilyB: “These nachos are yummy! Stretchy cheese!”
Well put.
I just saw on baseball tonight that Bavasi told the players to sit at their lockers and take blame for this… I wonder if mirrors work for GM’s. Also Bavasi was seen in an expletive rant. Is that a little late?
#26 I heard that too.
Did you hear the last part of it? That Sexson was the only player who chose not to participate… Nice.
26: Actually it was Mac who went on the rant. Bavasi said that it should have come a month ago.
The ownership should clean up the front office. Bring in the Sabermetric analysts and get this ship headed in the right direction.
I would love to know what Lou is telling Mac behind closed doors … I think Mac should be able to keep his job.
He has always had horrible players around him (Grover quitting mid year by surprise). I can’t excuse his lineup cards or some of his decisions during the games but his players / front office really let him down. If you want to say the players let Bavasi down then fine, but Mac has go to the be at the end of the stick.
This is basically King Bevasi/armstrong/lincoln trying to cover up their failures and the pitfalls of crappy players by axing Johnny Mac.
because a manager has never done that before
I want an “Expletive Bill Bavasi!” t-shirt.
here is a summary of the day’s activities.
I’m rooting for Yamauchi to walk onto the field in the second inning of one of Washburns horrible starts, dfa Washburn on the spot and then commence with the rest of the carnage. That would be pretty cool, but it would never happen.
Except that’s not the Mariner way.
And they’ll stick with the Mariner way until the day they die…
McLaren’s rant reads more like a compliment to the players then a real tirade. Nice passion but wrong message… If last night’s game (horrible plate discipline, bad pitching, and sleepy defense) was an example of ‘playing our butts off’ we’ll probably never win a game again.
here is a summary of the day’s activities.
Thanks, msb. We only arrived here in Denver with all our stuff Saturday night and can’t seem to keep track.
Haha. The players were sitting around watching Super Troopers. That’s awesome. If I get to a game back in Seattle this year I’m going to yell, ‘chicken f*ckers!!’.
I’m going with June 19th by the way. Any of you around Denver should plan on being in Castle Rock for celebratory bbq.
yeah in a rush to break that story in ussmariner i said bavasi but it clearly was mac….the manager who said they play hard and dont win. and then said they dont try or something
Who hung Johjima out to dry when certain starting pitchers wanted their own personal catcher? (And then backtracked, which makes him look both clueless and spineless). Who allowed Raul to play half a season last year without doing anything about his lousy production and without noticing that it was because he was concealing an injury? Who constructs lineups apparently using a random number generator? Who is unwilling to tell veterans to do things they don’t want to do for the benefit of the team as a whole? Who is so obsessed with roles it prevents him from employing sensible tactics?
“One player muttered under his breath: “What are we in, kindergarten?”
Wow. I’d really like to know who that dude was. Get him a big wheelbarrow for his balls and have him roll them right out the door, baby. Thanks for playing.
There’s a rumor (emphasis on rumor) that one player ditched on the sit-at-your-locker thing. Furthermore, the player was Sexson. (Again, rumor).
It would be an all-too-convenient series of events if Sexson is “suddenly” DFA’d.
Well, if you think about it, there is a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here. On the one hand, you hire a bunch of veterans because — though they may be expensive and have declining skills and only do what they want — at least they supposedly know how to win games. Then when they don’t, your response is to have them stand in a corner? If you’re going to treat them like kids, then why not hire kids? At least they’re cheaper and more fun. And they won’t mutter when you treat them like that.
Joser….having young players around instead of expensive (expletive) players would be logic. what in recent/nearly all of the teams history makes you think that will happen any time soon?
it wasn’t a rumor, it is right there in the AP report. Bavasi told all the players to actually be at their lockers for the media (which a lot of them have been ducking) and Sexson did what he has apparently been doing all season– he walked past his locker, went into the luchroom, then got on the bus to the plane.
msb said:
Ah, good. I threw in the disclaimers because I couldn’t verify it myself. Misread the report. Thanks for pointing it out.
#24. Melvin was a bad manager when he was with the Mariners. Evidently he, like Hargrove and McLaren, thought platooning went out with Casey Stengel.
Also, he was responsible for that major league record in which the Mariners used only five different starting pitchers all year. That seemed like a bad idea at the time, though much was made of it.
Not a coincidence that one of his nicknames on the blogs was “Box” as in “Dumb as a box of rocks”.
Not sure who the next manager should be, but I would expect the interim manager to be (drum roll please) John Boles.
Currently Special Assistant to Bavasi and former Marlins Manager. He stepped into a mess like this in Florida back in ‘96.
#47
If Melvin was so bad, why is his team doing so GOOD???
32-28 3.5 games ahead, FIRST in thier division.
Hmmm….not so bad if the right PLAYERS and Upper Management is in place huh?
Maybe because Melvin has a much more talented team now than he did with the Mariners?
Bob Melvin was a BAD manager when he was in Seattle. Although he is better now (thanks for using the M’s as a training ground!)- he certainly isn’t great – in fact – he’s just taken his highly talented team from the best record in baseball to a few games over .500 in about two weeks.
Bavasi MUST go – he continues to act like this is an underachieving team of all-stars he has assembled. He can’t even look at this ability lacking forlorn bunch of slow, overpaid, washups and admit they CAN’T PLAY. What is wrong with this guy? Every, and I mean EVERY trade/move he has made has been an absolute, unmitigated disaster. And every move he has made has been rightly questioned by knowing fans who continue to scratch their heads. Seriously, if WE know he’s making stupid moves – how stupid must they be???
McLaren MUST go – his in-game managing is disgraceful. From sitting AJ last year, to using Rick White in pressure situations, to batting Cairo second, to batting Vidro 4th – just a few examples – what more do we have to see?