McLaren fired, Riggleman in
DMZ · June 19, 2008 at 10:09 am · Filed Under Mariners
So says the hot rumor. I guess he got the predicted June 19th viking funeral after all.
11:30 press conference.
Was it the open letter on lineups? I was only trying to be helpful.
As Dave noted earlier, the reason to keep McLaren around would be to let an incoming GM pick their own candidate: if Riggleman does better the rest of the season, which should happen, then the thought is it’s harder to fire him. I’m not sure that’ll deter whoever takes over, of course.
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127 Responses to “McLaren fired, Riggleman in”
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jsa, if Derek’s polite, carefully worded post — and you know he’s joking about causing the firing, right? — was an insult, then it’s impossible to criticize a manager’s decisions without insulting him. Is that actually what you mean? If so, you must shake your head sadly an awful lot at sportswriting of all kinds.
Regarding Randolph: If you had to watch him manage every day, you wouldn’t want him. I don’t think he’s an awful manager, but if you want to be driven batty by constant small-ball managing, hire Randolph.
[linked already in another thread]
Hasn’t Riggleman had a decent reputation for talent evaluation? I could be wrong, it’s been awhile since I’ve read anything on him.
What scraps said.
That post was intended to be entirely sincere and helpful, something Mac could read, consider, and use as a jumping point for further reference, and if you read it as snark, that makes me sad.
I don’t know what else to say.
Yes, I know it was joking.
But a polite carefully worded post explaining baseball basics that EVERY high-school coach SHOULD KNOW, to a guy that has been in the dugout as long as those three guys, CAN and PROBABLY WAS taken (by Mac, if no one else) to be more insulting than just asking him what color the sun is on any planet where Vidro bats second.
And, for the record, yes I do shake my head at lots of sports writing. (And how did you sneak sportswriting by your spellchecker?) But I don’t shake my head much at DMZ’s writing.
The post was indeed well written. It was polite. It was correct. OK?
I’m just saying it came across as the overly patronizing hallway lecture delivered by the Assistant Principal to an misbehaving 6th grader. Had DMZ just posted it, without personally directing it as an open letter to Mac it would not have appeared that way.
I would hope this site never becomes such that one cannot give feedback to Dave or DMZ.
What’s patronizing about offering help to someone who clearly needs it?
explaining baseball basics that EVERY high-school coach SHOULD KNOW
You’re both right. McLaren should know this stuff; it’s also pretty clear he doesn’t. Just because you’ve been around a long time, doesn’t make you good; I’ve interviewed plenty of experienced job candidates who didn’t meet the bar for an entry-level position. There’s just no rational explanation for putting one of the worst hitters in the league in the 2 or 3 spot night-in, night-out, other than “I don’t understand lineup construction” or “I think Jose Vidro is a lot better than his stat line”.
In the first place, I don’t know what you’re spellchecker uses, but I use Webster’s 11th New Collegiate Dictionary, the publishing industry standard, and it is happy with “sportswriting”.
In the second place, I only care about the treatment of compounds — open, hyphenated, or closed — when I’m being paid to in my profession (copy editor and proofreader).
In the first place, this is a fallacy: criticizing your criticism is not the same as saying no criticism should be made.
In the second place, don’t you find it at all inconsistent to say that you ought to be able to criticize Derek on the basics of polite writing but he oughtn’t criticize McLaren on the basics of lineup construction?
Cripes, “you’re” should be “your”. It never fails: mention that you’re a proofreader, make a stupid mistake.
Different people take things different ways. He saw it as patronizing, which I can see and understand, you didn’t. Not a big deal.
Intelligent feedback always seems well received.
Joey Cora as a possible manager? Count me in on the bandwagon.
I haven’t seen Riggleman really manage day in and day out, but I can say he was Jim Tracy’s bench coach. The possibility of having intelligence leach out of his head by the sheer colossal magnitude of the vortex of suck that was Jim Tracy is substantial. Nevertheless, this is absolutely a temporary decision, and everyone knows it.
Are there anything other than sentimental reasons to want to hire Joey Cora? This is a sincere question; I honestly don’t know, and would welcome good reasons.
Yikes. Why on earth would we want Joey Cora? I mean I miss the guy too, but let’s just hang a big poster of his face somewhere in Safeco and hire somebody else, yeah?
Cora has been talked up quite a bit as future manager material, especially since the White Sox won the World Series. I think people implicitly assume somebody has to be keeping the ship on course while Ozzie goes nuts.
Riggleman was absolutely by-the-book in on-field tactics in his days with the Cubs. Uninspired, but serviceable. Personally, though, I think on-field tactics is just a small protion of what makes a good manager – maybe 10%. Far more important are his abilities to get the most out of the players he has, support his coaches, and deal with management (especially as they make personnel decisions). I don’t know anything about how well Riggleman does the 90%.
the three minor league managerial stints, as well as his time as GM of the Caguas baseball team …
Huh. I guess I’m pretty much the opposite. I don’t think managers have the ability to get the most out of their players; I doubt there’s ever been a manager who has a demonstrable record of their players performing better than they did under other managers. All I ask from a manager in these areas is that he not do damage: not do things that harm his players.
Whereas tactics, minor as it may be compared to the skills of the players, does make some difference in runs scored and allowed. So give me a tactical manager, regardless of the other stuff. At worst, that gets you Billy Martin. At best it gets you Earl Weaver.
I’d like to see Cora at the helm as well. He has worked his way up through progressively responsible coaching jobs (3rd base coach, bench coach) and frankly it is probably time for him to get a shot by someone. It might as well be us.
I think he might suprise us with his methods (and might not too), and the sentimental aspect of him being the Skip, sadly, is a fringe benefit that might freaking matter at this point. Yeah, I’d buy a ticket to see Cora yank Silva in the 4th inning after another lousy outing.
Bring on Mighty Mouse.
That would be an interesting study, and I’d love to see it. Obviously, my feeling is that it would come out the other way, but we’re both talking through our hats, which is why I qualified it as a clear opinion.
I think it is demonstrably true, though, that most managers have a hand in personnel decisions. Not about what to pay players, perhaps, but over what type of player the team pursues. Who goes between the lines is the most important thing for any team.
‘Mere’ tactics involve the accumulation — or loss — of fractional win expectancies here and there, inning after inning, all season long. In addition to that you have to manage day to day, directly and through your staff, 25 guys, many of whom still are pumping enough testosterone to fly the space shuttle into low earth orbit, some of whom didn’t exactly get 1600 on their SAT’s, some of whom have got some or all of the regular problems plus they barely speak the mother tongue and all of whom, even on a team of losers, are confident and relatively accomplished athletes. While I, too, doubt you can get more out of Willie Bloomquist than God has given him, I think poor managing either tactically or tactily can result in getting less out of Willie than there was to start with. Again, all of this occurs in fractions of win expectancies played out over 162 games (or more, unless you’re a Mariner fan) but I think both parts of the equation can be real enough to effect outcomes.
Here.
That would be an interesting study, and I’d love to see it.
There’s just not enough data, and way too many confounding variables. Teams that change managers in the offseason generally have different rosters; players who go to play for other managers have different teammates and are at different points on their career arcs. Even if you looked strictly at teams that switched managers mid-season and kept the same roster, there’s too much else that changes for it to be meaningful — they don’t play the same teams, and the teams they do play both before and after have changed somewhat as well (you don’t even see the same pitchers necessarily). Not to mention that, aside from the 2007 M’s, how many teams have changed managers when they weren’t doing anything but stinking up the basement in the standings, where some regression to the mean is almost inevitable anyway?
A manager probably has some effect, and there may even be some way to measure it, but I don’t know how you would.
Remember that we’re talking about the effect of a manager, but we don’t necessarily need to study only managerial changes on a single team. Studying the effects on players who change teams may be useful, too, if controlled for player ages and stadium effects and so on. So I don’t think the problem is lack of data so much as the surfeit of variables.
I take it for granted that the design of such a study would be very difficult, which is why we have never seen one.
Oh ho ho, and that’s where you’re wrong. This has been studied.
Anyone read Jim Caple’s piece on ESPN.com? Paints quite a bleak picture. Really makes you loathe Bavasi more, considering the Mt. Everest-sized enormosity of his ineptitude. Things should not have been allowed to get this bad. Being called laughingstock would be a compliment.
As long as Lincoln and Armstrong are the gruesome twosome calling the shots, may we hope and pray for some luck to get a saber-guy, and not a retread of the Krivsky/Bonifay/LaMar stinky mold. That said, we all wait with baited breath that they’ve actually learned something…
With Mat Olkin having as small a voice in the organization as he does, should we have any faith in anyone worthwhile as GM?
As a self-employed business owner myself, I truly cannot understand how a business person can look at themselves and their competition and seemingly never ask the question, “what can we learn from them to improve our own business?” All we hear, like in Howard Lincoln’s response to that fan letter, references their commitment to their high payroll. I honestly could give a s*** less how much money they spend on payroll if they don’t know how to spend it wisely. Lincoln needs to understand this and not sound so hollow. My parents taught me to think before I speak. Apparently, Lincoln’s philosophy is “ignorance is bliss.”