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Post by psuhistory on Oct 5, 2015 12:20:35 GMT -5
Williams first postseason casualty, not a surprise...
Washington Nationals Fire Manager Matt Williams
ESPN.com News Services, 10/5/2015
The Washington Nationals fired manager Matt Williams and his coaching staff after a season in which the team went from World Series favorite to failing to make the playoffs, general manager Mike Rizzo announced Monday.
Williams, the 2014 National League Manager of the Year, guided the Nationals to a 83-79 mark and finished seven games back of the New York Mets in the NL East. The team won 13 fewer games this season than in 2014, which was the second-largest drop among National League teams (behind the Brewers, at 14).
According to ESPN Stats & Information, Williams is the first manager in MLB history to be fired the season after winning the award, which was first presented in 1983.
The Nationals have called a news conference for 1 p.m. to discuss the changes.
"We had some things that went sideways and we had a whole bunch of injuries, and not much you can do about that except adjust and move on," Williams said Sunday after a season-ending 1-0 loss to the Mets. "We're all disappointed in the outcome. ... It all ends very abruptly."
Rizzo had said Sunday that the team was prepared to make a quick decision about Williams' future, saying it wasn't "going to let people twist in the wind."
Williams guided the Nationals to the East division title with an NL-best 96-66 record in 2014 -- his first season on the job. In February, the Nationals exercised the option on his contract for 2016. His deal also included a team option for 2017.
Washington was a World Series favorite in spring training -- the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook had the Nationals at 5-1 to win it all -- but the team struggled with injuries, poor play and internal turmoil.
"We'll get all of our baseball operations people together, and we'll begin the process of sorting out what went right, what went wrong, what we need and what we need to do to go forward to become the championship organization that the Washington fan base deserves," Rizzo said Sunday.
In addition to firing Williams, the Nationals did not renew the contracts of bench coach Randy Knorr, pitching coach Steve McCarthy, hitting coach Rick Schu, third-base coach Bobby Henley, first-base coach Tony Tarasco, bullpen coach Matt LeCroy and advance scout Mark Weidemaier.
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Post by psuhistory on Oct 5, 2015 18:10:28 GMT -5
If ritual sacrifice is more your thing...
Interim Manager Pat Murphy Fired as Underachieving Padres Seek Jolt
Associated Press, 10/5/2015
SAN DIEGO -- Admitting his San Diego Padres "didn't have the right formula" this season, general manager A.J. Preller says he's looking for a manager who can get the underachieving team to play at a high level.
Preller fired interim manager Pat Murphy on Sunday after the Padres finished 74-88 and fourth in the NL West, 18 games behind the division champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Padres were a disappointment. Despite the addition of stars such as Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and James Shields and a bump in payroll past the $100 million mark for the first time, the Padres had their worst finish in four years.
San Diego has had five straight losing seasons and has missed the playoffs for nine straight years.
Preller's aggressive offseason moves didn't pay off. He fired Bud Black as manager on June 15, when the team was 32-33. The next day, he promoted Murphy from his job as manager of Triple-A El Paso.
The Padres were 42-54 under Murphy, who had no big league experience. Murphy was a former head coach at Notre Dame and Arizona State.
Preller said Monday that it wasn't the record under Murphy or any specific thing that got him fired. He said it was "more just looking overall at somebody we feel will be a little different fit, a better fit going forward. That's what we're going to find."
Asked what he was looking for in a new manager, Preller's answer was telling.
"The biggest thing we're looking for is somebody that has presence, somebody that has energy, somebody to get our players to play at high level, somebody the players are going to respect and want to play for, somebody the organization can rally around and can establish a culture."
Asked if the players didn't respect Murphy and didn't play at their highest level for him, Preller suggested that the entire baseball operations didn't get the team to play to expectations.
"I do think we feel like there's talent in that room. ... It's hard to say the guys underachieved or anything like that. I think just overall it just didn't work," Preller said. "It didn't mesh, it didn't merge. We didn't get guys to play as well as they did maybe at some other stops. ... We just never got that group to play at the level we were hoping to get to all year."
The Padres topped out at 10-5 on April 21. The newcomers Preller brought in didn't turn out to be the impact players everyone expected them to be.
Last week, Wil Myers, who missed significant time with a wrist injury, said: "I think we did underachieve as a team but I know that everybody here's going to come back and work hard this offseason and make it work."
Murphy said last week that he didn't really get a chance to put his stamp on the team.
"I don't feel like I really got to display what I can do, for a lot of different reasons," Murphy said. "It was a difficult situation. .... The boat was already moving. It was hard to learn everything I had to learn and affect change. I don't feel I did very much that I know what I'm capable of."
Preller said firing Black and hiring Murphy when he did were "the right calls at the right time." He said he had no regrets.
"Obviously we didn't have the right formula here this year," said Preller, who was hired in August 2014. "Clearly we didn't have a winning dynamic this year and that's something we've got to get better going forward."
The division rival Arizona Diamondbacks said they'd granted permission for the Padres to interview third base coach Andy Green. The Diamondbacks said the Padres hadn't asked permission to interview Triple-A manager Phil Nevin, a former Padres player.
It's possible Padres bench coach Dave Roberts and hitting coach Mark Kotsay will get interviews.
Former Texas manager Ron Washington could be a candidate based on Preller having worked for the Rangers before being hired by the Padres. Washington, now Oakland's third base coach, said Monday that he hadn't been contacted by San Diego.
Another possible candidate is former Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek, who's spent the last three seasons as a special assistant in Boston's front office. Padres President Mike Dee is a former chief operating officer of the Red Sox.
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Post by kinsm on Oct 5, 2015 18:49:45 GMT -5
Marlins article? Dan Jennings isn't going to manage next season.
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Post by psuhistory on Oct 6, 2015 22:02:23 GMT -5
Twofer: promoted and asked not to return on the same day...
Dan Jennings Won't Return as Marlins Manager, Asked to Resume GM Role
ESPN.com News Services, 10/6/2015
Dan Jennings will not return as the Miami Marlins' manager in 2016 but has been asked to resume his role as the team's general manager.
Marlins president David Samson announced Tuesday that the franchise has started its search for a new manager. Jennings has not decided whether he will return to the team, according to president of baseball operations Michael Hill.
Jennings made the unusual move from GM to manager when the Marlins fired Mike Redmond in May after a 16-22 start.
The change failed to spark a turnaround, and the injury-riddled Marlins finished at 71-91, their sixth consecutive losing season.
Jennings has been with the Marlins since 2002 and is under contract through 2018.
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Post by kinsm on Oct 9, 2015 17:44:32 GMT -5
The Mariners have now formally announced that McClendon will not return in 2016. Additionally, pitching coach Rick Waits and coach Chris Prieto have been reassigned within the organization, while bench coach Trent Jewett, third base coach Rich Donnelly, outfield coach Andy Van Slyke and bullpen coach Mike Rojas have all been let go. Hitting coach Edgar Martinez and infield coach Chris Woodward were each invited back for their current roles in 2016.
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Post by psuhistory on Oct 10, 2015 0:07:02 GMT -5
Seattle will still owe McClendon $1m and change for 2016...
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Post by kinsm on Oct 22, 2015 23:54:24 GMT -5
You may add the Dodgers to this list.
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Post by psuhistory on Oct 23, 2015 4:03:20 GMT -5
If no one else is interested in discussing him, I'll post an article about Mattingly at some point. The idea was to promote discussion, not to create yet another thread in which there's only one person posting...
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Post by kinsm on Oct 23, 2015 4:43:52 GMT -5
If no one else is interested in discussing him, I'll post an article about Mattingly at some point. The idea was to promote discussion, not to create yet another thread in which there's only one person posting... that is pretty much every thread right now |
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Post by psuhistory on Oct 23, 2015 5:43:24 GMT -5
If no one else is interested in discussing him, I'll post an article about Mattingly at some point. The idea was to promote discussion, not to create yet another thread in which there's only one person posting... that is pretty much every thread right now So if you want to talk about the Dodgers, post something here and try to get it started. If there are interesting topics and actual questions, people will engage with them... Sometimes it's unclear what people want to discuss here. Articles are posted as if they speak for themselves... |
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Post by redsfanman on Oct 23, 2015 11:34:55 GMT -5
I'll say something. So far the team whose moves I'm most envious of are the Brewers, with new GM David Stearns and new Assistant GM Matt Arnold. So far all signs are that they hired a pretty much perfect pair for their current circumstances.
David Stearns is 30. He's a 2007 Harvard graduate who worked from 2008-11 in the MLB Commissioner's Office, 2 years as Director of Baseball Operations for the Indians, and then as Assistant GM for the Astros, under Jeff Luhnow. Smart young guy.
Matt Arnold is 36 and had been in the Rays organization since 2007, finishing up as Director of Player and Personnel. At one point he also worked for 3 other teams... Dodgers, Rangers, and Reds. His background is in scouting but he's worked to negotiate contracts with the Rays. Another smart young guy.
For years I've thought the Brewers were a joke. I seemingly kept hearing every year about how the Brewers were a really good MLB team with a chance to win the division, despite only making the playoffs once in the past 7 years. A 96 win 2011 team was impressive, but that was also all the success they had. For a few years they seemed to make lots of win-now moves, trading prospects for overrated playoff runs that merely kept the team around .500. Generally they seemed to place too much emphasis on hitting and too little on pitching, the opposite of what made the Reds successful during the same period. I've said for years they needed to give up their sustained mediocrity and go for a rebuild.
Anyway, the Brewers have taken some big steps in the right direction over the past few months. I like their Gomez-Fiers for OF Brett Phillips, OF Domingo Santana, LHP Josh Hader, and RHP Adrian Houser trade (far more than the Gomez-Zack Wheeler option discussed shortly before). OF Gerardo Parra for RHP Zach Davies was also a nice move. Their farm system has pretty quickly changed from terrible to full of promising hitters, although somewhat lacking in pitching. They still have some valuable trade chips to move, like Jonathan Lucroy, so their rebuild isn't complete.
Over the next year I think they should and will pursue the full scale rebuild as demonstrated by the Astros and Cubs, and I think they made great decisions in choosing a GM and AGM to pull that off. I think the Brewers are finished with sustained mediocrity, and will head a more extreme direction. Down, then back up. Building a strong pitching staff will take lots of work, but they can probably do it eventually.
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Post by redsfanman on Oct 23, 2015 12:06:16 GMT -5
Mariners To Name Scott Servais Manager
By Steve Adams | October 23, 2015 at 8:56am CDT
The Mariners will hire Angels assistant GM Scott Servais as their new manager, reports Mike DiGiovanna of the L.A. Times (via Twitter). An official announcement is expected to come later today. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reported last night that Servais had emerged as the front-runner for the position. DiGiovanna adds in a second tweet that Angels special assistant Tim Bogar, who had been a finalist for the managerial opening, will be Servais’ bench coach. Both men worked closely with new GM Jerry Dipoto while he was GM of the Angels.
Servais, 48, is a former Major League catcher that enjoyed an 11-year playing career. He began his career as an executive working in the Rangers’ front office before being hired away by the Angels to serve as assistant GM and oversee the team’s scouting and player development operations. This offseason, Servais has interviewed for the Padres’ managerial role and the Angels’ GM vacancy, though the latter of the two positions went to former Yankees AGM Billy Eppler.
The Servais decision will continue the increasingly popular trend of hiring rookie managers, as we’ve seen names such as Mike Matheny, Walt Weiss, Robin Ventura, Brad Ausmus, Craig Counsell, Matt Williams and Paul Molitor hired without prior managerial experience in recent years. Some of those names (Williams and Molitor) did come with coaching experience, and others (Ausmus and Counsell) were similar to Servais in that each had experience working in a front office.
Bogar formerly served as the Rangers’ bench coach and was Texas’ interim manager when Ron Washington abruptly resigned late in the 2014 season. However, upon being passed over for the permanent opening, which went to Jeff Banister — Bogar did interview and was a consideration — he joined the Angels’ front office as a special assistant to Dipoto. He’ll now be with his third AL West club in a three-year span.
Adding Servais and Bogar to the Mariners’ dugout will give Dipoto a rapport with his field staff that he very obviously lacked in Anaheim. Dipoto’s summer resignation from his post as Angels GM was said to be fueled largely by feuds with manager Mike Scioscia over his distaste for being provided with analytical input from the Halos’ front office, and reports have since indicated that pitching coach Mike Butcher was also resistant to receiving that type of input from Dipoto and the rest of the front office. Servais and Bogar figure to be much more open to that style of input, which should be a significant departure from former Mariners skipper Lloyd McClendon, who employed a more traditional approach to his on-field duties.
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Shrug. If I were a Mariners fan I doubt I'd be excited. It's hard to believe that the only person able to integrate 'analytical input' was somebody with zero coaching or managerial experience and a completely unremarkable playing career. Several of the inexperienced managers hired in recent years have had some expertise in something that got them the job - like Price's excellent reputation as pitching coach - but I have no idea what ever distinguished Scott Servais as a good candidate. While I'm at it, after praising the Brewers in a previous post, I think Craig Counsell was also a silly managerial choice. While I envy the Brewers' newly remodeled front office, I don't envy their manager.
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Post by Lark11 on Oct 28, 2015 23:23:05 GMT -5
William Ladson @washingnats 2h2 hours ago
I have confirmed that Bud Black is the new manager of the #Nationals. Great move by the Nationals. @jameswagnerwp first. #Nats #MLB
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Post by Lark11 on Oct 29, 2015 8:43:49 GMT -5
Joel Sherman @joelsherman1 14m14 minutes ago
Can confirm expected: #Mattingly named #Marlns mgr @molly_knight 1st. And unexpected: Anthopoulos out as #Bluejays GM @shidavidi 1st
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Post by Lark11 on Oct 29, 2015 8:50:40 GMT -5
Bernie Pleskoff @berniepleskoff 3m3 minutes ago
Reports this morning indicate Don Mattingly will become the #Marlins new manager with a four year contract. Not confirmed yet.
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