Bye, Bye Brenly (D-Backs Question)

In My Humble Opinion
1

So Jerry Colangelo announced last Friday that D-Backs manager Bob Brenly got the pink slip and has been replaced with interim manager Al Pedrique.

Colangelo stated that he did not feel that the D-Backs failure to produce this year had much to do with Brenly, and even attributed a heart-wrenchingly bad season to injuries and bad luck. If this were the case, why fire Brenly?

I’m fairly new to the world of baseball, what were Colangelo’s motivations behind replacing Brenly?

Do you think this was a good decision?

Could God himself save this season for the D-Backs? If not, why take the big man out half-way through the season? It doesn’t make much sense to me, really.

Any insight is muchly appreciated.

2

I don’t think this really has a factual answer, but it seems to me the trend in baseball in recent years is to fire the manager if the team is underperforming, regardless of the circumstances. Maybe in this case they had already made a decision to start rebuilding next season, and since this season isn’t going well, decided to get an early start by hiring a new manager (Brenly’s contract was up at the end of this season). But that’s just speculation.

Baseball analysts don’t think much of Brenly as a manager. Here’s a Baseball Prospectus story from the 2001 World Series. Many have said the DBacks won despite Brenly. So it may have been a good decision, even if the timing seems odd.