Here’s a nugget about the Cubs which probably doesn’t warrant it’s own thread but needs to be shared.
ESPN’s Page 2 has this article which highlights the real power of the Cubs futility. The stink of failure is strong I tells ya.
Yeah, because Detroit is just a HUGE market these days. :rolleyes:
Macha is not that good of a manager. He quit last season and came back for some reason. His players couldn’t stand him, he rode his pitchers pretty hard (Duchscherer, Witasick, Harden and Street all spent time on the DL this year) and he couldn’t win against a wounded Tiger team.
I’ll be surprised if Macha is skippering a MLB club next year.
I’ve been going around saying exactly the same thing, except that I don’t think it’ll take three years. I still can’t figure out why Piniella gets the adulation he does. His major talent in life seems to be wearing out his welcome. If it happened sooner rather than later in Chicago, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
That’s one of the reasons I’m glad Piniella didn’t wind up managing the Yankees.
Seems we accept this from managers. The Lions go back and forth with diciplinarians and players coaches. Fact is upper management is inept. Billy Beane is the brains behind the As and he does it by embracing technology. He recognizes his financial limitations and has developed ways to cope.
Most teams are run by the good old boys network. They recycle coaches and promote favorite players. No way to run a railroad.
Wonder what Beane would do with a decent budget.
Detroit is one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the United States. It’s a bigger market than Oakland, with a vastly better stadium.
As to Piniella, I’m not sure I buy the criticisms of his managing style. You can say he’ll burn out his team in three years, but that’s not consistent with his record. He managed Seattle for ten years and they DIDN’T burn out at all; his ninth season there they went 116-46, and his last season they still won 93 games. The only other places he’s managed three years were Cincinnati, where they went 90-72 in his third year before he accepted the Seattle job, and Tampa Bay, where they were just bad the whole time but were at least not quite as awful as they were under anyone else.
I think the best criticism of this move is gonzomax’s. The Cubs aren’t hiring Piniella because they need his particular approach, they’re hiring him because he’s a name brand and that’s about the maximum brainpower of the Cubs’ management; “Piniella famous. He big manager guy. We hire him!”
The Cubs didn’t finish 66-96 because Dusty Baker is a bad manager, they finished 66-96 because they have so many shitty players. They have an absolutely brutal lineup, with one of the NL’s worst-hitting outfields and no shortstop. The pitching staff is dreadful and its future is largely in the hands of B- prospects who can’t find the strike zone with a GPS. The Cubs needs to stop wasting money on a name manager like Piniella. They need to get a young manager who’s smart and who has experience as a coach of prospects, who’s on the same page as a good GM, and can run the team intelligently.
Eleventh-largest, I think. I remember reading that San Jose had replaced it because Detroit keeps losing people.
That alone doesn’t make them a large-market club. Until this year, no one’s been coming to the ballpark and their television revenue has been pretty low. The money they’ve spent on free agents has come straight out of the owner’s pocket.
San Jose is part of the SF-Oakland CMA. SF-Oak-SJ is substantially larger than the Detroit CMA, but is split between two teams, and the Giants have the bigger part of it for TV and marketing rights. Oakland’s a small market by any reasonable review; they have a small and less-than-attractive part of their own area and an absolutely horrible stadium in the middle of nowhere. If you’ve never been there, it’s kind of like having a baseball field in a parking garage. The neighborhood consists largely of I-880 and some industrial lots.
The municipality of the City of Detroit is a dump in parts, but represents only a fifth of the population of the immediate area; there’s five million people, at least, within a sixty-minute drive, and a lot of that area is actually pretty nice. There’s no other team in the market. It is a big sports market by any measure.
BINGO!
The way for the Cubbies to win the Series is for the Tribune to SELL THE TEAM.
I think Pinella will do ok, he might trip over a NL series championship, and I can delude myself long enough to believe he might actually win the series (I’m a Cub fan, hope and delusion are all i’ve got) but I’m not holding my breath.
You’re absolutely right that the Cubs always hire a famous guy or a in-house guy. Both with similarly bad results. They never seem to try and pair talent with coaching styles. They also never seem to place any value in developing talent after the minor leagues, they seem to assume that everyone who get promoted to the majors is a finished product.
You’re wrong about Baker though. He’s a terrible manager. He makes boneheaded in-game calls daily. He’s completely incapable of managing a pitching staff over the course of a season. He plays small ball at the most inopportune times and resorts to playing “match-ups” without applying any thought to the ramifications it will have on the bullpen/bench for the rest of the game. He’ll pull a starter who’s dealing in the 7th just because a lefty, who he’s gotten out 3 times already, comes to the plate with a runner in scoring position. I swear the guy uses a magic 8-ball filled with conventional baseball wisdom on it to manage a game. He’s probably responsible for 5-10 losses a season at least.
Also, Ronny Cedeno is not a gaping hole at second base. He’s young and developing, but he’s no more a lost cause than Khalil Greene, Bobby Crosby, Jhonny Peralta and BJ Upton. He needs to get better but there’s not reason to quit on him yet, he’s already a very good defensive SS.
Can’t argue with that crappy outfield though. One would like to think Pierre can find his groove again, but I think the years have caught up with him. Murton is supposed to develop eventually, but I’m not sure you don’t at least consider platooning him. Trade bait for someone, maybe.
Jeez brian, that was hilarious (but it did throw me for a sec!)
Shouldn’t there be a word to describe the feeling of wishing a Onion headline were true? It’s supposed to be satire, but damn that’d have made me giddy.