Sunday, October 22, 2006 |
Pickoff Moves
Today's Birthdays
None of import ...Sam Bohne BRO b. 1896, played 1926, d. 1977-05-23
Kid Carsey BRO b. 1870, played 1901, d. 1960-03-29
Anthony Chavez ANA b. 1970, played 1997
Mike Colangelo ANA b. 1976, played 1999
Jumbo Elliott BRO b. 1900, played 1925, 1927-1930, d. 1970-01-07
Oscar Jones BRO b. 1879, played 1903-1905, d. 1953-06-16
Johnny Morrison BRO b. 1895, played 1929-1930, d. 1966-03-20
I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat: Cardinals 7, Tigers 2
Things went just as planned, with the home team striking first and the rookie pitcher mowing down the opposition... oh, wait, that was Anthony Reyes, who wasn't supposed to do that. Well, you knew that if one of the two starters got the victory, it would be the first time since John Lackey notched a W in 2002 that a rookie starter got a win. The Birds get one over the Tigers, who looked just awful at the plate, swinging at everything and helping out Reyes immensely.Oh, What A Mess We've Macha'd
Ken Macha's exit interview at Oakland might have lasted five minutes or so, but even I'm not sure it would have gone that long. News comes out now that Billy Beane's legendarily heavy hand was responsible for at least one dubious choice, starting a still-shaky Rich Harden in ALCS Game 3; Macha wanted to put Danny Haren on the mound instead. (Beane also wanted Bobby Kielty starting against lefties, but Macha instead went with "Kotsay against Johan Santana of Minnesota and Nate Robertson and Kenny Rogers of Detroit.")Kotsay, who battled a bad back during the season, also said the A's "didn't play" for Macha and rallied among themselves, adding Macha "didn't have my back."Macha found out about the fracas via his Internet-reading son, and was none-too-happy about it:"Billy wanted Kielty in the postseason, and I play Kotsay, and then Kotsay comes out and says bad things about me while I basically got fired because I played him," Macha said. "It's kind of sad."
"I'm a human being," he said Saturday in his first extended comments since his dismissal. "Just treat me like one, OK? My son gets on the Internet, he's 25 years old, he's reading all this stuff, he's looking at what happened and he calls up my wife and says, 'Do you think Daddy's going to be able to learn from this?' How's that for shock factor?"Given that fear of failure is the A's pervading driver, one wonders just how pumped up that fear has become now that Beane has been made a fractional owner of the A's.
As a team sport, perhaps more than any other, baseball eagerly delegates responsibility, but Beane rejects that delegation, preferring to run the team as a sort of watered-down military command. But Beane can't be on the field every day, and he has to accept that his underlings will make decisions that won't make sense to him occaisionally. I close with this paragraph from Nico at Athletics Nation, because it so aptly summarizes the exact problems Beane's bondage-and-discipline style has — and will likely have for any future manager, as well:
Billy Beane chose not to offer Ken Macha a token $50,000 or $100,000 raise so that it would appear there had been a negotiation that caused the manager's return the second time. Instead, Beane, and these are the exact words I used at the time, "won the battle and lost the war," bringing back a humiliated and demoralized and disgruntled man whom the A's now, ironically, owe $2,000,000 for services that will never be rendered. Beane chose not to talk up his newly hired old manager, choosing a term, "good enough," that is every bit as inflammatory as the term "non-entity" Macha used to describe those on the DL. Who do you think was made to feel like a "non-entity" in 2006? The boss. By whom? His boss.It goes all the way down, kids. It goes all the way down.
Buddy Black To Talk To The A's About Managerial Opening
And after all this craziness, too. The other candidates are third base coach Ron Washington and bench coach Bob Geren.And Other Notes
- James Loney went 2-4 with a three-run jack for Licey in the DWL.
- Jose Arredondo pitched two perfect innings of relief Thursday in the DWL.
- Negotiators are very close to completing a new labor deal; despite earlier reports that free agent compensation is dead, it appears as though it will cease to exist. Instead, there will be a slotting scheme to keep bonuses down.
- Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty thinks using the All-Star game decide World Series home field advantage is unfair.
Newer› ‹Older
 |
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.