Game 160, Rangers at Mariners
Padilla v Feireabend. The Mariners are playing for a shot at .488, the Rangers would love to continue beating up the M’s to finish above the break-even mark themselves.
What crazy lineup will the newly-emboldened Hargrove come up with? What wacky hijinks will he get up to?
Unfortunately, it looks like he wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous.
CF-L Ichiro
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
LF-L Ibanez
1B-R Sexson
DH-L Broussard
2B-R Lopez
RF-L Snelling
SS-R Betancourt
Thiel: yay continuity
His PI column today
Which argues, pretty much, that firing Bavasi & Hargrove wouldn’t have helped
Unless it can be established that a manager/GM is incompetent or lazy, sports-franchise firings usually, but not always, are PR stunts for hapless organizations (that would include at one time the Yankees, who went without playoffs from 1981 to 1995 and fired so many managers and executives that the final total awaits confirmation from the archeological record, like Pompeii).
Makes a weird stop in the middle to make an error:
The Mariners are owned by a Japanese billionaire, who in 14 seasons has never seen his team play, takes serious interest only in his countrymen and never has been personally accountable to the Mariners fan base.
The Mariners aren’t owned by a Japanese billionaire and haven’t been in some time. Majority ownership is Nintendo of America. You could argue that amounts to the same thing, but he is not the owner.
And ends up with
They each made mistakes, the team made some progress, and both guys have a guaranteed year on their contracts that would have been Mariners money out the window had they been fired.
In the end, a third consecutive last-place finish for one of the game’s wealthiest franchises is the fault of everyone in general, and no one in particular. So the bosses chose to stick with a direction, because the other choice was to get back into the hamster wheel.
I disagree that you had to fire both of them.
I disagree that being under contract should confer any kind of job security.
I disagree that Hargrove didn’t particularly contribute to the problem.
I disagree that going 20-15 after an eleven-game losing streak proves anything about the team, much less Hargrove.
I understand the point that firings are often pointless scapegoating. But if you’re going to raise that question, and Thiel does make some kinda anti-Lincoln statements, we shoud be talking in some detail about how they’re the root cause, not shrugging our shoulders and going “mehhh”.