Many people have expressed surprise that Phil and Timmy were fired with 1 month to go to finish off one of the worst Astros seasons in many years. I certainly expected that one of them would be fired at the end of the season, as SOMEone would have to pay for the putrid performance of this team. I was both surprised and impressed that Drayton had the sense to fire them both NOW. Sure it “could” have waited until the end of the year, but he needed to do this to secure the fan base, most of whom were EXTREMELY unhappy with Phil’s roster shuffling and Tim’s seeming inability to either sign draft picks or acquire players who didn’t practically beg to play here. I simply can’t give Tim “credit” for signing Carlos Lee, Woody Williams or Mark Loretta, for that reason.
What is VERY interesting to me is that national baseball commentators, such as Steve Phillips on BBTN and Jayson Stark, writing for ESPN, have BOTH stated very clearly that McLane is seen as, uh, meddling, or too hands on. And they both said, as I have many times before, that McLane needs to hire good baseball men and let them do their jobs.
Timmy, at this time, is not talking to the media. IF he has had exactly no ability to make essentially any decision, I wouldn’t blame him for not being happy that he has been appointed a scapegoat. On the other hand, he must have known he had taken a job as a yes-man, and he’s too old to not know that the fate of a yes-man is to be a designated scape-goat.
At this point, I would guess that McLane has 2 options: 1 – find another yes-man and repeat the same path to failure and 2 – find a decent baseball man such as Dan Evans, and actually give him control of the club. McLane clearly wants to win (unlike other owners I won’t mention) but at some point, he has to come to grips with the fact that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and that he has no idea how to make a purse in the first place. The most important hire will be the GM – he has to completely re-do a great deal of the badly broken system, from the non-existant Venezuelan (and other Latin American) pipelines, the poor player development system, the poor scouting (or is it the refusal by McLane to sign the more elite and more expensive prospects) and trade for actal prospects to restock the virtually empty minor league system.
We all know that new GMs usually prefer to hire their own managers, so Cecil Cooper may or may not last more than the rest of this year. However, I SERIOUSLY doubt that McLane will hire DePodesta as GM or Joe Girardi as manager. And if Larry Bowa ever gets another job, it most DEFINITELY won’t be here in Houston as the players will rebel against him even faster than they did against Terry Collins…
Anyway, I received this email this morning from Anne Onnamuss, who passed along what appears to be McLane’s performance evaluations of Phil and Tim:
(1) “This employee has reached rock bottom and has started to dig.”
(2) “His men would follow him anywhere, ……. but only out of morbid curiosity.”
(3) “This employee is really not so much of a ‘has-been’, but more of a definite ‘won’t be’.”
(4) “Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap.”
(5) “When he opens his mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet.”
(6) “He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle.”
(7) “He has delusions of adequacy.”
(8) “He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.”
(9) “This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.”
(10) “This employee should go far, ….. and the sooner he starts, the better.”
(11) “Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together.”
(12) “A gross ignoramus – 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus.”
(13) “He certainly takes a long time to make his pointless.”
(14) “He has a knack for making strangers immediately.”
(15) “He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room.”
(16) “When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell.”
(17) “If you see two people talking and one looks bored, ….. he’s the other one.”
(18) “A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on.”
(19) “If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change.”
(20) “Some drink from the fountain of knowledge;….. he only gargled.”
And my very favorite (printable in this squeaky clean blog) critique of Phil Garner from an internet Brewers fan named “harvey’s wallbangers” – Phil couldn’t manage a lemonade stand at the corner of “Thirsty” and “Parched.”
Tags: Houston Astros
well, i would say that mclane’s meddling had a lot to do with
- the amount of playing time biggio got and his position at the top of the lineup
- the refusal to sign pettitte to a 1 year contract WITH a player option
- instructing purpura to sign jennings as soon as the trade for garland fell through – and he may have told purpura to get it done no matter what colorado wanted (of course it was purpura’s job to convince colorado that less was more because they already knew he wasn’t getting pettitte or garland and he would be desperate)
- instructing purpura not to give any draftee one penny over slot (of course it was purpura’s job, then, to make darn sure that he didn’t draft anyone who seemed to want anything over draft, or to get a pre-draft deal done
- i would LIKE to know how much his meddling had to do with not scouting or signing any local Black players
That article by Stark was interesting. There’s no doubt McLane is a meddler. But, I wonder where he gets the idea that Garner and Purpura, for the most part, weren’t able to do their jobs. Sure, McLane probably had something to do with Biggio starting as long as he did, and he was probably mostly responsible for not signing the draft picks.
But, Purpura wasn’t responsible for the obsession with Texans, the abandonment of the pursuit of Hispanic ballplayers (which was actually pretty good in Hunsicker’s days), the obsession with washed up old pitchers, the obsession with washed up former Tigers, the righty-lefty matchups, the lineup shuffling, the platooning, the favorites-playing…my point is that while it’s true that McLane is a meddler, it appears to me that Garner and Purpura were still able to do a heck of a lot of the things they WANTED to do. I don’t think McLane’s meddling had anything to do with their failure.
I agree, he’s to blame for all of those things. Except for maybe the Jennings thing. I don’t know how much McLane twisted Purpura’s arm on that one, because it seems to go right along with so many of the bad deals Purpura has made. It also has his signature “good ol’ Texas boy” stamp all over it.
My point was that there were enough things that Purpura and Garner clearly were calling on their own that sunk this team to say they were at fault. McLane shares some blame, too, but for Stark to call Purpura and Garner good baseball guys is nuts. And to act like this team failed because they couldn’t do what they wanted to is just ignorant. A lot of the reason this team failed was because Garner COULD do what he wanted to.
A lot of the reason this team failed was because Garner COULD do what he wanted to.
- now you KNOW i agree with this 100%
reason i talked about the stark column was that he is an east coast guy and he is talking about the MEDIA perception of mclane and the astros Organization
which is going to mean a LOT when mclane goes out to hire a GM
Ah, I see now. Yes, that perception definitely is a big problem. And that’s something I should have pointed out when I said that I doubted the organization had the competence to hire a good manager. I think that, in addition to their incompetence, they’re hamstrung by the small list of people that would ever WANT to manage here. We certainly saw that a few years ago when the only names that came up were Garner and Don Baylor. I don’t know if those are the only guys they courted, but if those are the only guys that were interested, that’s a really bad sign.
Especially when you consider that the team they would have been taking over wasn’t nearly in the shambles it is now. At that point, they still had a talented team with more youth than they currently have, and a few prospects in the minor leagues. They can no longer boast those things.
“They have the talent to turn around quickly next year.”
-Eric Mack, CBS Sports
http://cbs.sportsline.com/mlb/story/10321332/rss
He must have applied for the GM position.
O.K., that job performance review may be the funniest thing I’ve seen this year. First time I can recall reading an article about the Astro’s with a smile on my face since the last two weeks of last season.