Bill Simonson and Craig Calcaterra disagree about firing Jim Leyland. Simonson:
Tigers ace Justin Verlander has lost three in a row. He actually looked uninspired Sunday, a rare sight for one of the hardest-working pitchers the game has seen. If I constantly got the run support Verlander did this season, I would start to lose hope.
The Tigers have a defeatist, non-confident look to them outside of Quintin Berry, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder.
The comedy show called “Second Base Platoon” is laughable. It looks as if Alex Avila and Jhonny Peralta had those career years a year ago. Brennan Boesch seems jumpy at the plate. What else can go wrong with this team?
Calcaterra:
You fire a manager if he makes a lot of dumb decisions. You fire a manager if he bucks the authority of the front office in a way that prevents the team from carrying out the organization’s plans. You fire a manager if he loses the confidence and respect of the players or his authority over them is otherwise undermined in such a way so as to make his continued leadership untenable. You fire a manager if the composition of the roster radically changes and you suddenly have an awful fit in terms of temperament (i.e. the old vet-friendly manager suddenly finds himself in a rebuild. You fire a manager when a new owner and/or GM comes on board and the team wants to reset.
Now, a lot of those things cause poor records, and the subsequent firing may be chalked up to the poor record. But if none of the above things are present and the team is simply losing, firing the skipper is kind of pointless. He’s the same guy the GM had confidence in before the season. He still has the clubhouse under control. All that has changed is that his players are underperforming. Absent a clear link between things the manager has done and that losing, firing him is a pointless gesture.
Leyland has done none of those things. His team is underachieving. That’s on the players.
What neither person mentions is the Tigers horrible defense. They are worst in the American League at stopping runs with the glove. Someone made the decision to put Miguel Cabrera at third base and Prince Fielder at first. If this was Leyland’s decision, then he needs to take the heat for it. He praised his defense in spring training. (For the record, I thought it was the best way to configure the team, but I realized that it might cause problems for the pitchers.)
I don’t think Leyland should be fired, but I understand why some fans might want a change.
Cabrera was a fine first base man. Then Prince Fielder came on the market. Now, normally signing fall upon the GM, not the manager. But given the size of the contract both in dollars and years, Mike Ilitch had to be brought on board. Now, being a fine businessman, I’m sure he asked “Why are we signing a first base man when we already have one? Where is Miguel going to play?”
It was an organizational decision to stick Miguel at third, not Leyland’s, even if he was the one who broached the subject with Cabrera. Where else were they going to stick him?
rbj » At designated hitter.
Looking more closely at the roster, it looks to be a poorly designed one. You’ve got Miguel & Prince, and Boesch was to hit fifth, but he’s having a bad season. Rayburn regressed to AAA — and while we applaud him here, it’s because of what he did for the Hens in 2005 & 06 which is over half a decade ago, he should be an established every day MLer by now. So 2nd base is a sinkhole.
The outfield isn’t to bad, aside from Boesch. Berry is hitting to well right now to be displaced when Jackson comes back, maybe move him to RF. Delmon Young has been the DH, I suppose you could stick him in LF and Miguel DH, but you still need a third base man.
The one thing I will hold against Leyland was not using Brad Ellred more when he was brought up earlier in the season. 14 HR in 20 games gets you up to the big club, but if you’re that hot, you should get more than 13 ABs.
Cabrera is serviceable at third given his bat. I’ve been surprised at how bad Fielder is defensively — I was under the false impression that he was better defensively at first than Cabrera, but he looks horrible. At least he hits, though. The problem is that second base is a black hole offensively and bad defensively no matter who they put out there, and Peralta has not hit well enough to come close to balancing his defensive shortcomings. If they had a couple of no hit/good glove middle infielders somewhere in the minors I’d bring them up and shore the defense. There’s something about sloppy defense that spreads like an infection to everything else and this team is sloppy.
I’d like to have a dollar for every time I hear Dan Dickerson say “. . . off the glove . . .” or hear that brief pause followed by the words “under the glove . . .”
Fire Jim Leland. Tigers are good in regular season but they make every pitcher look like a hall of famer in post season.