What's the story on Fregosi? I don't know much about him good or bad.

The Dodgers went from having a young GM with a plan and a good manager to having a crappy GM with a cheesy, 80s mustache and a manager who doesn't understand the importance of something as basic as a pitch count. I would hate to be an LA fan right now.

And I can't even spell my own first name right. Oops.

And on top of that, they apparently narrowed their choice of managers so ineptly that they wound up making Grady Little the best of the bunch. I would have thought that was hard to do, but these new guys must be really trying... to screw up.

Grady did a wonderful job with the Red Sox. Forget about the spin that says he shoulda yanked Pedro; his was a team without a closer and he kept the ball in the hands of a hall of famer who gave up a bloop hit to tie (not win) game 7. He also, in the same playoffs, brought them back from down 2-0 and facing elimination in the series against Oakland. Look at the disarray the Hose were in when Little arrived; Jimy Williams had been gassed, replaced by Joe Kerrigan; the club was in disarray; he never got a closer after he moved Derek Lowe to the rotation (where he became a 20 game winner) but still came within a single 11th inning knuckleball that didn't move of the World Series (and it says a lot that the club had only a knuckleballer to trust in that situation -- knuckleballers aren't shutout pitchers. But Grady is stupid for not going to that patchquilt bullpen earlier?? What would YOU rather have -- a weakening Pedro orAlan Embree?)

If the biggest criticism against a manager is that he left the most dominant pitcher in the history of baseball, who's got a wicked need to prove himself and earn respect, in a do-or-die game 7, with a 3-run lead, for one more inning than the general public thinks he should have... he's doing pretty well in my opinion.

What was the pitch count in the 60's with the most dominant pitchers in history? Of course, I would judge a GM by his moustache. I have been a Dodger fan since my first game at the Coliseum, so I can by myopic, but to criticize a manager for the Pedro move and facial hair is weak. The fact is, in my opinion, is that modern managers over manage and good starters deserve to be left in after giving up a bloop single in a seventh inning three hitter.

Grady is a good manager. I think more than his statiscal approach its his savy with the media types that won him the job. Grady is also very capable of handling the Bradley/Kent clubhouse and that says a lot.

You have got to be kidding me? The question marks about Grady Little started well before his Game 7 brain cramp. The manager's job is to win the game.
Up by 2, going into the 8th, with a gassed starter and timlin/williamson having been lights out, the guy passed on the opportunity to pull pedro 4 times:
1- start of the inning
2- jeter double
3- bernie signle
4- matsui double
then posada doubles to tie the game

That's not a mistake. That's stupidity. Good luck Dodger fans.

ps- please stop perpetuating the myth that Grady Little was "fired". His contract was up and wasn't renewed and its not clear it would have been renewed irrespective of the playoff outcome that year.

DODGERS STILL SUCK

My view is that managing requires two completely unrelated skills: managing the clubhouse and making sound baseball decisions. Frankly, the first skill is much harder to find, especially when you can show/make any manager pretty sound at the second (do you think Francona embraced sabermetrics before he worked in Oakland?).

Grady was great at the first, but miserable at the second. His persistent inability to listen to the input of Theo/Bill James et. al. would have led to his departure from the Sox after the 2003 season, WS or not.

The challenge is finding someone who can implement sabermetrics without alienating the the players and old school media. Not easy to find, but the Dodgers obviously don't care.

Yeah, Plaschke praised Little to no end in this morning's Times, pooh-poohing the criticism over Game 7, saying he "was fired because he trusted instinct over statistic, people over paradigms, baseball over everything."

That'd be nice if his instinct had turned out to be right, but as I recall, when he trusted his instinct, his instinct was wrong.

http://tinyurl.com/ao7nl

haha good luck with Little, would be better off with Herchiser

It's not just the "Little left Pedro in too long" thing, which was horribly obvious to most people, though a few of the above commenters don't ascribe much significance to it. Fine, don't.

But tell me why Little should have a job, when someone interviewed him afterwards, asked him if he'd do anything differently, and he said, "No."

Mistakes are one thing. Not learning from them, or not realizing they've been made, is another thing, and in many fields, fatal to the concept of ongoing employment.

he should have know pedro would choke againist the yanks he does it everytime he pitches against them