Cleveland Browns Game 4: Winners and Losers
September 28, 2012Acta Goes Down, But Antonetti Should Have Gone With Him
September 28, 2012With Manny Acta’s ousting — and reprecussion-free front office — on Thursday, the Cleveland Indians have named Sandy Alomar Jr. as interim manager. MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince believes the team should save everyone the time and merely drop the “interim” tag from the long-time catcher’s title.
“My advice to Antonetti?” writes Castrovince. “Save your time, save your cell phone minutes and save everybody involved the hassle of submitting to a process that seems to have yet another inevitable result. Just name Alomar the permanent manager and be done with it.
“This is not meant to belittle the names that will be tossed into the fire of the rumor mill. Nor is this an affront against the benefits of careful deliberation and consideration. But given these particular circumstances — with a perfectly reasonable candidate in place and many pertinent and pressing questions being posed about the direction of the franchise — I’d say Antonetti and Co. would be best-served to place their emphasis and put their time in elsewhere.”
Alomar will be in charge of the Indians through their final six contests. He has drawn interest from multiple other teams in their past managerial searches and obviously has ties to the city of Cleveland. The Indians, engulfed in an inferno of PR disaster, could easily leverage nostalgia in their favor and, as Castrovince writes, has a lot of fans wearing jerseys with the name “Indians” scrawled across the front.
[Related: Indians talking to former Red Sox manager Terry Francona]
13 Comments
Alomar as manager and Nagy as pitching coach. People will roll their eyes at the “90’s nostalgia” but this could really be a step in the right direction.
So true. They want to continually shove the previous greatness of this team down our throats to cover up for the misgivings of the present. The pieces fit perfectly. If he’s smart, he’ll shop around a bit….
Just because he was a fan favorite and a great player for the team does not make him the right choice. He has never been a manager at any level and this team needs a guy who will give them a kick in the butt when they start to play like this year’s team has. I love Sandy but I am tired of our teams hanging their hats on the nostalgia peg. Just hire the right guy!
I’m glad that Antonetti didn’t name Sandy Alomar as the manager for next season, as doing so would imply that Antonetti isn’t going to get his own pink slip next week.
i’m just not sure Arizona would allow Nagy to make a lateral move. or that he would want to do it. he is definitely proving himself in Zona though.
Diamondback pitching staff 2010 (w/o Nagy): 7.4
2011 (Nagy’s 1st year): 15.8
2012 (Nagy’s 2nd year): 19.2
Again, the pitching coach isn’t the sole reason or anything, but when you see consistent improvement across the board, the pitching coach deserves some of the credit.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2012&month=0&season1=2010&ind=1&team=15,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0
I hope you’re right about that.
we need a guy who can light a fire when needed, provide calm when needed, and be able to come up with adjustments and plans. all while being able to relate to the latin, asian, caucasian, and black players on the team.
it’s definitely not an easy task. not sure if Sandy is up for the job or not.
That’s a fun idea, and an interesting article. Not one substantive reason given why Alomar would make the best choice as manager, but it sure is fun and interesting.
So, he’s got that going for him, which is nice.
Furthermore, Alomar may not have been at the helm during this Titanic season, but he was clearly somewhere on the bridge when the iceberg showed up.
I assume that the reason we canned Acta with 6 games left instead of letting him just run out the clock is that we wanted to give Alomar basically a 6-game interview for the full-time job. I don’t know why Francona would want to come here and manage a team that ownership and GMs simply set up to fail.
Zero confidence in Randy Lerner I mean Paul Dolan to hire the “right” guy, again. I mean this is really deja vu between the baseball and football teams right now. Not only that but the same people who made nearly every wrong decision when it came to personnel are still in their respective jobs. Good luck to Sandy or whoever else decides to take on the position of manager here.
Are you also saying the White Sox should not have named Ventura their manager or that guy in St. Louis? Both those teams are fighting for a playoff spot when they were expected to, well, suck. Sandy Alomar knows the game as well as those guys with his catching experience as well as 1B coach and bench coach experience. 90s nostalgia or no, Sandy Alomar is the right man for this job, in my opinion.
and here I thought Sandy had a say in whether he is made permanent manager. Turns out Progressive Field is like a roach motel, you can check in but not out. Maybe in 2014 they’ll just name him GM. Poor shmuck is stuck.