A week ago, Joe Maddon was so the best manager in baseball, and Jerry Manuel was just the night shift captain of the Titanic.
Now? Maddon is the manager of the old-style Tampa Bay Devil Rays with all that implies, and Manuel is the Buddha. That's how it works in baseball, and that's especially how it works when a natural break like the All-Star Game occurs. It's a good time for a snapshot that is, of course, no more binding than the one taken last week.
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| Jerry Manuel has the Mets doing more than just playing out the string. (Getty Images) |
I mean, what, you want more Brett Favre? We already know how that ends. Favre becomes an increasingly distracting distraction, and either stops just short of being released, or goes one text over the line and ends up somewhere else. Everyone looks small in the end, and isn't that the way we all knew it would happen?
Anyway, the managers, based on no more scientific methods than just what their teams look like they should be doing rather than what they actually are doing, and where we thought they would be at this time when we thought about it in April. Listed in more or less Pythagorean order, and with lame comparisons where applicable. Forgive the author, for it is the All-Star break, and we're all a little down-timey.
Ron Washington, Texas: He was fired, dead stone gone. The pitching was awful (and largely still is), the hitters were blah, and his ways were considered too harsh and too caustic for the sensitive kids. Now? Josh Hamilton and Milton Bradley are team leaders, Ian Kinsler is this year's Chase Utley (more or less), and the Rangers look like a wild-card outsider instead of a team in hell. Right now, Washington is a veritable Tony Dungy.
Mike Scioscia, Los Angeheim: Either they are lucky (they win more games with fewer runs than any team in baseball, and they're 18-13 in one-run games) or they're exceedingly clever (for those of you who like their managers as master manipulators of their own universes), but Scioscia has the best record in ball with a team that, well, shouldn't. Steve Jobs of the iPod, as opposed to the iMac.
Fredi Gonzalez, Florida: Lots of home runs, just enough of everything else, and frankly, we're not sure why. Anyway, general manager Larry Beinfest is getting credit for assembling a team that doesn't stink with a Jeff Loria budget, so Gonzalez is enjoying the low profile.
Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota: No, we don't believe Glen Perkins and Kevin Slowey negate the loss of Johan Santana, but they don't have to. The Twins overachieve based on their production because, well, they always do. Gardenhire is the logical extension of his former general manager Terry Ryan, and would be Tom Kelly, too, except for the dog-track fixation.
Ned Yost, Milwaukee: The one-time fly-off-the-handle nutcase to end all fly-off-the-handle nutcases (hey, it's a stereotype, but this is the All-Star break) seems to have mellowed as his team has become a postseason factor, and that was before they got CC Sabathia. He was supposed to be in trouble, isn't any more, which could make him Doc Rivers if the Brewers were the Celtics, which they pretty much aren't.
Dusty Baker, Cincinnati: Yeah, yeah, the Internet's favorite managerial piñata and all that, but the injury list is low and the bullpen has held a lot of one-run leads. The Reds right now are better than they should be, and based on the nebulous rules we have set up here, Baker is doing fine. Not Rivers fine, but more Nate McMillan fine.
John Russell, Pittsburgh: They're the Pirates. Based on their numbers and their history, they could be even more Pirate-like than they are. On that alone, Russell is the quiet equivalent of Arizona Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt.
Trey Hillman, Kansas City: See above, only more so. Hillman is: Whisenhunt, with an outside shot at Romeo Crennel.
