Lou's blue, but pink slip might cost too much green
After nearly 2 1/2 years of enduring one walloping after another in Tampa Bay, it's clear that manager Lou Piniella has reached the end of his rope.
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| Lou Piniella's Devil Rays are 21-42, 15 1/2 games out in the AL East. (AP) |
The way he blistered Tampa Bay ownership before Sunday's series finale with Pittsburgh, he left the Devil Rays with almost no alternative but to fire him. Sounding like a man angling to be pink-slipped, Piniella said the current ownership group has no interest in the present, he absolved himself from any responsibility for the woeful Devil Rays season and he told reporters to call ownership for answers instead of bothering him.
An astute baseball man with old-school blood coursing through his veins, Piniella is right, of course. On every single point he made, he connected more solidly than any of his hitters have at the plate in recent weeks.
The piece d'resistance was this: "I'm not going to take responsibility for this. If I had been given a $40 million or $45 million payroll, I'd stand up like a man and say it's my fault. Well, I'm not going to do it. So if you want answers about what's going on here, you call the new ownership group and let them give them to you."
Upon signing to manage Tampa Bay before the 2003 season, Piniella was promised that the player budget would increase in time. However, a group headed by New York investor Stuart Sternberg purchased 48 percent of the team a little more than a year ago, and the Devil Rays now are the only club in the majors with a payroll of less than $30 million.
Piniella's comments, destined to go down immediately as a classic moment in Tampa Bay baseball lore, likely would be enough to get a manager fired in most major-league markets.
Question is, will Tampa Bay's owners be too cheap to fire Piniella? Will they be too cheap to pay Piniella not to manage? He is in the third year of a four-year, $13 million deal that runs through the 2006 season.
Right now, that must seem like an eternity to the competitive and temperamental skipper, which is surely why he is forcing the issue.
By agreeing to come home and manage in his native Tampa, Piniella now is trapped in an untenable situation: It would be impossible for him to skip out on both his contract and his hometown without serious damage to his conscience. But if he sticks around, he is going to continue to take nightly beatings that eventually will push him over a cliff emotionally.
Obviously, Saturday night's 18-2 drubbing by Pittsburgh was one of the last straws for Piniella.
And his strong comments Sunday morning were a death-wish stare down with the club's inept owners.
So now, the clock ticks. And if Piniella isn't soon the ex-manager of the Devil Rays, this ownership group has less pride -- and less of a clue -- in what it is doing than many believe right now.
And confidence already is seriously low.
