Buck needs to go? What?!?!?

[DrungoHazewood]

Buck may not need to go, but some of his coaches should probably be replaced - namely pitching and hitting if Dan Duquette wants to turn this into a team with solid pitching and an offense with the ability to work the counts and get on base.

Nah... just not worth it. If the first 1000 times we talk about misplaced cause-and-effect don't sink in, it won't on the 1001st.

[DrungoHazewood]

Sigh, knew it would come one day. I think both by his general demeanor, and now his reputation, it was only a matter of time before he was turned on by any given fanbase. Whether it's deserved or not. I wonder if all those stories about how he's changed (or way different than his rep said he was stories O's players have told) will hold up here, though. I was kinda hoping he'd find a little more stable success here, instead of what's happened to the guy so far in his career (honing a team right to the point of a keen edge, then getting dumped and the keys getting handed off to another guy for the easiest coaching job they'd ever get...or the Altobelli, if you will. ).

The standard opinion of a fanbase towards its manager is that he's always on the edge of losing it and going from barely competent to clearly inept. If he has not fully lost it already. The only managers who're acceptable are those whose teams are running roughshod over the opponents, or are obviously, wildly overachieving.

Buck and Duquette's team is only meeting or slightly exceeding reasonable expectations (i.e. falling quite short of exuberant fans' expectations), so they're both targets for savaging. Luckily with their contract extensions we're quite unlikely to get another Thrift/Hargrove or MacPhail/Trembley or Beattie/Flanagan/Perlozzo to compare and contrast with.

[DrungoHazewood]

Given their "strained relationship" perhaps Duquette added him as a bullpen arm but Showalter put him in as a SP to send a message.

Ha! This is priceless. It's almost like we've returned to the wacko days of deciding whether Trembley, MacPhail, or Angelos had final say based on how much you liked the decision.

When your choice is:

1) Reasonable teams of people make reasonable decisions that sometimes don't work out

or

2) Machiavellian webs of conspiratorial backstabbing and petty vengeance</SPAN>

...always pick #2. That's why I believe Nixon was behind 9/11.

[JTrea81]

Nah... just not worth it. If the first 1000 times we talk about misplaced cause-and-effect don't sink in, it won't on the 1001st.

Look I know it's the players who play and Duquette definitely needs to get the players that will work the count and get on base and that will be solid pitchers, but the instruction has to change as well. Rick Adair really hasn't made much of a difference unlike Rick Peterson. Buck also needs to scrap this "time to HP" garbage as I think it has done more harm than good. I also realize under Presley that the team has a lot of power and a good BA - but their OBP performance and seemingly every member of the team trying to hit a HR in a clutch situation is what is killing this team right now. And the situational hitting has been an issue two years in a row now and has sabotaged the club. Better to be safe than sorry and change both the players and coaching for a new sense of direction.

[DrungoHazewood]

Look I know it's the players who play and Duquette definitely needs to get the players that will work the count and get on base and that will be solid pitchers, but the instruction has to change as well. Rick Adair really hasn't made much of a difference unlike Rick Peterson. Buck also needs to scrap this "time to HP" garbage as I think it has done more harm than good. I also realize under Presley that the team has a lot of power and a good BA - but their OBP performance and seemingly every member of the team trying to hit a HR in a clutch situation is what is killing this team right now. And the situational hitting has been an issue two years in a row now and has sabotaged the club. Better to be safe than sorry and change both the players and coaching for a new sense of direction.

You probably don't think this way, but out of all of the possible alternatives most are worse than the current situation. A rational organization doesn't take a successful group of people and fire a bunch of them because they're not overachieving quite enough. I mean, I'm pretty sure that the O's have already scored more runs this year than Zips or PECOTA had projected for the entire season... yet you're perfectly fine with firing Presley. This is a team that took a scrapheap guy like McLouth and got a 3-win season out of him, took Chris Davis and his .750 career OPS and 5:1 K:BB ratio and got an MVP-level perforamance out of him, took Manny Machado who'd barely been OPSing .800 in AA and some folks didn't want to even see in the majors for a year or more, and threw him in the lineup and got above-average offense out of him. They got a 4+ win season out of Adam Jones. Basically the only guy who's cratered is Markakis, and he's pretty obviously hurt. The idea you'd fire the hitting coach just on the principle of "better safe than sorry" and some anecdotal stories about inconsistant hitting with RIPS is ludicrous.

I don't know how you can look at a team that struggled to get the rest of baseball to stop laughing at them for a dozen years, finally established a bit of a winning foundation, and decide that the best path forward is to fire a bunch of coaches just to "be safe".

It's almost as if we're not watching the same team, or even the same sport. And you don't seem to realize or care that your point of view is largely seen as totally nuts. More likely, given your history here, it's that you revel in defending points of view no one else considers rational.

[The Wedge]

The standard opinion of a fanbase towards its manager is that he's always on the edge of losing it and going from barely competent to clearly inept. If he has not fully lost it already. The only managers who're acceptable are those whose teams are running roughshod over the opponents, or are obviously, wildly overachieving.

Buck and Duquette's team is only meeting or slightly exceeding reasonable expectations (i.e. falling quite short of exuberant fans' expectations), so they're both targets for savaging. Luckily with their contract extensions we're quite unlikely to get another Thrift/Hargrove or MacPhail/Trembley or Beattie/Flanagan/Perlozzo to compare and contrast with.

Oh, I know. It's just a basic lament that when you boil it down, we're just like every other fan base, there are always trends that bear true. Sometimes this place spoils me about the general level of fan intelligence, you know?

[brooksfrankjim]

Like many, I get frustrated with Buck's loyalty to Johnson and Markakis, but I can tell you the same criticisms used to be made to Weaver regarding guys like Cuellar, McNally, Buford, and many other players. Comes with the territory.

To me, by far, the biggest disappointment of the Orioles organization is the inability to develop pitchers. Other than Tillman, there isn't a guy on the roster that got better. What continues to hurt this organization is the failure of Matusz, Britton, Arrieta, and others to become solid MLB starting pitchers. Of all the moves Buck has made, I think the move to get rid of Kranitz as the pitching coach may be the one that has most hurt the team. In the second half of 2010 season Matusz and Arrieta both had the best runs of their career under Kranitz. I don't know if Kranitz was a magic bullet with these guys or if the sample size was so small that it isn't relevant, but IMHO the failure of these guys to develop into quality MLB starters is what is most impacting the on field results.

[DrungoHazewood]

Oh, I know. It's just a basic lament that when you boil it down, we're just like every other fan base, there are always trends that bear true. Sometimes this place spoils me about the general level of fan intelligence, you know?

So over at Tango's blog Mitchel Lichtman posts all the time. He's the guy who invented UZR. He's very smart, and not shy about making sure everyone knows it. His opinion of MLB managers is something along the lines of the average one is about -5 wins. A really great one might mean a couple wins to the positive compared to basic common sense and rational decision making. Basically, he thinks your typical MLB manager regularly does indefensible things for stupid reasons.

I don't agree, but it's not that intelligence automatically means you have a certain point of view.

[The Wedge]

Common sense ain't so common, after all.

I got an idea, let's just leave the managers and coaches outta game day. Appoint a captain and co-captain, and let the team handle everything themselves. How much you wanna bet that the win differential is like +/-2?

[Ommaculate]

I read several Orioles sites and I'm seeing more and more folks saying that Buck needs to go. Maybe I'm delusional, but this just seems ridiculous. Has he made questionable moves? Maybe even lots of them? Sure... but let's not forget what he's done in his relatively brief tenure here.

Buck isn't going anywhere, Dan isn't going anywhere. Looking to next year the remedy is refreshingly simple, compared to the lean years when there were always multiple issues to address: improve the pitching by any means possible.

Arizona and New York agreed Buck should go after 3 seasons. Were they crazy?

[Tx Oriole]

Given their "strained relationship" perhaps Duquette added him as a bullpen arm but Showalter put him in as a SP to send a message.

Here you go. You have no proof of a strained relationship but you put out there

anyway as if it is gospel. For you to say that is really sad. You should know

better than that.

[Hank Scorpio]

I strongly disagree. I am not saying Jtrea is right or wrong but I read this countless times about the Buck hiring. Coaches and managers actually do account for much more than a few wins a season and Buck is evidence of that.

Buck is, yes. He was impactful mainly in changing the culture b/c of his reputation, IMO.

The pitching coach and/or hitting coach?

Whatever.

[Can_of_corn]

Arizona and New York agreed Buck should go after 3 seasons. Were they crazy?

Buck quit in NY.

[MDK02]

Maybe it is on Buck, maybe it's on Dan.. but at what point do you look on the field and start holding the players accountable for their play?

[eddie83]

We have 3 games in a row vs lefty starters. DD just brought a RH bat in that cost 1M for a month. Valencia hammers lefty pitching so how does Buck get Morse into all 3 games? Nate just came off a good series in Cleveland. I think it will be fascinating to see how Buck juggles the lineup the next 3 games.