Mets Officially Hire Buck Showalter

[Frobby]

Good reporting by Rosenthal there.   He gets a lot of grief but he often is very informative IMO.

And good for Buck for addressing the issue with the team.   

[Sanfran327]

On 12/18/2021 at 3:01 PM, jabba72 said:

Buck being a manager is good for the game in my opinion. I'll be rooting for him in a roundabout way.

Me too. I'll be rooting for the Mets around about the time the O's are mathematically eliminated, so probably by mid July.

[Sanfran327]

On 12/19/2021 at 1:01 PM, Frobby said:

I will never blame Buck for the Davis deal.   First of all, we’ve never gotten anything but speculation about how involved he was in that.  Second, it’s on the owner to let the GM make the decision to say no.   I think DD gets off too light here.   If he was against it, he should have made a strong stand, not sat idly by and let it happen.   And I doubt Buck was negotiating the details of the contract.   At most he would have said it was important to have Davis back.  

Jumping in here way late, but I'm fairly sure Buck was on record as saying it was up to Chris to determine when enough is enough (paraphrasing) in terms of the pending contract value. Thinking back, we basically "out bid ourselves" 2 or 3 times to keep him, IIRC. 

[jcaponio]

Anybody catch his introductory press conference today? He said he was excited to get to use analytics more, and that he wanted to do that here but couldn’t because the Orioles didn’t have the budget for it. 

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, jcaponio said:

Anybody catch his introductory press conference today? He said he was excited to get to use analytics more, and that he wanted to do that here but couldn’t because the Orioles didn’t have the budget for it. 

Did he?

That hilarious.

What does the analytics say about teenagers with facial hair and blue eyes?

[LookinUp]

Buck and Dan's biggest failure was not giving aging steroid user Nelson Cruz the big contract instead of giving it to aging steroid user Chris Davis.

If only we'd have known what would happen to Davis.

[Frobby]

By the way, it kind of annoys me that people obsess over Buck’s decision to use Ubaldo instead of Britton in the playoff game, while giving him no credit for guiding a team that only outscored its opponents by 29 runs to 89 wins and a wild card spot.   The Blue Jays meanwhile had the same record while outscoring their opponents by 91 runs.   

[NCRaven]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

By the way, it kind of annoys me that people obsess over Buck’s decision to use Ubaldo instead of Britton in the playoff game, while giving him no credit for guiding a team that only outscored its opponents by 29 runs to 89 wins and a wild card spot.   The Blue Jays meanwhile had the same record while outscoring their opponents by 91 runs.   

The funny thing (for me) is that I always thought that Buck's management of our bullpen was a major reason for our success during much of his time with the Orioles.

[Can_of_corn]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

By the way, it kind of annoys me that people obsess over Buck’s decision to use Ubaldo instead of Britton in the playoff game, while giving him no credit for guiding a team that only outscored its opponents by 29 runs to 89 wins and a wild card spot.   The Blue Jays meanwhile had the same record while outscoring their opponents by 91 runs.   

I'd just like to point out that Buck's favorite player hitting a big HR against the Blue Jays was maybe my favorite moment of the 2016 season.

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'd just like to point out that Buck's favorite player hitting a big HR against the Blue Jays was maybe my favorite moment of the 2016 season.

It was a huge moment, no doubt.  

[Just Regular]

Kim's 2016 he was 92nd percentile MLB-wide in O-Swing avoidance (Hardy was 90th percentile that year as he fought off the death of his bat a little with improved selectivity).

It was the 2nd best Oriole Swing Decision season of the Best AL Record in a 5-year span era, trailing just McLouth's 96th percentile 2013.

[DrungoHazewood]

18 hours ago, Frobby said:

By the way, it kind of annoys me that people obsess over Buck’s decision to use Ubaldo instead of Britton in the playoff game, while giving him no credit for guiding a team that only outscored its opponents by 29 runs to 89 wins and a wild card spot.   The Blue Jays meanwhile had the same record while outscoring their opponents by 91 runs.   

It's strange how people latch onto narratives.  Here I'd say many posters think of Buck as mostly a disappointment.  You hear much more about the disappointing parts of his tenure than speaking fondly of the wins and the playoff appearances and the getting an awful lot out of pedestrian rosters.  The 2014 Orioles won 96 games in the AL East with Chris Tillman as their #1 starter, with Bud Norris getting 28 starts, with Caleb Joseph as the starting catcher, with David Lough and Ryan Flaherty getting significant playing time.  That's not talked about nearly as often as Britton and TTP and the save rule.

Frank Robinson spent less than four years as the Orioles manager and had a .447 winning percentage and one .500 season.  But if his tenure is ever discussed it's all about the Why Not? Orioles.  Nobody shakes their fists and gets all bitter about him being 18 games under .500 over his last season-and-a-quarter.

Nobody blames Earl for 1988 after his return from retirement crashed and burned.  But in this thread people have said Buck set up the team for needing to rebuild.

[DrungoHazewood]

18 hours ago, Frobby said:

By the way, it kind of annoys me that people obsess over Buck’s decision to use Ubaldo instead of Britton in the playoff game, while giving him no credit for guiding a team that only outscored its opponents by 29 runs to 89 wins and a wild card spot.   The Blue Jays meanwhile had the same record while outscoring their opponents by 91 runs.   

Also, how did Buck not win manager of the year in 2012?  Awards like this are usually about stories, and the Orioles were dead to rights that year.  Not even relevant for 14 years.  No hopes of winning.  Projections for 65 or 70 wins.  They make the playoffs and win 93 with an Island of Misfit Toys roster and the voters give it to Bob Melvin for getting 94 wins from a team that was only a small handful of wins under .500 the preceding two years.

[waroriole]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Also, how did Buck not win manager of the year in 2012?  Awards like this are usually about stories, and the Orioles were dead to rights that year.  Not even relevant for 14 years.  No hopes of winning.  Projections for 65 or 70 wins.  They make the playoffs and win 93 with an Island of Misfit Toys roster and the voters give it to Bob Melvin for getting 94 wins from a team that was only a small handful of wins under .500 the preceding two years.

Baseball writers have to be the absolute worst people to vote for awards. I’ve seen way too many public Hall ballots this year that include Ortiz but not Bonds. That should be the litmus test on whether you’re ever allowed to vote again. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, waroriole said:

Baseball writers have to be the absolute worst people to vote for awards. I’ve seen way too many public Hall ballots this year that include Ortiz but not Bonds. That should be the litmus test on whether you’re ever allowed to vote again. 

But Ortiz is a nice guy who donates to charity and loves Boston, he couldn't have taken anything illegal.  And even if somehow he did it's okay, he didn't break any records set by players the baby boomer writers love.