![\"WHGB11\"](\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/WHGB.png\" "\\"WHGB11\\"")
Bob Geren became the first managerial casualty of the 2011 MLB season this past week.\u00c2\u00a0 The former Oakland A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s skipper was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153relieved of his duties\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on Thursday with his team mired in a nine-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
Geren was already on shaky ground prior to that win-less run.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the few certainties in sports management is that you are going to be sacked at some point. You could even go so far as describing successful management as being the art of staving off the inevitable decision for as long as possible. \u00c2\u00a0Geren had been in charge for just over four years, so based on the law of averages his time was running out.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
By that point, winning is the only way to keep hold of your job as a losing sequence will have people clambering for change and that normally means a change of manager.<\/p>\n
A manager can ride through a storm if he has achieved something with the team that makes enough people decide that he can do so again if given time.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the former A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s skipper didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have this to fall back on.\u00c2\u00a0 Winning seasons, let alone a division title or more, eluded the team under Geren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guardianship.\u00c2\u00a0 The A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lost more games than they won in his first three years and narrowly scraped to a .500 record in 2010. With his team heading back in the wrong direction this year, the case for keeping Geren in post became less convincing as each loss was added to the list.<\/p>\n
On top of the win-loss record, there was one major issue hanging over Geren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head throughout his tenure.\u00c2\u00a0 He is a long time friend of the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s General Manager Billy Beane and was even Beane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best man at his wedding.<\/p>\n
Beane himself is a divisive character, partly due to his portrayal as something of a genius in Moneyball, but you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to be a devout Beane Believer to defend his initial decision to appoint Geren.\u00c2\u00a0 The underlying accusation that Geren was in post on a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcjobs for mates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ticket was never credible.\u00c2\u00a0 If anything Beane would have been more likely to shy away from appointing Geren when he thought he was the best man for the job because of the additional pressure it was always going to put on him.<\/p>\n
The problem for Geren was that the qualities that\u00c2\u00a0Beane thought (thinks?)\u00c2\u00a0he possessed never really shone through.\u00c2\u00a0 As he was already in a position (fairly or not) where he had to prove himself more than most, there was no residual good will to save him once a long losing streak came along.<\/p>\n
The sacking of a manager, especially a mid-season change, always starts a debate on how much impact a baseball manager actually has on a team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
A team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s success will always be dependent largely on the players at the manager\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disposal and while his job is to get the best out of them, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only so much he can do within the limits of each player\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ability.\u00c2\u00a0 The A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pitching staff has been hit by injury yet again this season and it was always a stretch to think that the additions of the likes of David DeJesus, Josh Willingham and an ageing Hideki Matsui were going to transform a poor offence into a good one.\u00c2\u00a0 Geren wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turning a sure-fire division winner into a bad team.<\/p>\n
However, we can evaluate strategic in-game decisions that managers make and A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fans (including myself) have long been scratching their heads at Geren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seemingly constant changes to the batting lineup and his haphazard use of the bullpen.<\/p>\n
There may have been sound reasons for some of his decisions, but Geren never did a particularly good job of explaining himself to the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s press, and therefore to the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fanbase, and the recent comments of A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reliever Brian Fuentes and former A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pitcher Huston Street suggested that his communication in the clubhouse wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much better either (with the caveat that such comments are always personal opinions that might not be shared by all the other players).<\/p>\n
Put simply, Geren never really convinced the fans that he was the man to take the team forward and you get the feeling (rightly or wrongly) that this opinion was shared in the clubhouse.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether the incoming Bob Melvin will have any greater success with this roster remains to be seen, but Geren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time had come.<\/p>\n
Mariners a home for European talent I unexpectedly came across a welcome name during my daily breakfast box score reading recently.<\/p>\n Greg Halman has been called up from Triple-A by the Seattle Mariners and has made several starts for the team. Halman is worthy of attention for baseball fans in Europe as he is a Netherlands native, being born in Haarlem and starting out in the Dutch Major League, the Hoofdklasse.\u00c2\u00a0 He was signed by the Mariners two months before his eighteen birthday and made his Major League debut at the end of last season.<\/p>\n The Mariners could be adding another European native to their roster this season as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Third baseman Alex Liddi is an Italian and like Halman he is a true European prospect having developed his skills in his homeland until he was signed by the Mariners as a seventeen year old. Liddi impressed for the M’s in Spring Training and is playing well in his first season at the Triple-A level. It’s very possible that the M’s lineup could include two\u00c2\u00a0Europeans\u00c2\u00a0later on this season, which would be a great boost for those involved in the game in this continent.<\/p>\n Jurrjens and Bernadina<\/strong><\/p>\n Two more Netherlands players are doing Europe proud in the Majors.<\/p>\n Jair Jurrjens is having a phenomenal season for the Atlanta Braves. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0He was born in Willemstad, Cura\u00c3\u00a7ao, which was part of the Netherlands Antilles before this was dissolved in October last year.\u00c2\u00a0 Jurrjens improved his season record to 8-2 with a 1.82 ERA on Thursday night with a win against the Florida Marlins.\u00c2\u00a0 He has gone at least six innings in each of his eleven starts since beginning the season on the Disabled List.<\/p>\n The Nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 outfielder Roger Bernadina was also born in Cura\u00c3\u00a7ao.\u00c2\u00a0 He hit a home run for the Netherlands against Great Britain in the 2007 European Baseball Championships and made his Major League debut<\/a> in 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 Bernadina made one of the most spectacular outfield catches<\/a> you are ever likely to see against the Marlins earlier this season and according to his Wikipedia page \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is nicknamed “The Shark” due to the way he hunts down balls in the outfield like a shark going after its prey\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even an unofficial Sharkadina blog<\/a> in his honour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bob Geren became the first managerial casualty of the 2011 MLB season this past week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[553,128,127],"class_list":["post-11056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2","tag-oakland-as","tag-seattle-mariners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11056"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11113,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions\/11113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n