Mr. Ed
Posts: 88732
Joined: 7/14/2007
From: Minne-so-ta
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SoMnFan
I'm all for this ... Jennings should be forced to wear some type of "two-face" dugout attire.
Half suit and tie, half old fat man uni.
We need this to happen.
That Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria fired Mike Redmond as the team's manager wasn't a huge surprise: Rumors have been going around since last month that Redmond was on the hot seat after Miami's 3–11 start to the season. That he did it at the 38-game mark—the same point at which he dismissed Jeff Torborg during the 2003 season with an identical 16–22 record—might have looked downright reasonable from the owner's twisted viewpoint. His solution, on the other hand, is much harder to understand.
At the same juncture in 2003, Loria tabbed grizzled 72-year-old Jack McKeon to pilot the team, which he did, all the way to an unlikely world championship. This time, he's turned to somebody who has no qualifications for the job: general manager Dan Jennings. While the 54-year-old Jennings has 31 years of professional baseball experience as a scout and executive—the last 13 of which have come with the Marlins as vice president of player personnel (2002–07), assistant GM ('07–13) and GM ('13–15)—his professional playing experience consists of having been to spring training with the Yankees’ Class A Greensboro affiliate back in 1984. His previous field experience, meanwhile, is that he "briefly coached in high school in Mobile, Ala., in the 1980s," according to the Associated Press.
With bench coach Rob Leary also fired, Jennings will be joined on the bench by advance scout Mike Goff, who after four years as an infielder in the Red Sox chain (1984–87) spent 10 seasons between '93 and '14 managing in the Mariners, Reds and Giants organizations. The conventional wisdom as to why such moves generally aren’t done revolves around the fact that those dugout Johnny-come-latelies have never endured the grind of a professional season and thus have a difficult time relating to and commanding the respect of players who have been doing just that. “He never played the game” is the common refrain.
The Marlins have actually done this before, though it was on original owner Wayne Huizenga’s watch—twice in the 1990s, when director of player development John Boles served stints, more on which below. With Loria still paying not only Redmond (who was signed through 2017) but also Ozzie Guillen (who is in the final year of a four-year deal under which he spent just one season in the dugout), this looks like the owner putting penny-pinching ahead of other considerations. For all we know, he'll probably pay Jennings in coupons clipped out of a Miami Herald circular.
Suffice it to say that you shouldn’t be surprised if things continue to go south in Miami. This isn’t exactly what Giancarlo Stanton signed up for, to say the least.
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