It’s been a theme all year for Pirates fans to talk about “accountability.” With the team on the field being historically bad this season (not hyperbole: they’re on pace to have the worst run differential in MLB history), for a lot of fans that’s come to mean “John Russell has to go.”
Two very good, thoughtful opposing viewpoints have been written on the issue, one by Pat at WHYGAVS, one by dtoddwin at Bucs Dugout.
As for me? I think Russell should go.
Look, I understand that Russell is just the manager, and that no matter who was managing this ball club they were going to be terrible. I don’t think any manager is the solution for the problems of the 2010 Pirates. Until more talent trickles into the Major League level, they’re going to be bad. It’s as simple as that.
I think if you’re not in the clubhouse every day, you don’t have any idea what the atmosphere is like in there and how the players feel about their manager, and thus you shouldn’t comment on it.
I know that the players on this team outside the McCutchen/Walker/Tabata/Alvarez core have either been disappointing or just were never very good to begin with.
However, I agree that Russell doesn’t hold his players accountable.
In all the examples Pat listed of Russell and his accountability, the only examples I count that have to do with him directly are firing his coaches and benching Ronny Cedeno. The rest is mostly player promotion/demotion, and while I’m sure the manager gets some kind of say in that sort of thing, it’s ultimately up to the GM.
Everyone knew that Pedro Alvarez was coming up this year and that if Andy LaRoche didn’t perform well above expectations he was going to hit the bench. Everyone knew when Walker came up as a second baseman that Aki Iwamura’s days were limited, and it still took a demotion to get him out of the lineup.
How long did it take Russell to realize Ryan Church wasn’t very good? And when he finally gave Lastings Milledge reps, how many times did Milledge make some kind of horrible fundamental mistake, then go out and do it again later in the week? How many times has Ryan Doumit failed at the most basic levels of being a catcher this season, and how many reps does he get behind the plate even now that we have a competent catcher in Chris Snyder?
I understand what Pat means when he says that this is a lose-lose situation in some ways. Milledge, Doumit and Delwyn Young are all bad outfielders, and none of them are going to make John Russell look good when he plugs them in right.
My problem is that day after day, series after series, you’ll see somebody make a fundamental mistake – whether it’s one of Milledge’s boneheaded baserunning outs or Ryan Doumit failing to block the plate again – and they’ll be out there again the next day, making more mistakes. Those players need to hit the bench the next game, even when the bench player is somehow worse than they are. If they’re not going to be benched, they’d better at least straighten up their fundamentals. We’ve seen no progress in that regard at all this season, and I have to believe at least some of that comes down to coaching.
I understand John Russell is only human. I understand he’s probably working as hard as he can, and I understand that I shouldn’t expect him to turn straw into gold. I don’t say this lightly, but: when the team makes this many mistakes on a day to day basis and you don’t so much as read a blurb in the paper to the effect of “Lastings Milledge spent time working with his coaches today on his baserunning” or “Ryan Doumit took extra practice to work on pretty much every aspect of being a catcher,” that’s a manager not holding players accountable for their mistakes. That’s dangerous on a team full of veterans, let alone on a team with an incredibly young core. John Russell has to go.
