The Tigers have fired Al Avila

[mtutiger]

16 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

 

The hardest of hard passes... no thanks

[CMRivdogs]

Yep...no retreads

[mtutiger]

21 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Yep...no retreads

Follow the Rangers a decent amount because of where I live... one just imagines he'll be floated as a candidate, yet the Rangers period of sucking overlaps pretty neatly on the Tigers. Which should not work in his favor at all.

[Edman85]

Without being in the room or knowing the people, I don't understand why a "retread" should be thrown out prima facie.

Daniels had a successful run and is still in his mid 40's. I'm not opposed.

[Tiger337]

I have no idea whether Daniels would be a good fit, but Dombrowski was about the same age as Daniels when he became GM of the Tigers.  

[mtutiger]

Jon Daniels had a great run with the Texas Rangers during a six year stretch between 2010 and 2016.  But again, that was six years ago since the end of that run and their fall from grace overlaps pretty well on the Avila era that we just exited.

Maybe it's a case of a guy needing a change of scenery, but while they are going to cast a wide net, I'd rather they ultimately go in a different direction when it's all said and done.

[RandyMarsh]

I don't know about Daniels, sure they had those 5 years of success but looking at his transactions they have been spotty at best. He got a good return on Teixiera(who he didn't acquire), along with reviving Josh Hamilton which was a home run and signing Adrian Beltre but he also traded away guys like Adrian Gonzalez, traded for Prince Fielder and gave out some dud contracts. 

Basically the success that he had for that period doesn't seem like something I'd bank on going forward, you rarely hit a HR in free agency like the Beltre signing, find a reclamation project like Hamilton or find a team so desperate that it will give you a haul for a half year rental. After that luck ran out we saw how poor the team was under him trying to develop their own players. 

[alex]

15 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

...After that luck ran out we saw how poor the team was under him trying to develop their own players. 

If this was the case - we do not need anymore of that inability.

We have to develop our players and the next GM needs the knack of being able to negotiate a trade.

Edited August 18, 2022 by alex

[mtutiger]

15 hours ago, RandyMarsh said:

I don't know about Daniels, sure they had those 5 years of success but looking at his transactions they have been spotty at best. He got a good return on Teixiera(who he didn't acquire), along with reviving Josh Hamilton which was a home run and signing Adrian Beltre but he also traded away guys like Adrian Gonzalez, traded for Prince Fielder and gave out some dud contracts. 

Basically the success that he had for that period doesn't seem like something I'd bank on going forward, you rarely hit a HR in free agency like the Beltre signing, find a reclamation project like Hamilton or find a team so desperate that it will give you a haul for a half year rental. After that luck ran out we saw how poor the team was under him trying to develop their own players. 

Correlation isn't necessarily causation of course, but things started to trend downward for the Rangers when AJ Preller left as well.

Daniels deserves credit for his part, but he had a lot of help with those early 10s Ranger ballclubs as well.

Edited August 18, 2022 by mtutiger

[Edman85]

A lot of the help Preller provided wasn't above board. Look into his suspension.

Question: Is Theo Epstein a retread? Was AJ Hinch a retread when the Astros hired him?

[mtutiger]

I don't have a problem with retreads. I just don't want them to hire Jon Daniels 

[casimir]

25 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

A lot of the help Preller provided wasn't above board. Look into his suspension.

Question: Is Theo Epstein a retread? Was AJ Hinch a retread when the Astros hired him?

Sure.  Dombrowski, Leyland, Anderson,.... all retreads.

[RandyMarsh]

Retreads are fine but it depends on the circumstances to why they are in the position they are. Like did they get fired for years of incompetence like an Avila or did they have long time success which set the bar for the franchise high only to go through some shortcomings which lead to them getting fired.

You then have to determine if they learned and can overcome from those short comings or if it is a flaw that can continue to show itself going forward.

[oblong]

To me a retread is a guy who's bounces from team to team.   The negative side to me is that they appear to be lazy hires and a buddy network thing.  It was a thing in the NBA in the 80's and 90's when black guys were trying to become coaches yet it seemed every opening went to some white guy who got fired from another team after 2 or 3 years.  "Blacks aren't ready to be coaches yet!"

 

[RatkoVarda]

Torre and Francona were both retreads and not welcomed when hired on NY and Boston 

[mtutiger]

This from RJ Anderson is a pretty good piece on Daniels and how things ended in Texas.

It should read somewhat familiar to Tigers fans... the Rangers aren't in as bad of a place, but they have been plagued with similar issues in terms of not turning around high draft picks and issues with developing talent in the latter part of the 2010s and into the 2020s.

I would prefer they go a different route

[gehringer_2]

However, the 'Retread' issue is not comparable between field managers and general managers. As has been beaten to death for years here, a field manager has very limited upward influence on his team's win total. A bad manager can make it worse, but even the best is completely constrained on the upside but the absolute talent level of his players, and he has little or no control over that. So many of field managers may be perfectly capable of winning but never do until they fall into the right situation.

A general manager is directly responsible for that talent level so team performance is much more directly his responsibility. I suppose a bad manager can mishandle a good team that a GM assembles, but in that case firing that bad manager is still part of that GM's job. The only thing that limits a GM is stingy ownership, but that is often pretty obvious to see from the outside. In fact, those are probably some of the guys you want to be looking at, guys from orgs with poor resourcing who show promise of being able to do more if they had better resourcing.

Tl,DR version. I mind a 'retread' manager who may not have won a lot less than a 'retread' GM. The 'win' burden for a GM hire is higher.

[Edman85]

Dombrowski wasn't really a "retread" when the Tigers hired him. He was employed by the Marlins and poached by Illitch when new ownership came aboard and DD was looking around.

I tend to agree on Daniels, regarding the Rangers inability to develop players of late. I get the feeling they were also slow to adapt as the Tigers were. Also, the mention of Preller dredged up memories of the shady nature of Preller's suspension roughly 10 years ago and the morass around that. I believe it was @microline133 who told me about what actually went down there and I don't know that I am at liberty to speak of it, but it wasn't good. 

[bobrob2004]

1 hour ago, RatkoVarda said:

Torre and Francona were both retreads and not welcomed when hired on NY and Boston 

Torre was a complete failure of a manager until he got to New York.  Sure, he had a few winning seasons, but never won 90+ games.  

Hinch was  a failure in Arizona and is currently a failure in Detroit.  If you have good enough players on the team, the manager becomes less important.  A manager would really have to screw up hard to turn good talent into bottom feeders.  No manager can turn a low talent team into a winning team.  

[Edman85]

Also, I finished this up yesterday. My list of the resume's of every MLB Baseball Ops front office person in several categories. Current GM's who aren't the heads of baseball ops, former GM's employed, former GM's unemployed, current day Assistant GM's or Vice Presidents trying to break them up into buckets (analytics, international/amateur scouting, player development, pro scouting, jack-of-all-trades/executive/misc)

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1us36qGEI-_eNObAK6YHNn3VKxR3X-y2Oi_TSaD4R_hQ/edit#

 

I think I am going to add the current heads of baseball ops just to have a baseline.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Edman85

[Tiger337]

2 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

Torre and Francona were both retreads and not welcomed when hired on NY and Boston 

Managers are different in that they don't really select the players and are very dependent on the talent given them.  GMs do select the players so they have more control over their success, although there can certainly be a lot of luck involved.    

[oblong]

55 minutes ago, bobrob2004 said:

Torre was a complete failure of a manager until he got to New York.  Sure, he had a few winning seasons, but never won 90+ games.  

Hinch was  a failure in Arizona and is currently a failure in Detroit.  If you have good enough players on the team, the manager becomes less important.  A manager would really have to screw up hard to turn good talent into bottom feeders.  No manager can turn a low talent team into a winning team.  

I wouldn't refer to Torre as a "complete failure".  He won 88 and 89 with the Braves and 87 with the Cards.

 

[Edman85]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Managers are different in that they don't really select the players and are very dependent on the talent given them.  GMs do select the players so they have more control over their success, although there can certainly be a lot of luck involved.    

The GM does a lot more than select the players these days. They set the course of the organization. Baseball decisions are made by a team of people now. A lot of the role is managerial in nature.

[Edman85]

2 hours ago, oblong said:

I wouldn't refer to Torre as a "complete failure".  He won 88 and 89 with the Braves and 87 with the Cards.

 

 

He wasn't there any of those years.

[oblong]

4 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

 

He wasn't there any of those years.

What do you mean?  He was the Braves manager in 82 and 83 and the Cards manager in 1993 when they won the stated number of games.