With Drayton, Astros' Manager Search Is Sure To Suck

For some reason, Astros fans appear to be more concerned about the transfer of Jose Cruz from one useless job to another useless job than they care about whether the team actually gets a decent manager. Believe it or not, the manager of a team is far more important to the team’s success than Jose Cruz.

And with the list of potential managers being interviewed by the Astros, it looks like a successful team really isn’t that important to Drayton McLane either.

Everybody really seems to be real high on Phil Garner for some reason. This is really strange because the record shows that Garner is a crappy manager when his team has no pitching or talent. Yet people say that Garner is the greatest manager in Astros history — which goes to prove that most people who now call themselves Astros fans know absolutely nothing about the history of this team past the year 2000.

Give Garner a pitching staff of Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and Roy
Oswalt with a then-lights-out Brad Lidge and supported by a healthy
Jeff Bagwell, a still-relevant Craig Biggio and Lance Berkman and the
team wins. Give Garner a pitching staff with Woody Williams, Brandon
Backe, and Wandy Rodriguez with a very hittable Lidge and an
over-the-hill Biggio and the non-entity of Carlos Lee, and his team
loses. Badly. Just like the teams he managed in Milwaukee and Detroit.

Speaking
of Milwaukee, there’s Ned Yost. Yost was such a good manager that, only
weeks away from the Brewers reaching the playoffs for the first time
since the early `80s, he was fired because the team was choking and he
had lost the clubhouse. Speaking of choking, there’s candidate Bob
Melvin who managed the Arizona Diamondbacks before being fired in 2009.
And why was he fired? Well, among other reasons was the fact that the
Diamondbacks, a playoff club in 2007, choked away a huge lead in 2008
and didn’t make the playoffs, then came out this year and, despite
having one of the more talented clubs in the NL West, sucked badly.

Then
there’s poor Manny Acta. The guy appears to have the makings of a good
manager, given talent, but he just escaped the Washington Nationals.
The Nationals have some talented players — Nick Johnson, Ryan
Zimmerman, and Adam Dunn. They have no real defense. And they had no
pitching. So they were the Astros except the pitching was even worse.
So what has he done to earn a job here? And Dave Clark didn’t exactly
distinguish himself while managing the Astros — his signature decision
was to sacrifice the possible future of the franchise for the sake of
Miguel Tejada’s quest for 200 hits.

Then there’s Eric Wedge,
who took an extremely talented squad in Cleveland and did absolutely
nothing with the team except lose. And let’s not forget Randy Ready who
just happens to be the hitting coach for one of the worst hitting teams
in baseball — what, was Sean Berry not available? And the first base
and bench coaches of the Boston Red Sox. And a few other non-entities.

But
nowhere in this list is a guy with a history of taking an awful club
and building a competitive franchise. There’s no Buck Showalter. No
Frank Robinson. One would think that Drayton might slow down a bit and
find out what happens with Tony La Russa in St. Louis. Or maybe he might consider putting in a phone call to Rudy Jaramillo or Dave Duncan. Damn, Bobby Valentine has even mentioned an interest in this club.

But
that won’t happen because Showalter and Robinson and La Russa and
Valentine and the like are strong personalities who know what they’re
doing. They won’t put up with crap from the ballplayers, and more
importantly, they won’t put up with crap from owners and their
flunkies.

If there’s anything that can be derived from the
history of managers under Drayton McLane, it’s that no person who would
challenge the authority of Drayton McLane and Tal Smith will be hired.
Only three people have ever worked for Drayton and dared to challenge
his knowledge of the game and his general greatness. Bill Wood. Gerry
Hunsicker. Larry Dierker. But despite excelling at their jobs, they
were all fired because they wouldn’t bow down to the greatness that is
Drayton McLane.

So bitch and moan about Jose Cruz. But what you
should be bitching and moaning about is that Drayton McLane is once
again refusing to hire, much less talk to, competent candidates to be
his team’s manager.