FanHouse JimRiggleman

It's June 13, and apparently we have our third major league manager firing. The latest victim -- according to scoop-master Ken Rosenthal -- of the ax is Manny Acta of the Washington Nationals. Considering that the Nationals are the worst team in baseball -- and at 16-43, it ain't close -- this can't come as a huge surprise to many.

Acta will be replaced by Jim Riggleman, who took over after a firing last season in Seattle. He's also had stints managing the Cubs and Padres. In fact, he was the Cubs' skipper during the 1998 season that saw Sammy Sosa's 66 bombs and Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout game. He shouldn't expect to see fireworks of that variety in Washington, though.

Don Wakamatsu saw the Seattle Mariners from across the diamond 19 times in 2008 as the bench coach of the Oakland Athletics. Reports are now surfacing that he'll get them for all 162 games next season as their new manager. The team will make the announcement Wednesday in a press conference.

Wakamatsu beat out six others for the job, none of whom were named Jim Riggleman. Riggleman had quite a run after taking over for John McLaren midway through the season, going 36-54. Of course, McLaren fared much worse, going 25-47 before he was shown the door.

Wakamatsu is a fine hire for this team, who is going to be starting from scratch this season. He's going to be a young manager at age 46 -- when the season starts -- but he's also seasoned, having spent five years as a bench coach in the AL West (four of those years were with the Texas Rangers). He'll be able to grow into an experienced manager while his team grows up with him.

Overall, the hire is a nice fit for both parties. The new general manager, Jeff Zduriencik, can now focus on building the foundation for a long rebuilding process.

Seeing as how the Mariners really suck this season, I've kind of stopped paying attention to them. Of course, because of that, I forgot just how bad the team really is. Thankfully the three games I just saw them play against the White Sox in Chicago this week reaffirmed everything I previously knew.

One of the reasons the Mariners are so horrible this season can be attributed to the Erik Bedard trade. The Mariners sent Adam Jones, George Sherrill, the Space Needle, and majority ownership in Starbucks to Baltimore for the southpaw. While a lot of people thought the addition of Bedard would help the Mariners win the AL West (I only had them as the wild card, so I guess that makes me slightly less stupid), thanks to his injuries and ineffectiveness, they're fighting just to avoid 100 losses this season.

Bedard cost the Mariners their season, and the jobs of John McLaren and Bill Bavasi. Fortunately for all involved, the odds of Erik returning this season to claim the livelihoods of others are slim at best.

Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre and [Jim] Riggleman both say that Bedard did not come out of his last throwing session feeling well, as he had in previous outings.

John McLaren finally has a real reason to throw a temper tantrum. Expected by some to play for the AL West title, the Mariners have been the worst team in baseball and McLaren paid for that failing with his job today. His firing comes on the heels of GM Bill Bavasi's ouster on Monday and a little more than a week after hitting coach Jeff Pentland was sent packing. The bloodletting is now complete and the Mariners can fully turn their focus to 2009 and beyond.

McLaren is certainly taking the fall for the sins of Bavasi but he didn't do much to help himself stay in the job. The easiest case to cite is that of Jose Vidro. With no power and little else of offensive use, Vidro found himself batting fifth or better in 44 of his 54 starts this season. Note to Omar Minaya: At least the team had the decency to do it on an off-day before a road trip.

He'll be replaced by his bench coach Jim Riggleman. Riggleman had a 486-598 record as the manager of the Padres and Cubs in the 90's. He's almost certainly an interim choice who will keep the spot warm until the team's new general manager, whoever that may end up being, hires the man he wants in charge. Whoever that man turns out to be, they'll have to hope that they are handed a better roster than McLaren. The cupboard is bare in Seattle.