If you picked Jim Tracy as the NL Manager of the Year, pat yourself on the back.
Even though he wasn't a manager when the season began, he's looking like a pretty sweet pick right about now. The Rockies were 18-28 when they fired Clint Hurdle, and they are 22-7 since elevating Tracy from bench coach, heading into a showdown series with the first-place Dodgers starting Monday night.
Of course, Hurdle wasn't that bad of a manager (he got the Rockies to the World Series in 2007) and Tracy isn't that great of a manager (the Dodgers and Pirates both let him go).
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.
You Oughta Know ... The Rockies are 4 1/2 games out of the NL wild card after Thursday's 5-4 victory over the Brewers.
OK, so they're still four games under .500, and fourth in their division. But Colorado has won eight straight games – all on the road, no less – to climb toward respectability.
"It's hard to expect to win eight in a row, but we definitely are a team capable of doing it," [Ian] Stewart said. "Our pitching has been unbelievable these last eight days. Timely hitting with runners in scoring position, keeping innings alive. Everything has kind of been going our way. We know we can be this good, so we just have to continue to play this way."
So much for the Rockies' desire to wait until the end of the season and assess the situation. Colorado axed maligned manager Clint Hurdle on Friday and replaced him with bench coach Jim Tracy for the rest of the season.
Hurdle, who led the Rockies on a magical run all the way to the World Series back in 2007, has been at the helm through a disappointing 2008 season and during an 18-28 start thus far in 2009. In seven-plus seasons managing the Rockies, Hurdle compiled a 534-625 record. The Rockies finished above fourth place just twice in his tenure and the NL-pennant-winning 2007 run was his only trip to the postseason.
As expected, the Pirates just announced that manager Jim Tracy will not be brought back for the 2008 season. To say that everyone saw this coming would be an understatement. What was not expected, however, was that Neal Huntington also announced the firings of senior scouting director Ed Creech, director of baseball operations Jon Mercutio, and senior director of player development Brian Graham, who also served as interim-GM after Dave Littlefield's firing. From the Bucs' official release:
"Since my appointment as general manager I have worked diligently to gather information about the inner-workings of the organization," Huntington, who met with Tracy and members of the coaching staff earlier in the week, said in a statement. "After a systematic evaluation of that information, I have come to the difficult conclusion that to transform the culture and to chart the course for future success, these changes needed to be made."
If you want to know the difference between the old regime and the new management in Pittsburgh, look no further than the front office shakeup today. Last off-season the Pirates actually added the term "Senior" to Creech and Graham's titles despite more than ample evidence that they were not good at their jobs. Today, they were both fired fired. This won't make the Pirates automatically better, but if any organization needed a restructuring from top to bottom, it was certainly the Pirates.
Jim Tracy's fate was probably sealed when the Pirates fired GM Dave Littlefield, and brought in Neal Huntington. New GM's generally don't want to be saddled with another man's hire, so today the announcement will be made that Jim Tracy will no longer be the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
"It's never easy for a manager on a losing team," first baseman Adam LaRoche said. "They take so much of the heat, when it should be put on us (players).
"He did everything he could do. He was calm. He was patient. He was tough when he needed to be. I was very impressed and I have a ton of respect for him."
LaRoche knows what he's talking about, as it was his first half of the season which helped contribute to sinking the Bucs' season before it ever started, batting .239 in that first half, when any hitting by the Pirates might have kept them in the hunt in a mediocre NL Central. But so many players brought in by other GM's have been busts ... so maybe Tracy's fate wasn't so much sealed when Littlefield was fired. Maybe Tracy's fate was sealed the day he was hired in the first place.
Most of this week the Pirates' new GM Neal Huntington had been telling the Pittsburgh media that he'd have a decision on the fate of Pirates' manager Jim Tracy by Friday. Well, it's Friday. You're up, Neal:
"I'm not there yet," he said. "If you ask me if I can rule out that it could happen [today], no, I can't rule it out. But I think it's doubtful."
Now, I've never really ever been a General Manger of anything, but I can't imagine what's taking the Pirates so long to make this decision. You have a readily available body of work, the last two Pirate seasons, with which to judge Tracy by. You have a roster full of players that know, and have worked for, the guy. You know what you're looking for in a manager. If the things you see don't match up with that, you fire the guy.
The thing is, there's really no evidence to think Tracy would be back for 2008. When asked about Tracy's future, the player response to his uncertain status can be described as tepid, at best. When Tracy demanded that two players, Jack Wilson and Salomon Torres, cut their paternity leaves short so as to not compromise the pennant race (the Pirates were playing the Cubs and Padres), both went over Tracy's head to get the approval for the customary three-day leave while their wives gave birth to their children. So they players don't care if he stays or goes and the front office is cutting his legs off with the players. How can they not be ready to make a decision yet?
If there's one thing that often seems to hold true in Major League Baseball, it's that a new General Manager often means that the old manager is on his way out. Things are certainly looking that way in Pittsburgh, as all signs point to Jim Tracy being on his way out of town now that his buddy, ex-Pirates GM Dave Littlefield, got the axe and Neal Huntington is the new sheriff in town. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
"The important thing is to get the right guy, be that Jim Tracy or if a decision is made to go in a different direction," Huntington said. "My concern is to go through the process fairly. I don't want to rush it. Does the fact that the season ends now play a role? Quite honestly, no. I want to make the right decision."
That's not what you say when you're about to not fire someone. That's what you say when you're thinking, "Joel Skinner is going to manage my baseball team next year and since he's in the playoffs with the Indians for a while, I don't have to do anything about Tracy for a couple weeks."
Maybe today's 6-4 win over the Pirates was Tony La Russa's last game as Cardinal manager. Maybe it wasn't. If it was, La Russa decided to go out with a bang. Or something like it at least. In order to get the win, La Russa used a major league record ten pitchers this afternoon. Not to be outdone, Pirate skipper Jim Tracy (also possibly in his last game with his current team) used eight. Meaning that in a game where only ten runs were scored, a major league record 18 pitchers took the mound.
Let's break this bad boy down. La Russa started with career reliever Troy Percival, who went one shutout inning. The Disappointing Kip Wells (Disappointing is his first name now, that's why it's capitalized) went three scoreless and struck out four. Then things got crazy. Braden Looper, Brian Falkenborg, and Tyler Johnson were employed to get one out apiece in the fifth inning. Russ Springer took care of the sixth all by himself. Ryan Franklin and Randy Flores got the first two outs in the seventh, Kelvin Jimenez got the last out in the seventh and the first two in the eighth, and Jason Isringhausen finished things off.
The Pirates reliever use is less interesting because, well, I don't think they did it on purpose. Still, Brian Bullington, Juan Perez, Franquellis Osoria, John Grabow, Romulo Sanchez, Shane Youman, Tony Armas, and Matt Capps are all part of major league history now. A very small part of major league history. One eighteenth, to be exact.
A week and a half ago, I wrote about "NL Central Syndrome." It's the disease that strikes bad baseball teams when they play in a bad division, fooling them into thinking they have a chance to compete. At that writing, every team in the NL Central was infected except the Pirates. Since then, the Astros have been cured, but the cure came at the expense of the Pirates. Last night the Pirates swept a double header from the Reds, pulling them to within 8.5 of the Cubs. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
"We're still playing significant baseball," Tracy said. [Eight and half games] is not an insurmountable task. Obviously, we've got to win a lot, but we've been playing our best baseball of the season over the past three weeks."
It appears the Jim Tracy and his crew have a milder case than everyone else, but it's insane that a team that was 50-70 a little more than two weeks ago can even discuss competing for the playoffs. The Pirates have no real shot (they're still behind the Reds, Cardinals, Brewers, and Cubs in the standings), but how can you not love a division that lets them think they do this late in the year?
If you picked Jim Tracy as the NL Manager of the Year, pat yourself on the back.
Starting Five
So much for the Rockies' desire to wait until the end of the season and assess the situation. Colorado axed maligned manager 
Jim Tracy's fate was probably sealed when the Pirates fired GM 
Most of this week the Pirates' new GM 
Maybe today's 6-4 win over the Pirates was 
A week and a half ago, 
