Baseball Anyone?

I’ve seen several of you lamenting the elimination of your favorite teams. Another one was unhappy with coming in at the bottom of the division. (You know who you are.)

My team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, came in dead last. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. This was a season of injury for Arizona. While I don’t think they were contenders, they should have fared better than this.

I’ve written before about the firing of the General Manager, and why I think this was a great move. He built a team of middle of the road players, and prayed they would all exceed their histories.

Now they’ve parted ways with Kirk Gibson, the on field manager. I’m pretty indifferent to this move. I don’t think his style was great, but he can only play the men they give him. Every manager does odd things, but Gibson baffled me sometimes. Still, I don’t see this as entirely his fault.

When a team hoses out the management, the infield manager has to go. That’s part of the game.

They hired a new General Manager to build the team of the future. I loved Dave Stewart as a pitcher, but question his qualifications as a GM. I think it’s cool that he was a player agent, and he ought to know his way around a negotiation. If things bog down, he can always give them that stare from his playing days. I also don’t think it hurts to have access to a great old pitcher. Some of them can be pretty helpful to the rookies.

A big part of baseball is that tomorrow is another day. The Diamondbacks get first pick when the draft comes around. They plan on making some trades during the off season, and I don’t think they need a whole lot.

The next big thing for me to watch is who they hire as the on field manager. We’ll get ’em next year. (Or the one after that.)