Wak fired

[Bay_Areas_Finest]

Just saw the article on yahoo.com. I'm too lazy to link. Bench and pitching coach are gone too.

I actually liked Wakamatsu. Didn't really have the right pieces to work with, so I think that hurt him greatly. And the manager is always the one on the chopping block.


EDIT: Wiretap

http://baseball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_ ... wakamatsu/

[Sweezo]

I'm not a fan...Wak gets stuck with an over-the-hill DH [Griffey] that he has to treat in a manner that becomes unpopular with the rest of the players, gets no backing from the front office when one of his players [Figgins] goes off on him in the dugout...even when Wak did the right thing by holding the player accountable for being lazy, and watches his team spiral down the toilet due to their offensive ineptitude.

It's not Wak's fault the players didn't produce. It's not Wak's fault the only good arms in the bullpen got hurt and/or regressed.

He may have made some moves I didn't care for, like relying on Rob Johnson and Sean White to contribute something, but ultimately I don't fault him for this team sucking. This was a team built to get to the playoffs with an average offense, great defense, and the best 1-2-3 SP in the league. Instead, the bats went cold, Felix was the only ace that was healthy to start the season, and the bullpen was just awful.

I don't think Wak was the one who overreacted in getting rid of Colome and Texiera, or who thought Jamey Wright/Garrett Olson were serviceable bullpen guys.

I like Z, but in his comments and attitude in the last few weeks...he totally threw his manager under the bus.

[TTown]

Last year we had Branyan and Lopez give us career power years, and Junior was more than respectable at the DH spot (19 dingers?). This year, Kotch couldn't carry Branyan's jock at the plate, Lopez is stuck on... 6 HRs? And Junior was absolutely worthless at the plate. That's a lot of production just... gone. Our offense wasn't great last year, but it had some pop, and it got along great with a VERY underrated 1-2-3 Felix/Wash/Bedard trio that we had on the mound for over half the season. This year, the offense was non-existent and, as said above, the dominant 1-2-3 pitching trio never materialized. Beltre was injured for a sizeable chunk of last year and his '09 was still better than the power/RBI numbers we're getting from his replacement (Figgs).

Simply put, Wak's teams performed to the talent available. And this isn't even taking into consideration the incredible record we had in 1-run games last year. We haven't met a close game we couldn't blow in some capacity this year... that's baseball. Good fortune doesn't always carry over from season to season.