Brad Mills is safe, no matter what the rumors sites say

Mills has been very underwhelming for me. The time has come for him to go. And note to future management, quit picking up options and adding years to deals a year in advance.

 

If you go by the pythagorean W-L, we should be around 60-93. So by that measure, he's underperformed.

Yes, the team wasn't going to be good anyway, but we're probably worse than we should have been. We were underperforming even before we went into firesale mode.

 

I agree with you. He has not been a disaster or a revelation, so it is very hard to say how good or bad he is. The Astros have far more pressing concerns that Mills. Let him comeback next year and then make a decision. The Astros will probably be a 95-105 loss team next year regardless of whomever their manager is.

 

Then we should bring back Cecil Cooper who out performed The Pythagorean during his Astros tenure?

If Selig keeps pushing back the owner's vote on Crane, Crane might have little choice but to keep Mills (since the A list of managerial replacements during the off season might be gone). Seeing how this benefits the team Selig owns, one can see that Selig's motives may not be pure.

 

This is the guy who continued to play Jason Michaels all year long. That alone is enough to qualify him as a bad manager in my eyes. But I agree it's not a high priority to get a new manager now.

 

JMike might be setting a good example to the rookies and Mills awards him with starts??? Mills and Wade might have wanted to lock in the top pick???

I can see legit reasons why Mills did why he did with JMike.

IMO, Mills needs to be judged on how well he has developed the rookies after they arrived in The Bigs. Mills appears to have done a reasonable job.

 

If I was Mills, I'd just resign. The team is horrible and won't be competitive for 3-5 years.

 

The biggest mistake the Astros ever made was losing Gerry Hunsicker. That guy knows how to run an organization.

 

For the near future, I would judge Mills based on how well the rookies and second-year players develop. I wouldn't judge him based on wins and losses or game management. As outsiders, we won't know how he's doing until next year sometime.

 

Sure, so he can be labeled a quitter and never get another shot managing at the MLB level? So he can let a couple million dollars sitting on the table?

 

Being out of the US in recent years, I haven't watched the Astros in a while. My thoughts on managers is that they're generally replaceable parts that you try to fit the team. i.e. a tough guy if players are laid back.

That is, unless said manager have some sort of ingenuity that really make your players better. Since I've been watching the Astros, the only manager I've seen this spark has been Larry Dierker. And unless Mills look like a Dierker, I really don't care what they do with him.

 

MLB coaches are as close to worthless as you can get in professional sports. If the Astros had the best MLB coach of all time they may have been able to pull out maybe 5 more wins? Make a double switch here, call a bunt there whatever.

 

Yeah, let's change our managers every two years -- that's worked out great for us.

Give the guy a talented team and see what he does. Until then, no point in firing him when he's got nothing to work with.

 

Baseball managers are largely disposible. I see no point in hiring a new manager, just to have this same issue 2 years later. Managers can help as midseason spark plugs to change the atmosphere of an underperforming team, but can't help a team that is flat out bad.

This team sucks, nothing any manager can do about it. May as well let him finish out the contract, no need to throw away money.

 

There's an old adage that every MLB team is "guaranteed" 54 wins and 54 losses. What you do in the remaining 54 games is what determines what kind of season you have.

If that's true, we're one win away from that 54-win mark. Does that mean given the talent level, pretty much anyone can coach this team as well as Mills has this year?