Apparently, some players are now calling Coop, Hugo Chavez. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_y...9-mlb-hou&prov=sportsxchange&type=team_report
I don't know who Hugo Chavez is, but Cooper hasn't done much with this team. Bring back Scrap Iron. He should never have been fired anyway. And if possible, get Gerry back, as well.
Yeah. It's one thing if the rumbling is coming from the fans. It's another if it's coming from the players. Coop's extension is looking like a brilliant move by the Astros brass.
I don't think Gerry will ever come back, but I really liked Garner even if he made some weird decisions at times. They always seemed to work out.
I cannot remember another situation in sports where a manager takes you to a World Series after 40 years of futility and gets canned a year and a half later.
I guess i still fail to see how whomever our manager is can be faulted for not bringing up another Roy or Berkman in over a decade since we can't spend like the Yankees and Red Sox. But like i got blasted before, i still believe talent has more to do with winning games than any head coach. A batter is all alone at the plate, just like a pitcher is alone on the mound. The missing key is not our coach, rather our GM and scouts that thrived in the 90's. However, everyone can flame me again for my philosophy that the best teams usually win, not the best manager.
Typically, I would agree for the most part. But if it's true that the players aren't even hiding that they have no faith or confidence in the manager, then somebody has to go. And it's easier to replace a manager than it is to replace all the disgruntled players.
The problem really isn’t Cooper it’s the way the team is constructed. We have a bunch of high strikeout power hitters with a 2 that should be a 3 and so forth with the pitching staff. We have a general manager who continuously make bad moves and we have a minor league with a bunch of old veterans so there's no flute because we refused to sign draft picks for a few years so now we're in a whole.
The manager can affect the tone of the team, and can effect a few games per year. Torre and Francona manage their teams off the field in a way which allows their teams to play successfully on the field. Game management is often questionable with those two, but results? Excellent. But, I agree, give me talent.
Who are our high strikeout power hitters? We really only have two power hitters, and one of them is known for his ability to make contact (Lee). The other is about average in terms of strikeouts compared to other power hitters (Berkman).
My guess is that Coop was either getting interest or showed interest in leaving the team after this season for someone else and the Astros brass really just couldn't get any interest in taking the manager position. So they decided to lock Cecil up for a year to keep him happy and have a safety net just in case.
Coop got his extension 11 games into this season when we were 4-7. He wasn't going anywhere until next season at the earliest. It was a Kelvin Cato type signing. If you didn't think he was worth giving an extension in the offseason, why was he all of a sudden worth it after 11 regular season games? If you weren't going to extend him in the offseason and were going to wait, why didn't you wait until closer to the end of the season so you could have a larger sample size to evaluate him with? The timing of it was just really bizarre and if they do end up firing him, the Astros are going to have egg on their face because there was no reason they should have extended Coop when they did.
A. Who on earth would be showing tons of interest in Cecil Cooper? B. The Royals and Pirates and Rays and Marlins have no problems finding competent managers. You reallly think no one would be interested in managing the Astros?
I think the real countdown should be how long until we hear Uncle D come out and say that he's excited about our prospects for the second half because, unlike most teams, we're going to be adding a Cy Young-caliber pitcher (Oswalt) and an MVP-type hitter (Berkman) to our team* for the stretch run! *=if they can revert back to their usual production/output.
