Cecil Cooper Fired

But nowhere in his report did he suggest that Cooper didn't deserve to be fired. His only focus was on the timing and the mess at the top with the Astros. Cooper's qualities as a manager are irrelevant to what he was talking about.

 

Thank you.

Do the research, or shut the hell up.

If he can't be expected to know those details, then he has no business commenting on them. Stick to showing pictures of former managers who are looking for a job.

 

That's not how I saw it. That was simply the initial question raised. Gammons went off on at least a couple of his own tangents, none of which had to do with timing.

If he's going to go off on tangents related to the Cooper firing, it seems worthy to slip at least something in there about the fact that Cooper was a horrible manager.

I don't mind some of the points he's making about Drayton and I agree that the timing was questionable but any discussion involving the firing of Cooper should also include the fact that Cooper performed horribly.

This is assuming there wasn't further discussion not included in that clip.

My focus here isn't Peter Gammons or ESPN though. What prompted me to post that video were the comments about Uncle D. I was surprised at some of the things he said, or more specifically, how he stated them.

 

I took it as Gammons really liking Cecil Cooper. It was like Coop is his buddy and he was sticking up for him. Thats how it came across to me.

 

I disagree - anytime someone is fired, the assumption is that they sucked unless there's reason to believe something else. If Gammons thought he didn't deserve to be fired, then you'd expect him to say something in Cooper's defense. But the default case is that a guy who got fired deserved it unless otherwise suggested. I think that's pretty much the standard scenario anytime you talk about anyone being fired.

 

Good point. I agree.

Beyond the Gammons discussion, I think firing Cooper was a positive move. Even though he was dealt a bad hand, I felt that he displayed enough bad in-game decision-making to warrant moving in another direction, not even touching on whatever was going on behind the scenes. I'm not saying the timing was ideal but that's fairly irrelevant at this point. He's gone.

Going forward, I just hope there is serious and permanent attention given to what I consider to be this franchise's biggest problem - our depleted farm system. I think that has a lot more to do with the present state of things than anything Cooper did or didn't do. Unless you're in the Yankees/Red Sox spending bracket, you can't rely on free agency to fill a bunch of holes whenever necessary. We need more of that low-cost, high production talent coming through the pipeline to complement our efforts in the free agent market. Even the Yankees have to rely on several of those types of players to be contenders. We've neglected an important source of talent over the past several years and we're now in a situation where we can't come close to addressing all our weaknesses through free agency. We also don't have any prospects projected to make a real impact next season other than potentially Norris, who most likely needs a couple of years to refine his game and reach his potential, whatever that may be. If we had just 2 or 3 more young, low-cost, impact players in the mix, we could still be looking to free agency to fill 1 or 2 additional needs and contend. As is, next year could be a lot worse than this one given all our needs and the fact that $55 millions is tied into just four players with Wandy, Bourn and Pence all due for raises.

 

Ed Wade's shining moment, from Adam Wexler's twitter account....

awexler 195 NL P w/ at least 40 IP. Only 1 has ERA above 7. Brad Lidge. He's 0-7, 7.48 w/ 11 blown svs. PHI can't put him on playoff roster, right?

Bourn for Lidge has turned out to be a great deal for the Stros. If Wade does the same hiring the next manager then will be ok.

 

It's actually 0-8, not to mention his WHIP is around 2.00. To say his season has been awful would be an understatement. This is far worse than the worst we saw in Houston.