OT: Royals Fire Trey Hillman
Trey Hillman is no longer the manager of the Kansas City Royals. He has been replaced by Ned Yost.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/baseball/mlb/05/13/royals.hillman…
This is a sad day for Tigers fans.
EDIT: To be clear, Hillman is not at fault for the Royals being completely terrible. However, Hillman does have some tendency to over-manage, which costs the Royals a few games a year. While this is a drop in the bucket, it can easily swing a game or two over to the Tigers, as we play them 18 times a year.
I'm confident the next Royals manager will be JUST as successful.
Hillman did tend to over-manage a bit, which is not the thing to do when you have the Royals bullpen.
This is the best thing that could have possibly happened to Hillman.
Ironic that his "handling of the bullpen" was the worst thing that could be said about his management. That's like criticizing Pat Fitzgerald for his handling of his backup kicker. There's no-one in the world who could "handle" that bullpen, excepting of course any person wearing the jersey of the opposing team.
It's an obvious "fire the guy so we look like we care" canning, but I met a lot of hard-core Royals fans while tailgating for Opening Day this year, and they all liked Hillman. You can't even get that many Detroiters to say they like Leyland, and duh!
He'll have success somewhere, count on it. As for the Royals, no.
I miss the yost infection!! Better than old man macha who just sits on his butt all game and doesnt say a word. But for real, I consider myself very knowledgable in baseball and i cant name five guys on the royals
It's the Royals, not much to see here.
Ah yes, I love when bad teams keep turning over their coaching staffs because they will not admit that they draft horribly, sign the wrong free agents, and basically produce an inferior product from the front-office down. I mean, not that the past Royals' coaches since Hal McRae were Sparky Anderson or Earl Weaver, but I have a hard time believing that all six guys were just horrible baseball guys who couldn't manage.
| Bob Boone | 1995–1997 | 181 | 206 | .468 | 387 | - |
| Tony Muser | 1997–2002 | 317 | 431 | .424 | 748 | - |
| John Mizerock† | 2002 | 5 | 8 | .385 | 13 | - |
| Tony Peña | 2002–2005 | 198 | 285 | .410 | 483 | - |
| Bob Schaefer† | 2005 | 5 | 12 | .294 | 17 | - |
| Buddy Bell | 2005–2007 | 174 | 262 | .390 | 436 | - |
Poor Buddy Bell was also the Manager of Tigers 96 97 & 98
Because the MANAGER was their problem.
Funny that he was fired after a game that they actually won.
While this firing is a little odd, it marks the annual tradition of the Royals looking forward to next year. I forget the writer's name who works for the KC Star, but he used to (still does?) write an article marking the moment the season is over for the Royals. It used to be some nice Summer Schadenfreude reading when the Tigers were just as bad, but I can't seem to find it anymore.
Anyhoo, Congrats to Trey Hillman. Your prison sentence has been commuted and you are now free.
I guess if I was a potential major league manager.....I would turn down jobs like KC and Pittsburgh. What do you have to gain? It's literally a no-win situation as you might never get a second chance again after being canned anywhere in the majors. I'd rather get a bench coaching job with a legit team and try to work my way up.
It's incredibly difficult to become a MLB manager. If you get offered an opportunity, you're generally going to take it regardless of the team.
but running a doomed to failure team is like managing Project Goosefood. You're just a placeholder till the industry craps you out. You have no chance to do anything else.
If you were elevated to that position from the minors or a bench job, then it's a golden egg.
Coaches and managers get fired all of the time, more often than not to provide P.R. cover for personnel decisions and franchise shortfalls that had nothing to do with the manager's abilities.
Once you've spent time in the bigs, you are an instant candidate for all future job openings, especially when you had some moderate success with a bad team, and you clearly were not the only problem.
Hillman will land somewhere. And it will almost certainly be in a position that's easier than "making the Royals into winners."