The 5 – When the Sox move on from RV at Manager, what then???

Good day folks, it’s your buddy BeefLoaf here with a quick hit on what the next White Sox manager shan and shan’t look like.

5. NO MORE FORMER WHITE SOX WITH LITTLE TO NO EXPERIENCE – RV never coached or managed even one hot minute at any level of professional ball, and there is an unsettling trend in major league baseball to hire former players sight unseen to take the helm.  I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer someone (in basically any field) to have done a reasonable to very long apprenticeship before taking the helm at anything. Do you want someone who frequents your favorite restaurant to suddenly become the head chef?  Me neither….so why would we want that with our baseball team, I know, I know, the example isn’t apples to apples, but its not that far off….I don’t want AJ, I don’t want Paulie, I don’t want Thome, I don’t want Aaron Rowand…………even though Ozzie Guillen served a reasonable apprenticeship as a major league coach (even though he had no managing experience), I still don’t want to go down this path.  

4. GETS THE TACTICAL STUFF RIGHT – We don’t need a stat head manager (although I wouldn’t necessarily mind it), but we do need someone that can get the tactical stuff right.  You can go the route of the Pirates and meld the analytics group with the manager and coaches to get it right (Clint Hurdle is not a stat head, but he’s smart enough to use the available info).  I don’t know if there is a Joe Maddon or Jeff Bannister toiling away in AAA, but if there is, that person needs to get a look.  The White Sox have left a lot of runs out there the past 4 years due to these sorts of poor decisions and that needs to be fixed.  

3. CAN ACTUALLY MANAGE PEOPLE – RV has been a terrible disaster in this capacity, with what we actually know about…………who knows what else……..I’m not a fan of Ned Yost from a tactical standpoint, but he seemingly gets this stuff right and is able to maximize performance from his players and teams.  Ideally, you’d want someone who is a stat head AND can manage people, but if we have to take one, I’ll take the manager of people who will listen to tactical stuff from the front office.  

2. SOMEONE WHO ISN’T AFRAID TO VOICE HIS OPINION TO MANAGEMENT – I view RV as a pet of management, I doubt many of you reading this would disagree.  What you really need is someone that buys into managements philosophy, but can challenge them when need be……look at this roster, at points in the year, there were unusable redundancies on the roster (Sanchez/Saladino & Sands/Garcia) forcing the manager into rough spots when needing or choosing to use the bench……something as small as that can be fixed by a manager willing to speak up and let the Front Office know what he needs.  This sort of thing is worth wins, having a flexible bench, or letting management know when you desperately need a reliable bullpen arm (like right now)……..none of that has seemed to happen during this regime.  

1. SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY WANTS TO BE HERE – Nothing, nothing has pissed me off more during the RV regime than him saying things like “He didn’t realize how much work managing is…” or when asked if he wants to manage next year “Well, I just want to finish up this year before I decide”………ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?????……I want a guy in this spot that WANTS TO BE HERE!!!!!  This brings me back to Joe Maddon who was toiling away in the early 80’s in terrible minor league parks managing, working hard to get to his eventual goal and then ~25 years later he finally gets a shot at his dream job and guess what, he attacks it with vigor and joy.  He’s wanted to be here half of his life.  The next manager needs to be someone of that ilk, I won’t tolerate anything else.  Nobody who is treating this like a fucking summer job…..A REAL FUCKING MANAGER!!!  

  – BeefLoaf