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TGIF, baseball fans! The weekend is upon us, do you know what that means? Double the baseball. Crack open a pumpkin beer because October is comin’ in hot.
Here’s a roundup of the National League East.
Last night, the Toronto Blue Jays dominated the Texas Rangers in the first game of the American League division series. Cole Hamels gave up 7 runs in 3.1 innings to the lion of a Jay’s offense that had apparently been napping most of the season. The icing on the postseason cake was a Jose Bautista bomb in the 9th inning, sealing the fate of the game. Now we’ll just have to see if the Blue Jays have enough left in the tank to take both games in Texas.
After a mass removal of coaching staff and front office, the Diamondbacks have narrowed their GM search down to five candidates. The most exciting of the candidates is Kim Ng, the current Senior Vice President of baseball operations at MLB, who has spent 25 years as a baseball employee. But her four other ~competitors~ colleagues have their fair amount of credentials as well. Let the Hunger Games begin. (Just kidding) (Maybe)
“After cleaning house, the Diamondbacks are considering who will replace the recently vacated seat of Dave Stewart. Among the top candidates are Kim Ng, two internal candidates in Bryan Minniti and Mike Bell, and two previous Diamondbacks executive in Peter Woodfork and Ray Montgomery according to a report from Nick Cafardo of The Boston Globe.
The list of candidates isn’t an especially inspiring list for Diamondbacks fans. With the ousting of not only Stewart and Chip Hale, but President of Baseball Operations Tony La Russa, the desire for many fans is likely a new direction. Promoting an internal candidate like Minniti, Bell, or Montgomery might come off—at least optically—as maintaining a similar direction. Perhaps that’s an unfair assessment, however, so long as Ken Kendrick is the owner of the team and chooses to involve himself in front office business, the direction of the team may not change.”
The Yankees, who have remained silent since the beginning of the postseason, held a press conference saying that the prospect of trading McCann is totally on the table. I can only hope that McCann was alerted beforehand and didn’t find out with the rest of us. Has anyone seen Gary Sanchez?
“After Gary Sanchez seemed to cement his future with an unbelievable rookie campaign, McCann seemed to become even more expendable than thought at the trade deadline. Sanchez, who began his rookie season just 229 plate appearances ago in the beginning of August, led all rookies in OPS, and was tied among AL rookies for the league lead in home runs with Nomar Mazara.”
Some extra spiciness has been added to Barry Bonds’ firing. It turns out, Don Mattingly may have said “My way or the highway,” to Jeffrey Loria. What was his way? A coach staff that was Bonds free.
“Of course, Bonds’s presence on the coaching staff wasn’t Mattingly’s choice to begin with. Like most bad ideas that involve the Marlins, this one came from the mind of Jeffrey Loria, who personally invited Bonds to be the hitting coach of his team before hiring his new manager. Naturally, Mattingly wasn’t super excited about that idea. CBS Sports’s R.J. Anderson did some additional digging and found out that “Mattingly’s problem with Bonds reportedly had to do with declining work ethic.” If that’s true, well, there’s no doubt that Bonds deserved to be fired.”
It has been said many different times using many different varieties of rhetoric: Buck Showalter blew the postseason. Good thing we put it in video format for your viewing pleasure.
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The deeper we get into the postseason, the more managers will lose their jobs. Keep up with that game of chess in one place . Send us a thank you card later.
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Today in baseball: On October 7th, 2010, both Rays' Joe Maddon and Twins' Ron Gardenhire are ejected from different ALCS games. There have only been 17 occurrences of skippers getting the boot in postseason games. Who said lightning doesn’t strike twice?