Marlins Fire Fredi Gonzalez, Jim Presley, Carlos Tosca

[Chewford]

I'm with Beef.

[lou]

Dan - Eugene Levy would play you in the movies

Samson - I'm not that old.

Dan - Rick Moranis

Samson - Come on

ground breaking journalism going on

---

Dan - Why are the Marlins always negative in the media from this, to the horns?

Samson - You're short sighted and not seeing the national media. You're focusing to much on your market, and our news is not even top 10 in the sports world

(currently # 5 story ESPN, earlier was # 2)

--

Samson - I talked with Uggla and Ross, I'm sending them Vuvuzela's for Christmas

---

Dan - Fredi well liked unlike Girardi, very different management styles. What kind of manager do you want and do you think your reputation of being manager unfriendly is true?

Samson - Nope. We have plenty of people calling us for the job opening. It's hard to find a manager that fits for a decade

---

Stu - Do you mock Beinfest over drinks and tell him how much the Cabrera trade sucks

Samson - I can't tell you if it has worked, because the money was so huge and we were able to do so many other things. If the ballpark opened in 08 or 09, things would be different. Not ready to write off Maybin and Miller

Dan - Come on

Samson - Any trade with Cabrera will be hard to justify, and have to look at other factors like the money, but we don't have the capacity to pay Cabrera, and Hanley, and Johnson

Stu - You'd have been to the world series every year if you kept Cabrera

Samson - Is Cabrera in the world series every year in Detroit? What is their payroll? Guess what Detroit's payroll is

Stu - I have no idea

Samson - That's why you have no accountability

[Valid]

So:

Hanley won the battle with Fredi. Outstanding.

Eh, I don't know about that. That was over a month ago. You would think he would have been fired a lot sooner if that were the case (unless the FO just didn't want to make it look that way to the public).

[lou]

Callers have started

-We have no middle relievers, and Fredi has only so much to work with, why is he bearing the brunt of this when he only has so much to work with? I know he's made mistakes, but these guys are now going to play better?

Samson - This is a bad day. We recognize we haven't done everything perfectly. This isn't a guaranteed fix, but this doesn't change the fact this is a business and we have to fix it in the most practical way possible. We can't trade the whole team. Fredi did a great job, but we need someone else to get us to the place we want

[jOOj]

That reads as horrible radio.

[THE_REAL_MIBS]

Marlins Get your Marlins Tickets now! owner Jeffrey Loria said things are going to change now that manager Fredi Gonzalez is fired. It's a good, high-command statement to make. But can anyone figure out what it means?

Are the Marlins going to get some better relievers now? Will they add a bench to give the new manager something to work with?

Is Loria going to ask for a mulligan on the Miguel Cabrera trade to Detroit that's yielded nothing?

Or how about the trade of Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham to Washington that, so far, has given the division's rising rival a couple of good regulars and the Marlins a left-handed pinch hitter in Emilio Bonifacio?

Loria's main point is this: Fredi Gonzalez was the main problem to this season. By extension, former Triple-A manager Edwin Rodriguez is the big answer. Wouldn't you be on board if the answer was a reliever to win in the seventh and eighth innings?

"We believe we can do better and be better,'' Loria said in a statement. "We owe it to our fans to put this team in the best possible position to win. Everyone knows how I feel about winning."

He's in favor of winning, you'd agree, at least if it doesn't cost him a buck. Middle relief? That can be found off the discard pile. A bench? Please, who needs a bench? That's not even getting into a superstar such as Cabrera demanding a superstar salary.

Everyone knew Gonzalez's situation entering this season. Loria considered replacing him with Bobby Valentine last offseason. That, after the Marlins exceeded any reasonable expectation by winning 87 games.

So the firing isn't a surprise considering the season hasn't gone as anyone hoped or the owner fantasized. Loria kept insisting in the spring these Marlins would make the playoffs, remember?

Let's not go overboard here defending Gonzalez. Managers are replaceable in baseball. They make a hundred moves every game, but if you have a good roster most moves are predictable. It's checkers, not chess.

Plus, there's this: Hanley Ramirez is in a season-long funk. That's not Fredi's fault. Fredi did everything right last month in the aftermath of Ramirez jogging after a booted ball. It was his finest managerial hour.

It also, as it turned out, wasn't the first time Ramirez was benched this season for laziness, according to a team source. It was just the one everyone saw. And so, as Ramirez kept struggling, something had to be tried and that didn't mean dumping the team's best everyday player. Bye-bye, Fredi.

Gonzalez also handed Loria an invitation to fire him Saturday night. He screwed up in either a big or small way. To review: Either he gave the umpires the players' names backward in a double-switch, resulting in Brian Barden being called out after walking to lead off the ninth in a tie game.

Or Fredi just made a strange tactical decision: Why insert the light-hitting Barden to lead off the ninth in a tie game instead of Helms, who was inserted to bat fourth that inning?

Helms hit two home runs in the previous week? Wouldn't you want him up first for the best chance to end the game?

The Marlins lost that night. They won a couple since, but when the press releases settle that strange loss probably was a final tipping point for an owner itchy to do some tipping.

Sometimes a managerial shake-up helps the team. Look at the 2003 Marlins, when Jeff Torborg was fired and Jack McKeon came aboard. Most of the time it does nothing, as the roster's strengths and weaknesses stay the same from one manager to the next.

"It is never easy to make a change in managers,'' Loria said in his prepared statement.

Maybe so. But he's getting pretty good at it. This is his fifth manager in eight-plus seasons. It can't be that difficult for him.

The truth to this season is the Marlins are a poorly constructed team. Loria can blame himself first for that. He was so cheap with revenue-sharing dollars that his fellow owners and players union made the unprecedented move of chastising him for it.

The bullpen was constructed with inexpensive hopes and young maybes. Its failure is the season's No. 1 problem.

The bench has one bat in Helms. Bonifacio, who doesn't have a hit this year and one career home run, was used as a pinch hitter twice last week in one-run games. Most teams have a left-handed bat capable of hitting one out. Not the Marlins.

So Loria says things are going to change now that Fredi's gone? Maybe so. Maybe Hanley catches fire. Maybe Loria allows a trade for relief help. Maybe new manager Edwin Rodriguez is magic.

As it looks, Rodriguez has one distinct advantage: He knows this relief corps and bench intimately. The bulk of them were minor leaguers this year.

Marlins too cheap with relievers and bench, but Gonzalez was easy target
--------------------
And, reading what Samson is saying on the radio is really wanting to make me go punch him in the face. I hope the fans continue to let him have it since his father-in-law doesn't have the balls to come out of his hole.

[Ramp]

I'd love to go toe to toe with Samson on the radio. Stu and Dan gave it a nice go, but they still weren't prepared.

Holy crap I can't stand the way this organization is run.

[THE_REAL_MIBS]

Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox did not mince words about Jeffrey Loria’s decision to fire Fredi Gonzalez, Cox’s former bench coach.

Team president David Samson said the dismissal of Gonzalez, bench coach Carlos Tosca and hitting coach Jim Presley was collaborative one between himself, Loria, President of Baseball Operations Larry Beinfest and General Manager Michael Hill.

Cox, who heard from Gonzalez almost immediately after the firing Wednesday morning, singled out Loria.

“I know that guy [Loria] is unpredictable, but I was still….After everything [Gonzalez] has done for that guy, are you [s-------] me?,” Cox told reporters before Wednesday’s game against the White Sox. “[The Marlins] have gone down to the end every year, playing their asses off. That guy doesn’t appreciate anything. He’s one of those guys that thinks you change [for the sake of change]. He’s always wanting to fire the coaches, always. That’s his history.”

Gonzalez, who still maintains a residence in Marrietta, no doubt will become a candidate to replace the retiring Cox in 2011. Samson said the Marlins would not stand in the way of Gonzalez, who is under contract through 2011, of getting another job.

If Gonzalez is hired for more money than he’s currently owed, the Marlins are off the hook for the remainder of the deal. They are responsible for the difference if he signs somewhere for less.

Braves manager Cox unloads on Loria over Gonzalez firing

<3 Bobby Cox

[Ramp]

I would kill to hear Cox say his above quotes.

Are you shitting me? Ha!

[lou]

I would kill to hear Cox say his above quotes.

Are you shitting me? Ha!

I want to have a focus group with Jim Leyland, Bobby Cox, Curt Schilling, and David Samson. That would be Pay-Per-View material

[jOOj]

Braves should give him a 1 year deal for a buck less than his Fla money. Just to make Loria pay.

[Fish and Chips]

I don't understand why people are upset that samson and loria expected
a year that ends in a pile.
What do you expect them to say, "the marlins suck dick and will hover around .500 all year. Come out and watch the marlins, they'll be ordinary. SERIOUs FUN Get In ON iT!!!!!!!!!"
it there job to hype them up

also, no they didn't make a huge splash or even a little splash in the offseason, but for once didn't dump guys of importance to save money.

[Ramp]

You're setting your manager up to fail if you have such a low payroll and give him a bullpen full of absolute assholes. Not to mention a horrible bench.

[Nick]

I don't understand why people are upset that samson and loria expected
a year that ends in a pile.
What do you expect them to say, "the marlins suck dick and will hover around .500 all year. Come out and watch the marlins, they'll be ordinary. SERIOUs FUN Get In ON iT!!!!!!!!!"
it there job to hype them up

also, no they didn't make a huge splash or even a little splash in the offseason, but for once didn't dump guys of importance to save money.

The problem is the FO has a job to do as well if this team is going to win, just like Fredi had to job to do to help this team win. The FO didn't do their jobs, so basically what they're saying when they expect a World Series, they're saying everyone is going to have to make up for our deficiencies and produce above and beyond your potential, and guess what? if you don't, you guys are going to be the ones to take the fall.

It's just like in any business. It'd be like if a company's upper management didn't give it's employees enough money or manpower to achieve the company's goal, but when it came time for someone to be held accountable it's the people on the low end of the totem-pole that take the fall. All it does is alienate people, and it's not how you sustain success, I don't care what you're doing.

[Valid]

Everyone is shitting all over this organization for not going out and getting bullpen help, but my question is, what the heck did you want them to do? It's not their fault that Calero's arm fell off and that there just are never many good relievers on the open market.

Bullpens are a crapshoot. Up until this season, the Marlins have consistently managed to scrap together good 'pens by finding relatively obscure players (Gardner, Nelson, Waechter, Calero [although he was a pretty fine reliever in the past], Meyer, etc.). It didn't work for them this time around, and you can't really kill them for that because a ton of teams in Major League Baseball bank on that type of thing.

The bullpen is the one major problem with this team. The starting pitching has been very good (it's funny how the same people who blast the organization for putting together bad relief pitching aren't giving them any credit for the Robertson acquisition), and the lineup, save a couple of bad slumps from a couple of players, has been pretty solid.

That's why I don't think you can really kill the front office here.