After sitting through the wretched mind-fuck that was the 2005 Tigers, it was obvious changes needed to be made.Alan Trammell out, Jim Leyland in:
I felt this was a rather cheap move and a way of placing blame on someone who was not really completely at fault for the disappointing season. Trammell, I think was in over his head when he got the job, but I felt deserved one more year to try to save his job and show some improvement. Any manager will struggle when his $100 million dollar free agent can't play half a season because of injuries, his best pure hitter decides to stop using steroids and also is completely batshit insane on top of that. I mean, he drew 11 fucking walks in 129 games! That is almost one walk for every million we paid him to play for us last year. And Dmitri Young decided to get fatter, and pout on the bench. Also, his best pitcher was 22 years old at the time.
That is not a good recipe for success, and in hindsight I think its kind of remarkable we were playing .500 baseball for most of the year.
Jim Leyland seems like a decent enough guy. He's old; he smokes, and has won a World Series. But, he hasn't coached since sending the Rockies to the ground and throwing out the arms of much of their pitching prospects at the same time. I am impressed by what he did with the Pirates. He developed a lot of talent (see Barry Bonds) and made pittsburgh one of the better teams in NL during the early 90's. But Like I said, he's old. I included a picture of him to emphasize he's old. And that picture is atleast 6 years old. He really only is 60 years old right now, but he looks like he has seen some wild shit in his days.
Overall if I'd have to grade this move...I'd give it a C.
It is going to be interesting to see how our young players respond to Leyland. Especially our young pitching staff. Bonderman, Verlander, Zumaya, Colon, German have great potential, but we get to see how they respond to Leylands coaching.
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