Top 5 pick here we come! It suck's to have a season like this and people blame AA but I believe his hands were really tied on the tax. If the team does continue to suck then get a new manager in the offseason, retool the bullpen (Lopez and JJ will help a lot), get a good SP and SS. A lot to do but AA will spend big after the season the teams had.
Totally agree AA had constraints. Where I find issue is, should he have bargain shopped all of the Temu website for As Seen on TV products or made a quality purchase or three from Amazon? Profar wasn't a bad stones throw despite the early return on investment. But even that was shrouded in mystery.
People had plenty of issues with Bobby Cox, but I don't recall anyone saying he was the worst manager in baseball.
No. But then nearly everybody he was managing against was a dinosaur.
all the managers in his time were following the speed at the top, have a closer, power hitter at 4 type idiots... Twit hasn't left that era while the rest of baseball has.. It was clear 5 years ago as it is today.. why AA didn't make the change is beyond me and why I don't give him a pass.. agreeing to trade Grissom for Sale is not that impressive..that is just Boston being dumb. that rivals saying Coppy was a genius because he got swanson and more for Miller.
Totally different era with longer benches and shorter bullpens (Braves had the big advantage of having starting pitchers that could easily get to the 7th inning). When you have a couple of extra position players, you can mix-and-match more effectively.
Casey Stengel was probably the first manager to use platoons extensively in the 1950s, but it wasn't practiced with any regularity for a long time after that and certainly not with the statistical angle that is employed today. Cox started using platoons in Toronto (Mulliniks/Iorg was the most notable) and carried that over to his second stint in the dugout with the Braves to a greater extent (think Gerald Williams/Ryan Klesko, Danny Bautista/Michael Tucker, Mark Lemke/Jeff Treadway--admittedly I may have some of these wrong). The thing about Bobby is that even when he had the DH in Toronto, he managed to get most of his bench considerable playing time and those Toronto teams were loaded with studs. Again, longer benches and a different approach to starting pitching created those opportunities.
He knew Acuna and Strider were gonna miss time, he was handcuffed by the owners with the tax and one of our best relievers just went down for most if not all of the season. He got alot of crap and hoped that some of it stuck. Going into the offseason he will have Acuna and Strider having a full offseason to rest and be ready for ST along with JJ and Lopez. On top of that he'll be able to spend big bc we reset the tax. Add JJ and Lopez to the bullpen and it'll be a strength. We'll need a closer, SS, SP, and possible LF if he can get rid of Profar. Cease, Bichette, Tucker should all be names he can get with the money he'll have available. Not all 3 but 2 of them. AA has a good standing with the A's so maybe he could swing something for Mason Miller.
Bobby used platoons to a fault. Even if one side of the platoon may as well have been carrying a toilet paper core to the plate instead of a bat, and the other half could actually hit a little.
He’d still probably write a book faster than George R R Martin.
