Reds Fire Narron, Appoint Mackanin Interim Manager
By
Amanda
Posted at 10:43 pm
CINCINNATI -- At a press conference at noon Monday at Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati Reds president and chief executive officer Bob Castellini and executive vice president and general manager Wayne Krivsky will announce Pete Mackanin as interim field manager for the remainder of the 2007 season.
Mackanin, 55, will replace Jerry Narron, whose Reds teams went 31-51 (.378) this season and 157-179 (.467) overall.
The club will have no comment until tomorrow's press conference in the field level interview room.
Mackanin (pronounced mah-CAN-in) will be introduced Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the field level interview room as the 59th manager in Reds history, the 49th since 1900.
He previously was in the organization from 1990-92, when he managed Class AAA Nashville in the American Association, and he rejoined the Reds in February 2006 as the Major League club's advance scout.
It will be Mackanin's second stint as an interim manager in the Major Leagues. In 2005 he managed the final 26 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who went 55-81 under Lloyd McClendon.
He spent seven seasons on the Major League coaching staffs of the Montreal Expos (third base coach, 1997-2000) and Pirates (bench coach, 2003-05) and has 21 seasons of managerial experience in the minor leagues and winter leagues.
Mackanin managed in the minors for 13 years and produced 917 victories and league championships in 1995 (Ottawa, International League) and 2002 (Lynchburg, Carolina league). For 8 seasons he skippered winter ball clubs in Venezuela, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. In 1988, he led Aguilas del Zulia to Venezuelan League and Caribbean Series championships.
An infielder, Mackanin was selected by the Washington Senators in the fourth round of the June 1969 free-agent draft. In 9 Major League seasons he appeared in 548 games for the Texas Rangers, Expos, Philadelphia Phillies and Minnesota Twins.
He will wear uniform number 46.
I won’t be happy until the real culprit is fired !!
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As a player, Mackanin was your basic light-hitting utility player, compiling a .226 career BA in 548 games at 2B, SS, 1B, 3B, OF, and DH.
What I seemed to remember him for was tormenting Reds pitchers, so I checked Baseball Reference, which confirmed that his career BA was .308 against Billingham, .714 against Borbon, .333 against Carroll, .286 against John Denny, .286 against Seaver, and .400 against Zachry. Oh, and he had a 1.083 OPS against Gullett.
But those days are long gone. The relevant numbers: Pete Mackanin’s record in those 26 games he managed the Pirates in 2005 was 12-14 (a .462 winning percentage).
Just sayin’.
HMZ
Poor Narron. Judging from the [url=http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070701&content_id=2061915&vkey=news_cin&fext=.jsp&c_id=cin]MLB.com article[/url], he wasn’t expecting this.
[quote]”I’m not real sure about what I’m going to do. I haven’t thought about it,” Narron said. “All I was thinking about after today’s game was Tuesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.”[/quote]
Most of the articles are blaming the Reds’ terrible pen, not Narron. Narron’s bullpen use drove me nuts, but OTOH, what can you do, when Weathers is the only one you can trust to get outs?
Again, Narron must assume some of the responsibility for the terrible bullpen. He never knew who to go to and when to go to them… he would throw a guy from the 5th inning one day to the 8th inning the next day and then back to long relief. Again I must point out that EVERY team has bullpen issues. ALL OF THEM have question marks and journeyman, but most managers keep it from imploding. Narron dating back to last year never had a grasp on this bullpen and simply cycled guys until they “lost it”. The only guy he ever meshed with is Weathers and we’ve been through something like 30 guys. Somewhere along the line you have to say the manager is not handling the bullpen very well. Maybe Hume should get a share of the blame too. Anyhow, I look forward to a new future and I sincerely hope we land a stud manager to take us to the promised land. This is a game of elite managers who abuse the rest of the league. Just look how LaRussa takes a bunch of nobody’s with Carpenter and Edmonds injured and still has them in the hunt. Throughout history you can count the great managers on your two hands and they seem to nearly always be in the playoffs or on the cusp, while the rest of the league plays the victim role. Great managers get more from their players and get mediocre talent to rise up and play beyond expectations… or else they are quicker to identify who has it and who doesn’t. They influence the GM to get them their kind of players. Obviously Narron is not a very good manager and never earned Krivsky’s respect in that regard. His kind of player is Royce Clayton. Nuff said.
It is about time!!!!! I will never understand why they extended his contract earlier in the season. Looking forward to a new start with the Reds this week!
If Weathers is the only guy Narron meshed with, maybe that’s because (as smartelf pointed out) that’s the only guy who had a set role in the pen (which has been one of my gripes for months). Also, it occurs to me that Hume is the one constant that’s been around the whole time that the Reds’ bullpen has had problems, which goes back to the Bob Boone days.
As far as great managers getting more from their players and so forth…I believe that the trick there for a manager is, instead of focusing on what guys can’t do the manager has to focus on what his players’ strengths are (IOW, what they CAN do rather than what they CAN’T do), and try to put them in a situation where they can be successful.
Obviously, such brilliant Narron decisions as Castro to pinch-hit for Hamilton in the ninth inning of a close game don’t fall into line with this school of thinking!!! >:-)
We saw this on the news last night. I guess Ludwick was just too much. The last manager was fired before or during a series with the Cards and the Reds kicked their butts. Please stop firing managers?
Krivsky came awfully close to breaking down during the press conference. It was a pretty pathetic press conference. They didn’t introduce the new manager and they just praised Narron even though they are firing him. Krivsky accepted his share of the responsibility but you get the feeling they still don’t know what is wrong with the team.
HINT: promoting Bailey ahead of Livingston was a terrible move. Getting rid of Santos in favor of Ricky Stone was a bad move. Bringing up Majewski was a bad move. Trading for Majewski was a bad move.
A guy on MLB TV just cracked me up when he said as soon as he saw a lineup card with Dunn batting behind Alex Rodriguez he would have fired Narron. EXACTLY. Narron always outsmarted himself with the lefty-right thing. He could never decide on ANYTHING and stick with it for more than a game or two.
The AP article suggested that it was the Giants games, not the Cards’, that prompted the firing.
Barry Bonds could break the record during this series, but none of the games is even close to sold out. That was seen as a sign that something had to be done to appease the fans.
You’d think that having the worst record in major league baseball would be reason enough without them having to look at Bonds or ticket sales or anything else. I have to wonder if this didn’t happen not because Krivsky made a decision, but rather because Mr. Castellini finally put his foot down and told Krivsky, “Enough is enough. Either Jerry goes, or you both go.”
Krivsky came in at the 11th hour, stuck with the manager who was already in place when probably most GMs in that situation would have wanted their own guy in there. It was my thinking that Krivsky was going to play it smart, go forward and if things didn’t work out he could throw Narron under the bus and bring in his own guy and divert the blame away from himself. Now, I have to wonder…Did Krivsky really think Narron was the right guy to lead this team out of its current half-decade plus of losing?
If so, maybe I should go back to making up lists of potential GMs for Mr. Castellini to hire. That would be, like, really eerie for me personally, because the first thing I ever posted here was the facts on the guys who Castellini was reportedly considering after he canned O’Brien, maybe a day or two before he hired Krivsky. For me, it would be like, “Excuse me, isn’t this where we came in?” when you’re at the movies. Kind of a Groundhog Day experience, but with different guys for me to dig up the facts on.