By now it is official. The Baltimore Orioles have fired manager Dave Trembley and have promoted third-base coach Juan Samuel to be the interim skipper.
Now that he is gone, the biggest question is what Trembley failed to do and what Samuel needs to do differently.
To Orioles fans, the firing comes hardly as a surprise, considering most of them have been calling for this for months now.
To say Trembley was disliked would be an understatement. Fans thought he was so bad that for the first time in a decade, Baltimore’s failures were not blamed on owner Peter Angelos.
Fans blamed Trembley for everything, especially the under-performing of the offense. Most of them probably have some sort of Trembley Voodoo doll in their closet with a needle in it for every loss this season. After all, baseball is a superstitious game.
While some Orioles fans are just happy he is gone as if he were the Wicked Witch of the West, they should be focusing on what Trembley is actually responsible for.
The answer to this is that doesn’t come from any particular moves Samuel will make, but rather what this change will do inside the clubhouse.
Some are saying that the losing isn’t all Trembley’s fault because of hampering injuries, but that attitude in the locker room is 100 percent on him.
The Orioles have become stagnant in the past few weeks and have accepted losing as an inevitability. Remember Adam Jones throwing his helmet after an out because he was tired of failing? That isn’t happening anymore because they have stopped caring.
Trebley should have been fired right when that feeling started creeping into the minds of the players.
In post game interviews, Trembley basically sits there and has no insight to why this team is bad. If it’s true that he really does have no idea why the team isn’t performing, then he is truly a terrible manager. However, the most likely scenario is that he doesn’t want to call anybody out- this isn’t any better.
This is the Major Leagues Dave…these aren’t kids we’re dealing with here.
Throughout the entire season of losses, I never heard Trembley yell or criticize his players once. He never held any of them accountable for failures and never got up their butts when careless mistakes were made.
There is a difference between nurturing players and coddling young talent. Trembley clearly coddled them and it has hindered their development.
As his first managerial move, Samuel needs to call Adam Jones into his office and light a fire under him. Call him out for his absolutely terrible plate discipline and poor base running. Let him know he isn’t a young talent, but is instead expected to be one of the stars on this team.
After he lets Jones know what every fan in Baltimore is thinking, do the same with Matt Weiters- then Nick Markakis (I know he has a good average, but his lack of power is disturbing).
These guys were supposed to be the O’s strength, not weakness.
If Baltimore is to see any benefit from this, it will be because someone yelled at this team of apparent children.
It’s been 13 years now since the team was any good. How about getting a manager in there that knows that? Let every player know how embarrassing it is that the Orioles organization has been diminished to a laughing matter when it was feared in the 1980s.
If Angelos won’t pay for a manager to do this for him, I’ll do it for free.
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