That's the question posed by the front page of the Baltimore Sun this morning. I think the answer is "maybe". Perlozzo has definitely made some questionable, if not poor, decisions over the past few weeks. They include pulling Jeremy Guthrie in the 8th inning up 5-0 last Sunday, bringing in righty Danys Baez to face a lefty in the 8th inning of yesterday's game (or ever for that matter), and failing to take advantage of lefty-righty hitting matchups in other situations, especially with the flexibility possessed by the O's at C, 1B and OF with Huff, Chris Gomez, Gibbons and Hernandez. Given the Orioles' margin of error is very slim due to injuries and overall talent, these factors all point to firing Perlozzo.
Unfortunately, Sam and pitching coach and childhood friend Leo Mazzone come as a package deal. If you believe that the progress shown by Loewen (pre-injury), Cabrera, Guthrie, Bedard and others is due to Mazzone, you'd be hard-pressed to send them both packing. If, on the other hand, you look at bullpen disasters like Danys Baez and the regression of Chris Ray, you might not feel particularly attached to either of them.
Given Peter Angelos' reluctance to make mid-season moves, and since no player has publicly griped about Perlozzo, I think we are going to be stuck with him for the remainder of the season. It will be unfortunate to see bad things happen to good people, but it wouldn't be the first time (Johnny Oates, Cal Ripken Sr., Frank Robinson).
4 Responses:
I think the answer is "not yet." You might be able to pin 1 or 2 losses on Perlozzo, but the reality is that the team just isn't good enough to compete with the Yankes and Red Sox.
I would like to see him get more fired up at some of these tough losses, but that's a management style issue.
We're trying to build a team around some young players, and that's tough to do without some stability at the top. I'd like to see Perlozzo get at least enough rope to hang himself.
But what do I know, I thought Lee Mazzilli should have gotten another season.
I think there's a little more to Perlozzo than we see publicly. I heard the MASN post-game interview with him yesterday. He gave very short answers, and actually repeated Gary Thorne's question as his answer for one of them. It went something like "Do you think....", and Perlozzo replied, "I think....". There might be a bit more asshole to him than we see.
Unfortunately for those of us who would like to see him throw some guys under the truck, he's not going to come out and say "I would look like a genius if my players weren't such fuck-ups." I think that's what Ozzie Guillen would have said by now.
Yeah, I'd just like to see a little bit of fire from him. Maybe he's like that in the clubhouse, but as a fan you don't really get to see it.
Now that The Sun, MASN, and HFS are all up his ass, he might have to put on a show this next series against Toronto. I'd almost bet on it.
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