Ron Roenicke relieved of managerial duties (Craig Counsell named new manager, 3 yr contract)

[MNBrew]

I know a lot of people wanted someone like Gardenhire, but maybe there is a reason he's not currently managing a MLB team.

 

Correct, there is a reason: He chose to take a year off before possibly pursuing other openings.

[Bombers]

This bagging on RR for starting Marcum in Game #6 is kind of annoying me. He was faced with 3 crappy options: 1. Start Marcum; 2. Start Gallardo on short rest after he got shelled the game prior; 3. Bullpen by committee.

 

I am sorry but all 3 of those options sucked. Gallardo pitched like crap in Game #3 and always struggled against STL; Marcum was obviously struggling at the end of the year; and a bullpen by committee in Game #6 of the WS is never a good option either.

 

Even with Marcum having a horrible start; the Brewers were down 5-4 after 2. Only after Narveson; who some apparently wanted to start the game; gave up 4 runs in the 3rd inning did things start to get out of hand. Even with Marcum starting the Brewers were still in a good position to win but the bullpen couldn't hold the Cards down

There was a bazzilion things RRR did wrong at the end of 2011 but to focus on your "What was the better option" question - I guess for me:

1. Marcum closed out the regular season giving up 5+ runs in 3 of his final 4 games. Everyone knew his arm was dead but we kept trotting him out there. He then gave up 7 earned runs in Game 3 of the NLDS. So why we even started him in Game 2 of the NLCS is beyond me. We gave up 12 runs that game. There are better options that just throwing the game away.

2. We finished at 96 wins and had to use Greinke on the final game of the season. (There was a chance we could have ended up tied with dbacks at season end with a loss in that game. But at that point, you need to focus on setting your post season pitching lineup. Especially when you knew Marcum was done.

3. Us not able to close the NLDS series in 3 or 4 games forced us to use Yo in game 5. Why even start Marcum in NLDS game 2 - he was done.

4. We should have been at a 3 man rotation in the playoffs. Greinke, Yo and Wolf.

 

Even with all the starts Marcum made up until Game 1 of the NLCS and all the bad choices made thus far, RRR still had the option to say; 3 man rotation time. Marcum is out. And the NLCS should have went

Greinke on October 9th (Who last pitched on October 2nd! Greinke somehow managed to get 7 days rest in the playoffs!)

Wolf on October 10th (Who last pitched on October 5th)

Yo on October 12th (Who last pitched on October 7th)

Greinke on October 13th

Wolf on October 14th

Yo on October 16th

Greinke on October 17th

 

How Marcum managed to get 3 playoff starts is baffling. Then toss in him starting Kotsay over Gomez and I'm sorry - he should have been walked to the door then. What was he thinking?

[Patrick425]

I know a lot of people wanted someone like Gardenhire, but maybe there is a reason he's not currently managing a MLB team.

 

Correct, there is a reason: He chose to take a year off before possibly pursuing other openings.

 

 

Well, there you go. If that's true he was not available anyways (it hasn't been a year). Even if that's not the case, Gardenhire's last 4 years in Minnesota were horrible and he was 6-21 in the post season in his career.

 

I realize it's a smaller sample size but Roenicke was 5-6 in the post season and had almost the exact same winning percentage as Gardenhire (.508 vs .507) during his career.

[bill hAll Star]

I know a lot of people wanted someone like Gardenhire, but maybe there is a reason he's not currently managing a MLB team.

 

Correct, there is a reason: He chose to take a year off before possibly pursuing other openings.

 

 

Well, there you go. If that's true he was not available anyways (it hasn't been a year). Even if that's not the case, Gardenhire's last 4 years in Minnesota were horrible and he was 6-21 in the post season in his career.

 

I realize it's a smaller sample size but Roenicke was 5-6 in the post season and had almost the exact same winning percentage as Gardenhire (.508 vs .507) during his career.

 

Ned Yost has an extremely positive playoff winning percentage (his roster is perfectly constructed for the playoffs, to be honest) but I'm not concerned about playoff winning percentages of managers. I'm just worried about getting there. I guess some managers can horrendously botch a situation, but for the most part, I'll take one that gets me there by being smart in the regular season and see what happens, because I don't think managers have a huge handle on winning in the playoffs with it being such a small sample.

[xisxisxis]

Why does Doug Melvin still have a job? He's on his 4th manager which is Epic in the ability to continually choose the wrong person and yet still have your job. To go along with crappy choices for running the scouting department, player development, and the water cooler and you have a completely horrible "manager" who still has his job and will continue to have a role in the evolving brewers. Heck Melvin's track record alone would indicate that counsell is a good choice if it would have been Dougie's last choice for manager.....

[Thurston Fluff]

http://www.theonion.com/article/turns-out-craig-counsell-was-actually-best-basebal-6581

[reillymcshane]

http://www.theonion.com/article/turns-out-craig-counsell-was-actually-best-basebal-6581

Awesome. I had forgotten about that one.

[3and2Fastball]

Why does Doug Melvin still have a job?.....

 

Mark A is the reason

 

Mark A turned around the franchise. Increased ticket sales. Increased revenue. Under Melvin the Brewers made the playoffs twice. I believe that Mark A thinks he knows how to help us contend every year and Doug has done what Mark wants him to do.

[logan82]

Funny thing is if the bats don't go ice cold to finish last year we make the playoffs and suddenly the organization is not the worst in baseball like people want to make it out to be. They put a playoff roster on the field, the team tanked due to a bunch of nagging little injuries late in the year.

 

As for the Marcum thing, there were no good options at all. Gallardo had pitched poorly in Sept and would have to go on short rest which has never treated him well or you had Marcum who wasn't pitching well or a bullpen that would have struggled to get through a game since it wasn't rested.

Funny thing if the Brewers don't have hot month last year on April they start the rebuild a year earlier.

[Lee16]

Haudricourt just tweeted: "Doug Melvin had hard time accepting only 3 2-game win streaks since Sept. 1: "You'd think you'd win 2 in a row by mistake.""

 

Between that and Roenicke's comments yesterday, I wish I could have seen that last meeting between these two, wow.

[Boomer5]

Based off of what Doug and Craig said it sounds like there were some issues behind the scenes with Ron.

 

This makes more sense. This is one aspect the advanced metrics crowd rarely gets; the personalities and chemistry of a bunch of alpha males in a locker room, let alone factoring in losing.

[logan82]

Why does Doug Melvin still have a job?.....

 

Mark A is the reason

 

Mark A turned around the franchise. Increased ticket sales. Increased revenue. Under Melvin the Brewers made the playoffs twice. I believe that Mark A thinks he knows how to help us contend every year and Doug has done what Mark wants him to do.

I think you are right. I hope Mark realizes we can't do that. We are going to have down years unless we draft well. Maybe even then.

[xisxisxis]

Mark A is the reason

 

Yep and as I've stated before, the cash flow associated with a team that always appears to be on the edge of contention and the best baseball fans around makes money for the owners. But at some point the fans aren't going to come out in droves to watch a 5th place team get their butts handed to them by the cubs (whose fans fill Miller ParK for 8-9 games a year) and the only way to maintain the cash flow is to gut the roster (i.e. the salaries).

 

Its almost as if 12 years on, Attanasio is doing a favor for bud and making us forget the Wendy Selig-Prieb years with a run of crapitude and an interfering wanna-be GM owner... Well we aren't there yet, but I see it around the corner....

 

I thought it was funny when Marky Mark was PRing it after he arrived to save the day a few weeks ago and he mentioned how he ran into Walt Jocketty and was encouraged that Walt thought he had a good team. Wake up Attanaseau, this isn't a country club or a gathering of investment bankers where other members have to compliment your butt ugly daughter, this is a business and if I was competing with you in the business world I surely would be telling you to continue to do stupid things so I have an advantage. Yeah, keep using a large amount of your budget to sign those long-term deals for those vets, that will make your team really competitive... Yeah mark that's a great team you got. Don't let those 70 wins fool you and don't, please I am begging you, don't change direction. Just hang in there, I feel your pain bro... as my team crushes yours on the way to the playoffs and you can stay home and hold no one accountable....

[monty57]

I will be interested to see how Counsell does. I remember after 2011, someone interviewing Corey Hart asked how the team would handle losing Fielder. His answer was that the team's biggest loss would be Counsell for how he helped the players in the clubhouse. This was after Counsell had his 0-fer-50-something and posted a .503 OPS and 39 OPS+ for the season.

 

I hope Hart was right, and Counsell does have a clubhouse presence that motivates players to do better, and be a better team. Going forward, I also hope he is able to work with young players, as we will probably see a lot of them on the roster over the next few seasons.

 

All-in-all, I never had anything against Roenicke, but we'd probably be a lot better off it this move and the moves we are probably about to make would have been made a couple of months ago.

[danzig6767]

Counsell managed to accumulate 22.3 bWAR (17.7 fWAR) in his career. Over 15 years, that's not a huge amount - but it's nothing to sneeze at. He played good defense, was a solid baserunner and took almost as many walks (10.7% walk rate) as he had strike outs. Defense, baserunning, plate discipline - those are all things this club could use.

 

Yea, i don't get some saying they hated him as a hitter. Counsell had a higher walk rate than Braun has even though Craig had zero power. I'd love for more Brewer hitters to have a similar approach at the plate. Swing at strikes, take balls. Work the count, don't let pitchers get you out by swinging at the pitches they want you to swing at.

 

I like the hire because pretty much whenever i've hear Counsell speak, he strikes me as an intelligent guy. I see him being willing to mix sabermetric ideas with needed leadership qualities.

[danzig6767]

Why does Doug Melvin still have a job?.....

Mark A is the reason

 

Mark A turned around the franchise. Increased ticket sales. Increased revenue. Under Melvin the Brewers made the playoffs twice. I believe that Mark A thinks he knows how to help us contend every year and Doug has done what Mark wants him to do.

I think they are very similar in mindset, which is why Attanasio has kept Melvin so long. Doug generally is a win now guy whenever and Attanasio is also. So when Mark has been going around talking to Boras nearly every year signing free agents, Melvin likely wasn't trying to throw up roadblocks saying hey Mark, you probably shouldn't sign Lohse and give up our draft pick, regardless of what you read on Fangraphs about late first round picks.

 

A GM with a different mindset probably would have told Attanasio to stop signing all of these free agents and to stop picking up the phone every time Boras calls with a free agent struggling to find a home.

[3and2Fastball]

A GM with a different mindset probably would have told Attanasio to stop signing all of these free agents and to stop picking up the phone every time Boras calls with a free agent struggling to find a home.

 

I agree and my concern is that when the time comes to hire a new GM, any prospective GM who tells Mark to essentially stop playing fantasy Baseball with a major league franchise and to let him run things in terms of player acquisitions is not going to get to the 2nd interview let alone get hired.

[monty57]

So when Mark has been going around talking to Boras nearly every year signing free agents, Melvin likely wasn't trying to throw up roadblocks saying hey Mark, you probably shouldn't sign Lohse and give up our draft pick, regardless of what you read on Fangraphs about late first round picks.

 

Melvin also got fired in Texas for telling the owner that signing A-Rod was a dumb idea. He probably figures it's safer to quietly let the owner make his free agent mistakes, while doing what he can to fill the rest of the roster with the money that's left over. It's hard to start over with a new organization when you're in your 60's, so while he discusses the team with Attanasio, he probably doesn't go overboard on criticism or try to tell him what to do or who to speak with.

[dlk9s]

Haudricourt just tweeted: "Doug Melvin had hard time accepting only 3 2-game win streaks since Sept. 1: "You'd think you'd win 2 in a row by mistake.""

 

Between that and Roenicke's comments yesterday, I wish I could have seen that last meeting between these two, wow.

 

It was kind of funny listening to him/watching him say that in the press conference. You could see on his face that he has been really frustrated with how the team is doing.

[JohnBriggs12]

Based off of what Doug and Craig said it sounds like there were some issues behind the scenes with Ron.

 

This makes more sense. This is one aspect the advanced metrics crowd rarely gets; the personalities and chemistry of a bunch of alpha males in a locker room, let alone factoring in losing.

 

Just the fact that a team that was in first place for 5 months became so utterly helpless down the stretch is a sign that all was not right behind the scenes. This year it just carried over, with the newcomer Lind not surprisingly the least affected. That being said, I don't think this is an easy group to manage and Counsell is going to be tested. There are guys on this team who weren't particularly popular in the clubhouses of other organizations and some of those guys are among the highest paid Brewers. That's not even counting what feelings Braun engenders especially when he's not carrying his load.

[jodo23]

After a few hours without a uniform number assigned to Counsell on the Brewers website, they've finally updated the page. Looks like he's got his #30 back.

 

http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/team/coaches.jsp?c_id=mil

 

Thornburg is still listed as #30 on the 40-man roster, so I'm not what's going to happen there.

[markedman5]

@trebby: Jonathan Lucroy on managerial change: “Sometimes you need to come in here and kick someone in the butt, move guys forward.” #Brewers

[monty57]

After a few hours without a uniform number assigned to Counsell on the Brewers website, they've finally updated the page. Looks like he's got his #30 back.

 

http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/team/coaches.jsp?c_id=mil

 

Thornburg is still listed as #30 on the 40-man roster, so I'm not what's going to happen there.

 

My guess: Thornburg will be happy to give him the number as long as he's at least considered for a rotation spot once Lohse and Garza are traded away.

[reillymcshane]

@trebby: Jonathan Lucroy on managerial change: “Sometimes you need to come in here and kick someone in the butt, move guys forward.” #Brewers

Comments like this - and from one of the team's best players - make you think players were too comfortable.

[yfinn6]

@trebby: Jonathan Lucroy on managerial change: “Sometimes you need to come in here and kick someone in the butt, move guys forward.” #Brewers

 

It's kind of nice to see that, to be honest.