The Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton yesterday, ending his five-year term as manager of the organization. There weren't many highlights in this term, as the Pirates never won more than 76 games under a season's guidance, leaving the manager's chair overall with a record of 306-440. For a job that is vague and difficult to evaluate from the outside, there are other options besides treating the club’s records as manager’s job performance.
All of this is to say that replacing Shelton in a canoe is not necessarily a shocking or controversial decision to pirates. After years of failures, including the disappointing 2024 season, their record is the same as in 2023 despite their increase Paul Skynis and Jared Jones Rotating, Pittsburgh certainly hopes to spend the year in 2025. It's been a long season, but so far, the situation has not been resolved: the club has gone 12-26 so far and has now lost seven consecutive games in all three consecutive wins this year.
Having said that, it's hard to say that even a Hall of Fame manager can turn this club around. The Buccaneers' offseason was very quiet and saw them heading into the season, and this winter they spread only 22mm of their spending in seven free agents. Maybe, if Skenes gets a higher-than-average supplement Teoscar Hernandez and Gleyber Torres Not role-playing Tommy Pham and Adam Frazierthe team will be in a better position and Sheldon will still be hired.
From Sheldon's specific case, seasonal shooting of managers has become increasingly rare. Quite famously, the 2022 season saw four managers being eliminated for more than a month in baseball games. The Wanderer fired Chris Woodward in mid-August. The Blue Jays fired Charlie Montoyo in mid-July. Both the Phillies and the Angels fired their managers (Joe Gillardi and Joe Madden, respectively) before the end of the first week of June. Two of the four teams continue to make the playoffs, although it should be noted that Toronto has a record of victory and is in the playoff position when Montoyo was fired.
For every fire like Girardi, it happened with Phils eventually turning the situation around and heading into the World Series under Rob Thomson, which took several seasons of results. Before Thomson and John Schneider succeeded in 2022, the last team to make the playoffs after firing the manager was the 2009 Rockies. On the other hand, the 2010 Orioles and Royals improved significantly after hiring Ned Yost and Buck Showalter. Although neither team made the playoffs, Showalter led Baltimore to play for the second year, while Yost eventually led the Royals to lead the Royals to play in a row in 2014 and 15 years later. The Mariners' season turned to last year after Scott Servais' sack on Dan Wilson, and Seattle currently has the second best record in the U.S. League.
Perhaps, the argument for making season management changes is that it provides your new manager with an opportunity to lower their expectations in a comfortable role in the season that has already been under a bad start under a previous manager. Of course, this is certainly valuable, and the opportunity to have an internal candidate trial in the canoe before weighing outside candidates in the offseason.
On the other hand, one might argue that if the club is unconfident in the managers and keeps them performing for more than a month with the team, the club should make changes to management before the offseason so that it will be led by the ideals of the organization from the start of the season.
Where are the MLBTR readers in this debate? Is it a good practice to change in season management that brings positive changes within the organization and can it stimulate team success or is it a largely meaningless move to prove that there would be a better performance in the last offseason? There is a say in the following polls:
