Who should be the next Manager?

[flyer85]

I have always liked Valentine(even if he is a bit of prima donna) and Johnson. Seems that BCast needs to spend some cash on a experienced winner mainly for PR reasons.

[KronoRed]

Originally Posted by BRM

What about Larry Dierker? What's everyone think of him?

Raisor suggested him 3 manager changes ago, sadly I think he's done on the bench

[Reds4Life]

My guess is LaRussa. It will happen shortly after Jocketty asks out of his St. Louis contract and comes here. If you notice in the artlce yesterday he only denied talking to BobCast, he didn't say he wouldn't be interested or he wasn't going to leave St. Louis.

Unless BobCast wants to be viewed as Lindner 2.0 he's probably going to need to drop some major coin on this hire.

[Heath]

Ken Macha would be fine in my book.

[traderumor]

I don't want a recycled baseball lifer. Give someone with the credentials except for experience a chance.

[jmcclain19]

Bob Brenly - No No No No No. No.
Does anyone remember the 2001 World Series? The Diamonbacks may be the only team in modern history that won the trophy despite their managers best intentions to give the title to the Yankees. Was absolutely awful as a manger and was run out of town on a rail because without two monster horses he had nothing.

[Always Red]

Originally Posted by traderumor

I don't want a recycled baseball lifer. Give someone with the credentials except for experience a chance.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm not interested in a "name." Find the best man for the job, no matter what his name is.

[Jpup]

anybody but Larussa would be fine. I have preferences, but that isn't going to matter.

[wally post]

I agree with the NO on LaRussa. Bobby V is def a prima donna. But he's smart. Really smart. i think he would move us forward very well - plus we would constantly have things to talk about here with his crazy ideas!

[Always Red]

Originally Posted by wally post

I agree with the NO on LaRussa. Bobby V is def a prima donna. But he's smart. Really smart. i think he would move us forward very well - plus we would constantly have things to talk about here with his crazy ideas!

I'm not so sure Bobby V would be a big hit around here at RZ; he's picked up some crazy ideas from the Japanese about how pitch counts aren't all they are made out to be...

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseb...pitchers_x.htm

Foreigners quickly learn to appreciate Japanese pitchers.

"I just watched three of my guys throw 150 pitches" during a workout," says Bobby Valentine, the former New York Mets and Texas Rangers manager in his sixth season in Japan. "At the finish, they're still throwing hard, hitting corners. I wanted to kiss them. It goes against my grain, against everything I've ever learned. … But I've learned to accept it works here."

Motonori Watanabe, Matsuzaka's high school coach, seems amused by all the attention to pitch counts. "Americans use their upper body more," Watanabe says through a translator. "We're farmers, fishermen. Our body type fits for using the lower body."

The secret seems to be a combination of training and repeti-tion that, used by Japanese play-ers from their youth, provides stamina.

"Look at his thighs," Valentine says of pitcher Yuta Ohmine, the first draft pick of Valentine's Chiba Lotte Marines last year. Valentine says Ohmine's high school coach would have his pitchers shag fly balls for two hours during batting practice — dragging a tire attached by a rope to an elastic waistband.

The superior stamina allows pitchers to throw longer without fatigue and maintain their normal motion.

"How do you repeat the mechanics?" Valentine says. "But they do, over and over. A lot of it has to do with balance. They do everything with good mechanics."

Last summer's hero in the two-week high school tournament was Yuki Saito, who is now in college in Japan. He threw 948 pitches over the final five days for Waseda Jitsugyo, the West Tokyo high school that produced Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh.

But Marty Kuehnert, assistant to the president of the Rakuten Golden Eagles, says there are casualties.

"A lot of them can't pitch anymore," he says. "It's not written about here. … You give your all for the school until your legs go into spasms on the mound. I've seen that. It's seen as heroic."

[RANDY IN INDY]

A few new sets of radials and Bobby V will have this pitching staff ready to go deep into games.

[traderumor]

I get a little chuckle thinking about LaRussa as manager with Marty B.'s love for the man. In the same manner, let's throw Buck Showalter's hat in the ring

[M2]

You want a sleeper? Torey Luvullo.

Might be the next big thing when it comes to managers.

[OnBaseMachine]

Davey Johnson.

[HumnHilghtFreel]

Ryne Sandberg

PEORIA, Ill. -- It's a little after 2 o'clock, some five hours before the first pitch on this steamy, sun-soaked, triple-digit afternoon; yet there's the Hall of Famer, shagging balls in the outfield and pushing a grocery cart filled with baseballs to the pitcher's mound. There's the Hall of Famer, throwing batting practice, hitting fungoes, practicing rundowns and gathering his players for a pep talk.

While the 20-somethings he manages chug Gatorade and hover in the shade-covered dugout, the 47-year-old Hall of Famer doesn't stop.



It's a pretty safe bet that Sandberg didn't pitch much batting practice during his playing days.
Ryne Sandberg is still obsessed. The same fear of failure that motivated him through each of his 15 seasons as the second baseman for the Chicago Cubs now pushes him as the first-year manager of the Peoria Chiefs, the Cubs' low-Class A affiliate in the Midwest League.

"Even at this level, where it's 80-90 percent about development, I'm constantly thinking about what our record is," Sandberg says. "When we don't play well, I take it very personally."

What's different is how the chronically soft-spoken second baseman has gone about this new experiment, managing with a Lou Piniella-like fire he rarely flashed in his playing days. The same quiet, introverted kid from Spokane, Wash., who was ejected just twice in his 16-year playing career has been tossed four times and suspended once in his first year as a manager. And the Chiefs' season is barely half over.