Final Acta

The Nationals did something pointless. Dog bites man.

Did Manny Acta "deserve" to get fired? Being 26-61 in the midst of a third consecutive losing season is a strong argument in favor of making changes. But does anyone honestly expect a significant improvement from the Nats in the 2nd half?

I've spilled far too many bytes on the Acta situation already. The manager doesn't pitch, he doesn't hit, he doesn't field. He can't go out there and close out games himself. He can't make Adam Dunn anything more than an indifferent fielder. (Sure, he could bench Dunn to send a "message" to the club, but what would that message be, exactly?)

More worrisome than the firing itself is the atmosphere surrounding the team. Remember that Acta was allegedly supposed to fired a month ago, only to be left hanging when Ken Rosenthal and others "broke the story." So did Stan Kasten stay the execution for 30 days in a fit of pique at the media? If not, what happened between then and now that cost Manny his job?

With Manny out, the last barrier between Stan Kasten and accountability is gone. Kasten talks a good game about being responsible for everything that has gone wrong over the past 3 years, but I missed the part where he offered his resignation after showing Jim Bowden, Randy St. Claire and Acta the door in the space of a few months. Mike Rizzo is an interim GM. Jim Riggleman is a stop-gap manager. This is Stan Kasten's team now, for worse or worse.

Reaction from the Natosphere has been measured and mixed. General consensus: Manny was dealt a lousy hand, but still didn't play it all that well. Brian Oliver makes a good case for giving a new manager a three month audition rather than recycling a retread like Riggleman. But that would require the Nats doing something smart, now wouldn't it?

I'm awfully close to the point of hoping the team screws up the Strasburg negotiations so I can finally write this organization off and go back to enjoying my summers.

Nats at Random

A sequence of disjointed bits for your off day evening:

Dan Steinberg finally gets Manny Acta. Good News Week is off to a roaring start on the DC Sports Bog. Read the whole post and then tell me that firing Manny would be anything other than management CYA and scapegoating by the Lerners, Kasten and Rizzo. When the ship is sinking you don't can the guy calmly organizing the bucket brigade.

Speaking of getting the axe, remember Luis Ayala? The erstwhile Nats set-up man, late of that proto-Washington franchise, the Minnesota Twins, is getting DFA'd. Is it time to think about putting the band back together? Ayala would be a cheap pickup, Jon Rauch is on the outs in Arizona, Gary Majewski is in AAA and Chad Cordero has yet to make so much as a rehab appearance for the Mariners. You could probably grab the whole lot of them for next to nothing. If you're going to have a bad bullpen, may as well have a bad bullpen with nostalgia value, right?

If we're going to reacquire Cordero, it would probably help to have something the Mariners want. Something like, say, Ryan Langerhans? Dave and Derek at U.S.S. Mariner do some of the most interesting baseball writing going, and it would be easier on the eyes if they didn't treat the Nats like their own personal dollar store. Some of us are quite fond of Ryan. Note to Mike Rizzo: If there is a fair deal to be made for Langerhans, make sure The Chief is a throw-in.

Acta Out?

Is the curtain coming down on Manny's act? According to Ken Rosenthal, Acta could be axed following this weekend's series at Tampa Bay. The info comes from Ladson-esque "major-league sources" but it's hardly a far-fetched rumor. (As an aside, are "major-league sources" sources in the big leagues or sources who are a really big deal? Is Rahm Emanuel a major-league source? But I digress...)

Robothal's "sources" indicate that the unenviable task of managing the rest of this season in DC will fall to bench coach Jim Riggleman. Riggleman took over as interim manger of the almost equally terrible 2008 Seattle Mariners before coming to DC to backstop (backstab?) Manny. There's no word yet on who will be promoted to bench coach to play MacDuff to Riggleman's MacBeth. Where have you gone, Pat Corrales?

It's my view that canning Manny is unjustified and will be at least unproductive if not actively counter-productive. I've said so repeatedly. But the numbers don't lie. 15-42 does not portend job security. Likewise, Acta's career record of 147-231 is hardly confidence inspiring. If your solution is to replace him with someone with a track record just as bad, over a much larger sample size, well that's where you lose me. Maybe Manny "deserves" to be fired in some sense. But if the goal is to improve the team, shouldn't you shoot for somebody who would be an improvement? And if Riggleman's just a stop-gap, what's the point?

In one sense though, this is a good thing. The lines of authority are as clear as they've ever been on South Capitol Street. If things don't improve there are no more buffers between the President and the people. June 13, 2009 is Inauguration Day for the Kasten Administration.

D-[Insert Picket Fence Prop Here]

Today Mark Zuckerman encapsulated everything I've been trying to say about the fan-driven furor for Manny Acta's head. Demonstrating once again why there's still a line between sports bloggers, however knowledgeable and informed, and working journalists who cover the team every day, Zuckerman details the Nats' daily defensive drills. For every blogger, commentor or casual fan who traces the Nats ineptitude to a lack of fundamentals, it's a must read.

To sum up, the Nats can "Drill, Baby, Drill" from now 'til Labor Day, and they'll probably still be a lousy defensive squad. No centerfielder, two largely immobile leftfielders (one playing quite a bit of right) a declining shortstop and a second baseman prone to brain freezes equal errors no matter how many fungoes they field. Now, if you want to be contrarian, I suppose you could say that the lack of improvement reflects as badly on the coaches as the players. It's a fair point, but I'm not aware of a revolutionary new method for teaching outfielders to track the ball off the bat, or reminding Anderson Hernandez when to cover first.

If "Fire Manny!" makes you feel better about watching this undeniably crapbag team, then by all means carry on. Far be it from me to deny any Nats fan whatever small measure of solace they need to stomach donning the Curly W in public. Just don't expect improvement, ok? Firing Acta would be a pure public relations move. And given how bad this franchise is at PR, they'd find a way to screw that up too.

I'm no fan of activity masquerading as progress. In my experience, "change for change's sake" means somebody above you is covering their @##. If Manny, or Randy St. Claire, or any of the coaches, has demonstrated deficiencies that are impairing the ballclub, make the case. Show me somebody else out there who can manage this team better. But no black boxes, please. There are too many moving parts on a 25-man ball club to just point to the end result and say, "They're terrible. Anyone could do better!" That's a cop out.

In Defense of Liberty

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether Nationals Manager Manny Acta is stoic and unresponsive to the point of narcolepsy - he is. But you can't hold a manger responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted umpires. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole umpiring system? And if the whole umpiring system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of Major League Baseball in general? I put it to you - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to Manny, but I for one am not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!

(With profuse apologies to National Lampoon's Animal House.)

Seriously though, what's the point here? Yes, the team is losing. Yes, theoretically someone ought to be held accountable. (Let's leave aside for the moment the idea that Jim Bowden was preemptively held accountable for this fiasco.) Does Manny bear some responsibility for the current mess? Absolutely. Should he be fired for it? Well, that depends on your definition of "should".

Step back from the situation. The Nats awful record is built on two faulty pillars. Lousy defense and abyssmal relief pitching. Sure the starting pitching has been bad, and the bats have picked a few inopportune times to take a night off; but by and large the starters have been good enough to keep the team in the game and the offense has held up its end. So what can Manny do about the defense and the relievers?

On defense he's been hamstrung by that perennial Nats weakness: they don't have a starting centerfielder worthy of the title. Lastings Milledge wasn't, isn't and won't be it. Elijah Dukes has the bat, but not the glove, Justin Maxwell just the opposite. Willie Harris is probably the best man for the job, but inserting him into the starting lineup exposes the other problem: too many leftfielders. Adam Dunn and even Josh Willingham are outfielders only in the sense that that's where they stand when not batting. Dukes is best suited to a corner spot as well. Austin Kearns has the glove to play anywhere, and the bat to play in AAA.

Here's Manny Acta's dilemma: max out the offense with Willingham, Dukes and Dunn and just hope nothing gets hit out of the infield, or get better defensively with Harris and Kearns in CF and RF, respectively, sacrificing offense while still trotting out a defensive liability (Dunn) in left. Behind Door #3 is a rotation of all 5 of these guys that changes the offensive and defensive profile of your team from night to night. So what's the "right" answer?

Down in the bullpen, Manny's even more constrained. He doesn't sign the relievers, he doesn't coach them, and though I'm sure he has input, he doesn't get to move guys on and off the 25-man roster on a whim. That's GM territory. So if you have an historically bad bullpen, what can you do? Throw everything you've got against the wall and see what sticks. Manny has been criticized in the past for being a "roles" guy, "Saul is my 7th inning pitcher, Beimel's my 8th inning guy, Hinckley's the LOOGY and Joel is the closer." Well, where are they now? Hanrahan, Beimel, Rivera, Julian Tavarez, Kip Wells, Garrett Mock, Jason Bergmann, Logan Kensing, Ron Villone... they've all gotten opportunities, sometimes multiple stints. There's been some improvement of late, but only after sifting through a lot of junk.

The sad truth is, this team can only expect so much improvement given the personnel on hand. Would Manny Acta barking at the umps in Citifield improve Josh Willingham's glove, or Joel Hanrahan's control? For that matter, would it have moved the officials to change either of their ultimate decisions? (If you say yes, you have to show your work.)

If not, then what is all this fuss about? There was no bait-and-switch here. Acta's always been very clear on his philosophy, arguing doesn't help. For a long time, he was lauded for that calmer, more professional, more analytic approach. Except that apparently, when all about you are losing their heads, the correct managerial posture is to lose yours too.

Maybe Manny's not the right manager for this team. But ask yourself: is that Manny's fault, or the team's?

Magical Manny Acta

The era of transparency and accountability ushered in by the Obama administration is slowly making its way down South Capitol Street towards Nationals Park. The "Fire [Randy/Manny/Stan]!" drumbeat has been growing louder as the losses mount, and understandably so. Fingers were made for pointing, goats were meant to be scaped and, despite fervent prayers, owners just don't fire themselves.

Canning the pitching coach is okay, maybe even justified when you have the worst bullpen in recorded history, but it doesn't exactly scream "Overhaul!" Axing the Team President certainly counts as a shakeup, but it's hard to do when he's a part-owner, and would the effects really trickle down to the play on the field? No, if you want maximum bang for your pink slip, the field manager is your guy. Whether you think that Manny Acta was never the right man for the job, that he lost the team at some point, or just that there has to be somebody out there who can do better, the evidence just keeps piling up.

Unfortunately you can't fire Manny Acta, because: MANNY HAS SUPER POWERS!

Look, I know what you're thinking. One too many blown saves has finally untethered Nate's mind from its increasingly fragile moorings. That's certainly a possibility, but consider this. The 2009 Washington Nationals have the worst defense in Major League Baseball and a historically bad relief corps. You think random chance could have brought the two together? HA!

Truth is, immediately after the opposing team strikes the ball Manny erupts from the dugout at speeds which render him invisible to MASN's X-MO camera, much less the puny human eye. In less time than it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings he subtly repositions the fielders so that Cristian Guzman doesn't get the glove down on a grounder, Willie Harris is forced to take circuitous routes to routine fly balls and Anderson Hernandez flinches away from relay throws at the last second. But super speed is just the beginning.

When a reliever's pitch randomly goes sailing to the backstop, or skidding into the dirt in front of home plate, that's Manny's telekenesis at work. Such is the power of Manny's mind that he can convince Charlie Slowes that a game ending fly out is actually a home run! And there's more.

Invisi-Manny creeps through the clubhouse just before game time loading down Adam Dunn's cleats with lead. The additional weight means that he's slow to balls in the gap and spikes throws into the outfield grass. Sometimes, when a Nats runner gets a good lead off first, Invisi-Manny will trip him just for spite.

"But that's ridiculous!", you say. "Manny Acta isn't out there sabotaging the players, causing the relievers to throw junk down the middle and the outfielders to miss cut-off men. He's the manager, sure, but he can't make Garrett Mock throw strikes or Adam Dunn play a ball off the wall properly."

To which my response is: "Fine. But if that's true, who do we fire?"

All the Right Moves?

OK, so how do we blame this on Jim Bowden? If last winter was Jim Bowden's crucible, this summer is shaping up to be Manny Acta's trial by fire. There's no question that this is the most talent ever assembled on Acta's watch. But, to misquote the late Ben Parker, with great talent comes great responsibility.

This is exactly what we as fans should want. This is Manny's team, win or lose. He picked Kearns over Dukes. He went with three lefties in the 'pen and left Bergmann out. He installed Lastings Milledge in center field and the leadoff spot. He indicated that there won't be a true outfield rotation to get Dukes and Willingham at-bats. If it works, he's a genius. If every day is like yesterday...

For what it's worth, I agree with most of Manny's moves. I think playing Austin is the only possible way to give him any trade value. I think stockpiling relievers with options in the minors is the best way to construct a capable bullpen over a long season. I think batting Milledge leadoff is at least a defensible move, though I'd prefer at little less GUZMANIA! in his approach.

Dukes isn't going anywhere unless he has a blow up. And if he blows up over being benched after the hacktastic spring he had, he's probably not a stable long-term building block anyway. It's not like he being passed over for Mike Vento, for goodness sake.

This is what managers get paid to do. Over the last few seasons Manny Acta hasn't been managing, he's been surviving. Lurching from game-to-game with a cobbled together lineup and the AAAA pitcher of the month is a fine test of intestinal fortitude, but no real measure of managerial skill. 2009 is a different story and the results will speak for themselves.

Flushing Queens. What a Splendid Idea.

Under the category of kicking the Mets while they're down: Manny gets a contract extension! Even if it weren't soundly deserved, locking up the ex-Mets third base coach through 2009 is a nice little bonus kick in the shins to New Yorkers who are calling their own managerial situation into question. I don't have anything against Willie Randolph, he managed a talented ballclub into first place in the National League for most of the season. There's no doubt that the Mets picked a terrible time to hit the skids though, and should they find themselves home on the couch in October you gotta believe somebody's head will roll.

By my count, in the last year the Nats have lifted two of the Mets best young talents: Manny Acta and catcher Jesus Flores. As we all know, the only thing better than acquiring young talent is picking a division rival's pocket to get it. Congratulations Manny! Let's provide some balm for the Mets wounds by taking it to the Phillies. Just watch out for flying batteries!

IN OTHER NEWS: If you haven't seen it, Capitol Punishment ends the National League third base Gold Glove discussion. The Nats should send this highlight reel out league-wide, pronto. Win one for the Fielding Dutchman!