It’s never a pleasant thing to see someone lose their job, but it’s part of the deal in professional sports. The Cleveland Indians have had disappointing seasons the past two years, so manager Eric Wedge was fired effective at the end of this season.
While we advocated letting Wedge go early this season, it’s still tough to see a good man get let go. And Eric Wedge is a good man and a class act.
It’s kind of sad that his tenure will be more remembered for the collapses at the end of the 2005 season and in the 2007 ALCS than anything else. However, baseball is a win and loss business, and after seven seasons, Wedge lost more games than he won.
An online survey asked fans to assess Wedge’s performance as manager of the Indians, his strengths and weaknesses. Given the choices, it was funny that some of the things I thought were his strong points were also liabilities.
I respected his day-to-day; take one game at a time mentality because it is perfect for baseball and all sports for that matter. You can only win today’s contest, and once that game is over, you play again tomorrow. When you think about it, he’s correct. Fans get caught in looking at the next ten, or twenty, or a month’s worth of games, but the players and manager can’t do that. All they can control is the game at hand.
On the other hand, Wedge seemed to give his players too much of the benefit of the doubt at times. He wanted to show confidence in those players who performed well for him in the past, but at times he stuck with them too long. Think about how long guys like Rafael Perez and Jensen Lewis were trotted out there with the game on the line when they clearly were not effective.
This confidence extended to his coaching staff. The only changes to the coaching staff since 2005 involved first base coaches and bullpen coaches. Perhaps a different bench coach, hitting instructor, or pitching coach would have made a difference when things got stagnant.
He also seemed to only be comfortable handling one type of player. He could have never handled the Indians of 1995-2001 with some of the wild personalities on those teams. He was right about Milton Bradley, but he seemed concerned that Brandon Phillips would turn into a carbon copy of him. So, he didn’t get a second chance after failing in his rookie year.
I’m not one of those who think Phillips is the next coming of Rogers Hornsby, but he is a quality major league player. He didn’t get a real chance in Cleveland.
I also think he relates well with younger players. His “grind it out” mantra plays better with kids just trying to establish themselves at the big league level than with veterans. Usually, the Tribe doesn’t have a lot of experienced players, but I don’t know how seriously some veterans take this advice.
His most damning problem though was getting the team off to good starts. Only once in Wedge’s tenure have the Indians had a winning record at the end of April, and that was in 2007 the skipper’s only division title. That meant that Cleveland was always playing catch up. In 2005, they caught up only to hit a cool streak on the last week of the schedule, but in the other years it was too much to overcome.
Next year, the Indians will have a new manager for the first time since 2003. The new man may win more games (hopefully) and may be more open with the media, but it’s doubtful he will handle the job with more class than Eric Wedge.
Good luck to him and his family.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 