The arguments that your arguments for firing Trey Hillman are stupid

It's pretty obvious to me what Trey did in Japan hasn't and won't duplicate itself here in the US. Why? Because this is America's sport, you know, apple pie and all...the baseball players here in the US are part of a long, rich tradition and aren't fooled by a guy that respects the samurai, follow?
Look, bottom line, his players don't respect him and so on. Fire him, anytime..this season, just have a manager in there in time for next season. Sometimes you can't really peg ceratain things about somebody, but the easiest is the condition this baseball team is in and the look on Treys' face, like a deer in the headlights. Tim G

Sam, denial is not just a river in Africa. You mentioned things that have happened that were out of his control and you mentioned things that he has done poorly. Why don't you come up with one or two things that he has done well. I don't think everyone of the injuries were out of his control as Rany has mentioned. It's impossible to know how much of it he had in his control but based on how they went about each injury, it's hard to believe at least some of it wasn't.

This team continues to make mental errors on the field some of which show their face in the form of physical errors. He continues to make or not make moves that no one including yourself can understand. I don't place all the blame on him as DM deserves his share of it as well for even picking up a guy like Jacobs or Farnsworth or HoRam.

The first one to go is usually the manager. I say the sooner we start the better.

I sort of understand the bizarre confluence of events that has our roster left with what seems like six middle infielders who are decent with the glove and terrible with the bat. We have had injuries throughout the system in the outfield, and so on.

So while I would normally think it inexcusable to have TPJ, the Spork, Hernandez, and Hulett all on the same roster, well, it is what we have. It is a big reason we suck right now, but the path that got us here over the last couple of months is what it is.

But when you have a whole series of mediocre bats and decent gloves, how is it that you send the worst bat to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded. I can understand the rationale of putting your best glove and worst bat in there. The one redeeming feature of having all of these guys is that none of them should be at the plate during a big at bat. We had to use Guillen there, or Brayan, or somebody, anybody who hits better than a mediocre national league pitcher.

TPJ had a startingly good at bat, taking 13 pitches to strike out if I remember right. But this is the kind of crap that drives me crazy. There are plenty of games where we don't really know when the key plays are happening until we look back at the whole game. But how freaking hard is it to tell that bases loaded and two outs in a tie game is a key moment?

And so I am left with this sequence of thoughts ... if he doesn't know that this is a key moment, he is not up to this job. And if he knows that it is a key moment, and still sends Pena to the plate with several other options for shortstop already in the game and on the bench, well, he is not up to the job.

Is there maybe a post coming up about what Jim Souhan said about the Kansas City Royals playing like an older version of the Lansing Lugnuts? If you haven't read the article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, you should definitely look it up. And they say that there's a bunch of "good people" up in Minnesota...
JT

So why keep him on? Granted, I agree that firing him now doesn't accomplish anything, but why give Trey another chance after this season? What does he bring to the table that other managers don't have? Experience in Japan? That's it, really. The only fruits of that experience we have seen are the Yabuta signing and some odd bunting situations. Both of those apples are rotten.

Sam, I respect your opinion, but the bottom line is I don’t understand what about Trey Hillman is defensible. How do you even feel passionate about the guy? He’s impossible for me to defend in any way because he’s just so damn uninspiring. Trey has proven to be a mediocre manager, plain and simple. In his tenure, he’s been the equivalent of two years of interim Bob Schaeffer or John Mizerock. He has no character other than being a mediocre dude with a long Texas drawl, and I know ton of those guys personally. He's come close to losing the clubhouse multiple times. None of his players seem to be passionate about him. He comes across as unintelligent, even aloof at times, with the media.

Most of all, he has not put a stamp on the franchise in any way whatsoever. Say what you want about Bob Boone, Hal McRae, Tony Pena, Buddy Bell, and Tony Muser but at least they had some fire to their tenures. At least they tried some things that were strange, that showed they were desperately trying to cling to life on a sinking ship, even if their actions were not necessarily inspirational or helpful to the team in any way. Trey’s injected no life into the Royals franchise. And if you’re not going to inject life in the franchise, you need to be a master tactician, and he is the farthest thing from that since Buddy Bell. So essentially, Trey brings NOTHING new to the table from a managerial perspective.

When it comes down to it, he’s just a dude who happened to manage in Japan. That might sound awesome to some people, but we’ve learned that it’s really not. Whatever benefits were thought to be gained from his hire were flushed down the toilet somewhere between signing Yasuhiko Yabuta and hitting Mike Jacobs against a LH starter for the 25th time this season. I honestly have no idea how Trey was such a big thing in Japan. Don’t they go for extreme character guys like Bobby V.? John Gibbons has more fire and character than Hillman.

Trey is just Trey in every sense of the word. Nothing special, just an average employee who comes in to work every day to tread water and doesn't learn from his mistakes. So why hold on to him any longer than necesssary? Give him walking papers after the season.

If it's not the trainer and it's not Trey, who, then, is responsible for the God-awful handling of injured players? Who is responsible for letting Meche throw his arm off after already showing major concerns around his stamina and back? Who is pitching Soria on consecutive nights unnecessarily when he wasn't available the night before when we needed him most? Who was moving Crisp in and out of the lineup asking him to play through injury?

Normally, the man in control of all of these things (and so much more we've all seen covered) is the manager. Maybe that's not the case here, and Trey is innocent. But, it's pretty lazy commentary to blast the criticisms of Trey as "stupid" when you aren't explaining why these complaints, which usually land at the managers feet, are, in this case, misplaced.

I think you misinterpret Rany. I don't think he thinks Schwartz should be blamed for this season's bad start. He explicitly says ...

I’m not naïve enough to think that all of the Royals’ injury woes are the fault of Swartz, or that after firing him the team’s DL will magically empty. I’m sure that you can find some reason to absolve Swartz for every individual incident I’ve mentioned above.

If you want to address his argument, by all means do so. But it is an argument that is based upon nearly 20 years of injuries, and not just the last three months. It is low brow to say that there are critical facts without providing any critical facts. But you misrepresent his argument, and then attempt to discredit the strawman with a wink.

That is weak sauce, and you are better than that.

Now, as to your main point, I agree that it is difficult to get a gauge on Hillman for this first half. My thought was that if Gordon and Butler weren't hitting three and four everyday in some order by this time, we were going to be looking at a long season. So when Gordon went down for most of the year, I pretty much wrote off our chances to win the division over the long haul.

That said, a manager's job is to get the best performance possible out of his players. You list a whole bunch of guys underperforming. Who is over-performing? The Spork, for sure, and Callaspo has had more extra base hits than I would have expected. Greinke has been other-worldly. Butler has been good, but basically in line with expectations.

So you have a somewhat mixed bag. So I give Hillman a gentleman's C at this point. Not enough to fire him, but certainly not safe, either.

"...of a team that had very little margin for error to start with, and then proceeds to be decimated by injuries and key underperformances."

Therein lies the problem. And will continue to be a problem unless this team makes serious improvement in personnel. All injuries aside, at some point DM needs to stop being patient with guys who are consistently...inconsistent. It does no good to surround average young big leaguers with even MORE average (and underperforming) veteran free agents with flaws to their game or are past their prime - just for the sake of cheaper contracts.

Right now, the best players on the team are average, at-best, compared to the rest of the league. Each of them has had at least one season or half-season or projected crap from their minor league days that makes our front office continue to wait around for them to become great. The franchise pays DM to make very hard decisions regarding situations like this. If quality improvements aren't made, you can not only expect this team to be a continued let-down in the future, but you can also add Moore's name to the firing line.

Every time I hear Frank White go in detail during a Royals broadcast about what he would do in a particular situation, I always wonder why he is not the manager. He has to be the next in line. It seems like he is just waiting until Trey is out.

Your crystal ball was flawless during the preseason, when you stated that if anything happened to Greinke, Meche, and/or Soria there would be problems, and that the performances of Aviles and Davies would be pivotal to the team. You were absolutely correct and my hat is off to you.

Honestly, I can't properly assess Trey Hillman at this point, and I don't think it's fair for anybody to try. Everything that could go wrong this year has, and it's not his fault that the guys he has to fill in are replacement-level (or worse). I'm not sold on him yet, but he hasn't done anything that has me calling for his head either.

But sometimes its in the best interest of both parties to just move on. Sports history is full of examples where a coach and team fail miserably with each other, they both go their separate ways, and both are better for it.

Unfortunately the Royals have a losing mentality in the clubhouse. Its not Trey's fault, but its going to be hard to change it. The easiest way to get rid of that mentality is to mix things up dramatically by bringing in a new manager.

Its not fair to Trey, but life often isn't...