10:48pm: The Orioles may already have fired Trembley, according to ESPN.com's Buster Olney (via Twitter). Olney's source says the change was "inevitable."
9:36pm: Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun passes on word from Connolly that "it's not normal for [MacPhail] to meet the club when it returns home from a road trip," but that's MacPhail did this evening.
1:35pm: The Orioles may fire manager Dave Trembley soon, though nothing is official. Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun reports that president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail will likely meet with Trembley before tomorrow night. A source familiar with MacPhail's thinking told Connolly that a meeting between MacPhail and Trembley could take place tomorrow morning or even tonight, when the Orioles return from Yankee Stadium.
Connolly hears that the O’s will hire from within the organization if they make a change, so Juan Samuel and Jeff Datz are options. Connolly expects the interim manager to be “a placeholder” to steer the team while MacPhail looks to hire someone permanently.
The Orioles are 15-39 under Trembley this year and they have lost eight consecutive games. In parts of four seasons, the team is 187-283 under Trembley. This afternoon the Orioles lost to the Yankees in New York, so it's not getting any easier for the 58-year-old Orioles skipper.
I’m so sick of this crap — when organizations fire the managers. It’s just a symbolic move and is not going to affect the team at all. Get different players, not different managers.
I totally agree that firing Trembley will not change the fact that this team is going to lose a TON of games this year. But it is a move in the right direction in the sense that Trembley was never going to be the Manager that took this team back to the playoffs (if that person has even been born yet).
This move is more to appease the dwindling fan base…sometimes it feels like there are only a few of us left.
I do not really care who they hire from within the organization as long as it is understood we hire a new/real manager from outside the organization in the offseason.
Umm..I’m pretty sure that Jim Tracy had an effect on the Rockies last year. They were 18-28 under Clint Hurdle and 74-42 under Tracy. And as far as I can remember, they didn’t make any changes to the roster the whole year other than a few players getting called up from the minors.
It’d be interesting to know exactly what effect a managerial change does have. Can that be quantified? While Tracy surely helped…I just can’t see a managerial change putting a team 30 games over .500. It was fun to watch. Must be something to it.
Even if it’s a placebo effect, it’s a desirable effect worth a shot.
it’s tough that the O’s have to play in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox. Maybe having high draft choices will soon allow them to have a Tampa type of team……barring mismanagement. There just isn’t room for error in the AL East.
they have good players. if they get the right manager i can see them turn around a little. not like the rockies did with jim tracy but he is the victim of this situation.
If they are firing him, they should do it now. It’s no good for anyone to have this out there in the press for the next 24-48 hours.
who replaces him? if i could pick, bobby valentine is waiting patiently in the espn dungeon waiting on a job offer.
He’s going to wait for a GOOD job offer.
While Bobby Valentine can take decent teams and make them great (the 2000 Mets had maybe one superstar in Piazza, and a whole bunch of good players/role players), the Orioles are still too far off for him to work his magic. So I agree with you.
The O’s have more talent than they’ve shown. Not enough to be a force in the AL East yet, but enough to at least be a .500 team. Yes, guys like Jones, Markakis and Wieters need to step it up, but who is going to light the fire under their butts? Trembley might be a nice guy, but remember what Leo Durocher said about nice guys.
Trembley is a good manager, but they probably have to do this. I’m really down on their players, though. When Trembley first took over, they started playing a lot better.
As a Yankee fan, it’s not like I expected the Orioles to threaten for the division, but with the amount of talent on that team, they should have had a better record last year and they absolutely need to have a better record this year.
I know their pitching depth is thin, and that hurts them, but I’m sorry.. they have enough talent to win more games than they have and that’s on the players.
Stay classy, Baltimore.
By pitching depth, you really mean positional depth, right? Arrieta, Britton and Erbe are all guys developing. What about 1B? Nothing. 2B? Nothing. SS? Givens, maybe. Outside of the guys in the outfield now, how about outfielders in the minors? Eh. Not much going on there either. What you are seeing this year is what happens when the position players are struggling and they have nobody doing well enough to call up and perform. The pitching hasn’t been anything to write home about, but if the offense put up even average numbers, they’d be a lot better off.
I mean, they have Lou Montanez, and Corey Patterson on the 25-man roster, while Atkins is playing 1B with a .555 OPS.
No, I meant pitching depth. But I do agree with your point about the position players and did allude to it generally when I said I was “down on their players”.
The guys you are throwing out aren’t going to do ANYTHING of any note against Tampa, New York, Boston, or Toronto this year. Maybe next year.
As for Britton.. am I correct that this is Chris Britton? If it is someone else, disregard this, but if its Chris Britton the guy was in his late 20s when he rode the Scranton Shuttle for NYY a few years back. I don’t think guys in their early 30s are going to ‘develop’.
They have pitching talent but they don’t really have major league depth or anyone in the minors to step up (as you said). Bergenson, Matusz (who I think is really good), Hernandez, Meredith, Albers.. it’s a lot of 5ish ERAs to carry when your offense is slumping.
Arrieta has a 1’ish ERA this year in AAA so you’ll see him in the majors this year. You may see (Zach) Britton up here as well.
Haha. I can’t believe you thought I was talking about Chris. That insults my intelligence just a little bit.
They don’t have “major league SP depth”, but how many teams actually have that? What is that really? They have guys in the high minors that could contribute. I don’t know how successful they’ll be, but they’re there. They’re all young and cheap.
They have to beat the Yankees/Rays/Red Sox. They can’t make the playoffs, can’t win the division, they can’t do anything except collect gate receipt unless they beat the Yankees/Rays/Red Sox.
And they don’t have the horses to do it. Matusz was good last night or two nights ago, whatever it was, but our boys absolutely shelled him the previous time we saw him. Bergensen was soundly destroyed as well. Guthrie has his little temper tantrums on the mound, hitting our players (who have trounced him to a 5 something ERA and have hit more homers off him than any other team) because he can’t succeed against them.
Major league pitching depth looks like this, man: Sabathia, Burnett, Hughes, Pettitte, Vasquez.
So he has a bad night and now he isn’t good enough to do it? They’re young pitchers. Hughes was awful as a starter prior to this year, but he seemed to bounce back. The team is young. They’re going to struggle. But don’t say they can’t do this and that. They can’t compete this year, but that doesn’t mean the players will never be able to compete against good teams. Yeah, it’s a great rotation you guys have purchased. It’s been better than the one the Red Sox purchased/developed. How many other teams have depth like that?
I like the offense we bought even better!But in all seriousness, the New York Yankees have more homegrown players on their roster than the Baltimore Orioles. 14 to 9.
in the orioles defense, how many of those player would you consider recent homegrown? you have about 4 fossils that you developed back in the 1600s.
11 of the 15 (I forgot about Marcus Thames). You want names?
David Robertson, Juan Miranda, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Brett Gardner, Frankie Cervelli, Kevin Russo, Ivan Nova, Robinson Cano, Ramiro Pena, and Nick Johnson.
Lets see, David Robertson is getting lit up this year, Juan Miranda has to either play DH or outfield to get in the lineup, Joba is inconsistent, Phil Hughes is putting up a very good season, Gardner seems like a guy who gets hits in whatever way possible, Cervelli seems like a quality back up catcher, Kevin Russo who knows, Ivan Nova still not sure what he is going to be, Robinson Cano is a possible MVP candidate, Ramiro Pena utility guy, Nick Johnson still not able to play for a whole season.
Uh…
Yeah, thanks for the breakdown. Broseph up above made a quip about “buying” players (like fans of terrible, awful teams do) and I simply educated him about the number of home grown players on the squad. Homeslice wanted to exclude Jeets, Pettitte, Jorgie, and God because they were developed “back in the 1600s” (it’s pretty good to dominate the AL East for 400 years, if you ask me), so thems the names and thems the numbers.
3 of those 4 fossils have been the best players on the team. And with posada returning and seeming just fine, I fail to see the problem with that.
You can’t simply label a homegrown player as recent or ancient. Doesn’t work that way.
Actually, the White Sox have depth like that. It’s not showing, but Buerhle, Peavy, Danks & Floyd are pretty solid. Only Danks has shown anything so far.
If Andy Macphail and the Orioles want to win he’d hire one of his former managers: Tom Kelly. Tom Kelly took twins teams from worst to first and this Orioles team has the talent to do that. They have guys they can build around and their pitching could be really good in a year or two.
He never held players accountable for not hustling or general bone headed plays, he insisted on batting Adam Jones leadoff for a bit when he was batting in the lower 200’s, is not very good with his bullpen management, always leaves the starter in for at least one batter too many, and has overseen what is quite possibly the worst baserunning team I have ever seen (and after the last 13 years, I have seen a few awful teams). Changing coaches isn’t going to solve everything, but it can’t get any worse.
Yes it can.
You can trade for Dusty Baker, and have him rip apart the young pitching arms.
=P. kidding, of course. MacPhail is smarter than that.
hahahahaha I stand corrected, I don’t really want to see Matusz become the next Mark Prior
You do know that MacPhail was in charge when the Cubs hired Dusty Baker, and for his entire time in Chicago, right?
I mean maybe he learned from it and I actually do like the guy, but if we’re talking about MacPhail being too smart to hire Dusty… well…
The orioles may be seriously outgunned in the AL East, but they’re not THIS bad. They need a spark, this may be it.
Whats the record for ‘most managers fired in a season’ ?
Just saw it on the WJZ ticker. They just fired him, I missed who the interim manager will be though.