Man. What a way to come out and start the homestand.
The fate of Buck Showalter is prominent in the papers this morning...Tim Cowlishaw talks about it, and doesn't come out and say that Buck needs to go, but also doesn't make any sort of endorsement. Jim Reeves, meanwhile, is in Buck's corner:
Only mathematicians and giddy fools can find a shred of hope in a team that's now fallen eight games off the pace with 32 to play, and Zito stifled whatever giddiness I had left Friday night.
I know what many of you are going to say.
Fire the manager.
It's the cry of the frustrated and the disappointed, and it's not going to happen, not now and not this off-season. Nor should it.
"He's my manager," owner Tom Hicks declared before the game, a statement reiterated by general manager Jon Daniels.
"That's the last thing I'm thinking about right now," Daniels said.
There may come a point sometime next season or beyond when a change needs to be made, simply to freshen the atmosphere, but not now. To blame Buck Showalter for what's going on with this team would be to take the players off the hook, and that's absolutely the wrong thing to do.
The only thing Showalter has done wrong is not win, but how many out there believed in April that the Rangers should and would win the AL West this year? Reality is that most of us figured this to be a slightly better than .500 team, and that's just about where they've been most of the season.
If Reeves really thinks the only thing Buck has done wrong this year is not win, then Reeves is not paying attention.
There is a survey on the topic at the DMN, and as I type this, it is 83% in favor of Buck not returning, 17% in favor of Buck returning.
Of course, in the middle of 2004, the DMN did a similar survey about whether Hart should stay on as g.m. after the season, and about 95% of fans said Hart should leave. And we know how that turned out. So I don't expect this will do much to change Tom Hicks' mind about the manager.
In other news...Mike Heika has a piece on Barry Zito's historic performance against the Rangers.