Wonder Twin Powers, ACTA-VATE!
October 27th, 2009 | by johnhoyos |Form of a water buffalo!
Shape of an ice cone machine!
Perhaps Manny Acta promised super power intervention as part of convincing Mark Shapiro that he was the man for the Cleveland Indians job. It’s a little baffling. Manny Acta doesn’t have much of a track record at the Major League level as a manager. He has a career winning percentage of .385 in his 2+ seasons at the helm of the Nationals. I just don’t get it. He doesn’t have the rapport with the players the way Torey Luvollo does. He doesn’t have the experience that Bobby Valentine has. He doesn’t have the grooming or excellent Major League playing career that is instantaneous when you hear the name Don Mattingly. So how does he beat all three of them out for this job?
The problem is not that the Nationals were so terrible – he can’t be held too accountable for that. (He took Frank Robinson’s team in 2007 to a 73-89 record and it got worse from there.) It’s that Shapiro went out and said he wanted a guy with Major League exprience. I took that to mean that Shapiro wanted to know what kind of manager he was getting and that this particular person would have a history of managing winning baseball at the Major League level. So the problem is not his previous Major League exprerience, but rather that his Major League experience doesn’t tell us anything about how he’s going to handle the Indians.
And I know there are those Shapiro detractors that firmly believe that Manny Acta was selected because he is the most likely “yes” man of the group. I only have one thing to say to you people: you could be right. Because other than buying a year of rebuilding because Shapiro has his eye on someone else who might be available for 2011, I can’t understand why Manny Acta is the right selection for this position at this time.
A manager with more experience might be better suited to help turn this franchise around quicker. Fans, rightfully so, want a better expectation of what 2011 is going to be like – because they know 2010 is going to be pretty bad. With Manny Acta now entrenched at the helm, it’s hard to see the promise of good things to come. Perhaps if we could get the Wonder Twins to morph into some kind of time machine, we might be able to get a better idea of what the Indians will be like under Manny Acta in 18 months.
Tags: manager, Manny Acta
By Steve on Oct 27, 2009
Acta is highly regarded around the league. Several Baseball Prospectus writers called him the next Terry Francona. He’s bilingual and can talk to the latino players in their native language so nothing gets lost in translation. Let’s give this guy a chance before we shit all over him. I’m not ready to write off 2010 just yet, but maybe that’s just the eternal optimism of a Cleveland Sports fan talking.
By Wreck54 on Oct 27, 2009
I also wonder if Acta is right for the Tribe. At least he has experience managing a lousy team! I hope he is not one of those guys (everybody knows someone that fits this description) that can ace interviews and just dazzle the interviewer. Except when he actually starts doing the job, he’s in WAY over his head.
By johnhoyos on Oct 29, 2009
Thanks for the comment, Steve. I’m willing to give the guy a chance and hope he is a good fit for the Tribe. He just wouldn’t have been my first choice. Admittedly, I don’t have the benefit of being able to sit down with each of these candidates for several hours for interviews, so Mark Shapiro does have a slight edge there. The bilingual edge is an important advantage and I certainly didn’t consider that initially. Good call.