The Kansas City Royals hired Cleveland Indians bench coach Buddy Bell as their manager Tuesday, taking over the team with the worst record in the majors. Bell's contract with Kansas City runs through the 2007 season. He will be in uniform when the Royals begin a series with the New York Yankees tonight.
Buddy has experience managing bad teams, and this one is even worse that the Tigers team he took over in 1996. The Royals are rebuilding, again, so are they going to consider trading Mike Sweeney?
(edited by mountinman44 on 31.5.05 1058) Lemony-fresh victory is mine!
Sweeney's history if they can get someone to take him.
95 DET 60 84 .417 +5 ------------------- 96 DET 53 109 .327 +3 97 DET 79 83 .488 -1 98 DET 52 85 .380 -3 ------------------- 99 DET 69 92 .425 +1
99 COL 72 90 .444 +0 ------------------- 00 COL 82 80 .506 -5 01 COL 73 89 .451 -9 02 COL 6 16 .273 +3 ------------------- 03 COL 74 88 .458 -4
(last column is +/- Pythagorean W/L for the whole season)
Hope they signed him for two years.
Uh, why bother? At all? Neither of these teams got better over the course of his stewardership, nor did he build a foundation that someone else capatilized on. Both teams had to do a great bit of rebuilding after his tenure.
He was screwed by less than effective GM plans in both jobs, so maybe he's a good manager in tough places, but Kansas City really can't afford to be the ones to find that out.
This makes no sense. They should have just allowed Schaefer to take the bullet for this season. They are going nowhere this season and maybe next. As much as I disliked him previously, Bobby Valentine would have worked just fine for this team for NEXT year.
Word is that KC is asking for a team to not give up a couple of top prospects for Sweeney, but also to swallow all of Sweeney's salary. Hopefully the Dodgers don't attempt a move, since I dunno if Sweeney and Jeff Weaver can co-exist after that epic brawl a couple of seasons ago.
"You can look the other way once, and it's no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that's all your doing; compromising, because that's the way you think things are done. You know those guys I busted? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren't, they weren't bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised... Once." -- Jack Bauer
Well, so far so good for the Buddy Bell era. I was at all three games, and this was as much fun as I've had out there since the middle of 2003. This was the Royals first sweep of the Yankees in KC since 1990, the first sweep in 79 series, and only the third time the team with the worst record in baseball has swept the Yankees.
I'm a lifelong Royals fan, and a current season ticket holder, so it's nice to actually see them playing good baseball, if only for a few days in June. I know this won't last too much longer, but sweeping the Yanks will be something the kids on this team can look to in the future. And honestly, we are better than our record shows. With a couple of breaks here and there, and our 5-15 record in one-run games closer to .500, and we would at least not be contending for the worst record in baseball. We're not going to win 70 games this year, but I feel a lot more confident about not losing 110 games than I did a couple of weeks ago.
About Sweeney: Right now, the Royals are really looking at 2007 as being the year we can make a run, which is the last year of Sweeney's contract. We're not going to get what we want for him, especially if the other team is gonna pay most or all of his salary, and there would be a fan revolt here if we did trade him. It's going to take a mighty good offer for Baird to trade him at this point.
The Real teams have 32(!) players.... I went back and forth between Munson and Young, which set off the chain reaction with the OF situation in the AL. No matter who you pick from Detroit, it's a reach. Palmeiro is only hitting .260(or so)
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