Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Fire Chuck Hernandez!

Pitching Coach Chuck Hernandez
    We fans know Loria. He's seething, he's moaning. He has to do something. Such a dismal start after he spent a ton of money on this team.
            Baseball is still sometimes a game of mystery when teams come/don't come together. It's early in season .. Stanton has to adjust to pressure of biggest contract ever and I hope/think he can do so successfully, but there are a lot of parts to team. 3B, 1B and C big question marks .... 2B doing a lot better than I expected.
    But Loria is not a patient man. I'm tempted to wisecrack that he might soon sell everybody to Blue Jays, but my gut tells me that if things don't change pretty quickly, the easiest change will be Redmond. Right? You can't blame upper management for assembling this team, so somebody has to take blame.
    But Redmond has always struck me as a pretty steady, smart guy.
    So what to do? Rather than throw him under the bus, let's look for someone else. The Marlins have the worst ERA -- by far -- in the majors.
    Their starting pitching is utterly miserable. Their closer has had a rough start. So if Loria feels like dumping, why not pick the pitching coach?
    Must be his fault, right?  He just isn't telling the staff to throw good pitches. Or strikes. Or avoid home runs. (What the hell do pitching coaches talk about? I always think of that meeting on the mound in Bull Durham, in which the coach says, "Candlesticks always make a nice gift.")
     It was management that grabbed Latos in exchange for the young Anthony DeSclafani, Phelps for the always disappointing Eovaldi, Haren for Andrew Heaney (disappointing last year in his Marlins debut). And you can't blame management, right?
    But ... but ... Last night Eovaldi shined for the Yankees, giving up one run in seven innings. Heaney is the top minors prospect with the Angels and DeSclafani (2-2, 6.27 ERA last year with Marlins) is now 2-0 with 0.86 ERA with Reds.
      So maybe Marlins pitching coach is not getting full potential out of his staff. Or maybe  everybody should just stay cool for a while. Season is still young.  Who knows? If baseball weren't so complicated, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

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