To be perfectly honest, I’m a little more interested in the circumstances that lead to John Russell’s dismissal than who’s going to replace him. I don’t mean I’m going to ignore the managerial search, since it’s likely to be the dominant Pirate story over the next couple weeks. I just mean that I think that asking why he was fired and what that means is a little more important than who’s going to replace him. In any case, I’m still hashing out a post to those ends so for now there are two links that I’d guess most of you have probably seen, but are definitely worth your time if you haven’t.
First, I really enjoyed Dejan Kovacevic’s analysis of the Russell era and his dynamic with Huntington. It’s very interesting to me how heavily the front office weighed on him and how the front office backed off during the season. I think the player’s reaction to the firing is also interesting, especially since neither Huntington nor Coonelly would directly criticize Russell yesterday and both placed the brunt of the blame for the bad record on themselves. This is what I mean when I say that it’s important to ask why Russell was fired. If the front office liked him and the players liked him, what exactly happened?
Second, I’m looking forward to Bucs Dugout’s series of blogger interviews about potential Russell replacement candidates, mostly because fans (and bloggers) tend to view managers very differently than they’re portrayed by their peers or the media. Charlie is running the Eric Wedge post today with more coming as more candidates are announced.
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