When you can fire Davey

First a thought experiment

Adrian Sanchez is not a good major league baseball player. He was not good when first brought up in 2017, and then into 2018 was also not good. While you could say the problem was a lack of major league experience the facts are he simply doesn't belong on a major league roster beyond emergency use status. This was clear after 2017 and is some small part of the reason Matt Adams was signed.  No one batted an eye. So someone shows they are clearly not ready for the job they are handed.  They are replaced. It is the way of the world and we are fine with it.

What makes managing different?

Well, of course the huge one thing is that there is only one hard and fast measurement of managing success, wins, and it's unclear how much the manager contributes to that. It's as if we could only evaluate pitchers by opponents BABIP. But our choices are (1) use the flawed measurement we have or (2) use nothing, and I'd at least take the flawed measurement into account.  That's what's going on with Davey.  He doesn't manage the team to win. That's a fact. It's arguable even considering injuries and the like, he doesn't get them to the success rate they should have. Does that overcome the other things we don't see? Well we fans REALLY don't see those things so it's mostly a shrug. Don't know. Don't care. That's why experience matters here. You may be able to point to testimonials from a long managerial career saying "No, this guy really gets it! This is just bad luck and timing!" But Davey doesn't have that either. So all we have is management's word that they aren't keeping him just because they are paying him, but he really is a good manager that's gotten some bad breaks.


At this point it just the flawed use of wins, versus the unverifiable use of words.  Fun times for us soulless automatons. Given the managements unreliability when it comes to dealing with managers, I feel compelled to go with the flawed use of wins and hope that Davey gets fired.

When? I've never been a fan of the dramatic firings.  Fans love it because it matches the anger they usually feel, but I think it's a poor business move that may make candidates think twice about coming to your organization.  Sure demand is high and supply is low, but you still want to be THE place people want to go to, not the place they go to because that's what's available.  you'll get better people the first way.  So I wouldn't fire Davey now. You could fire him as soon as the Nats are back home assuming they don't sweep the Dodgers or anything.

Alternatively, if you like Davey, or want to keep him around for other reasons, you can use the recent run to keep him around. Massive injuries, good teams, tough road trip (PHI -> MIL -> LA is a slog, even without mechanical issues). It was the worst case scenario. So you keep him around until Soto is back (Saturday) and Turner is back (maybe a week after that - he'll need a couple AA games probably - yes AA - he aint' going to Fresno) and the team has played a while.  That could be as late as June 5th.  You'd have to assume a poor or even middling showing with a full strength team when they go on a vMIA, @ATL, @CIN, vCHW run would be telling enough. Or even stretch it out to include the @SDP @CHW  road swing if you must. June 11th. That's the latest date I could possibly see a still underperforming Davey here. If he's here beyond that either the team has gotten better, gone through even more dramatic injury problems (and Davey is just here to suck up the losses), or you don't want to pay two guys.