Zach

You are a friggin' moron.

The "breaking point" shouldn't be performance based, because it's basically statistically proven that, on the aggregate, the game management of managers at the big league level is *irrelevant*: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=16630 However, it should be noted, just for funsies, who rankes No. 1 on the list of "manager wins above replacement": http://darowski.com/hall-of-wwar/expectancy/ The only real justification for dismissing a manager is when they "lose the clubhouse" -- which clearly hasn't happened with Scioscia, according to those journalists who are actually in the clubhouse every day -- or when they do something which puts an undue media focus on the team, i.e. Joe Torre batting Alex Rodriguex eighth or Ron Washington's drug use. But even in the latter case, obviously, the Rangers smartly decided that weathering that storm was smarter than bringing in an unknown quantity to lead the club.

Wrong: http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/law_keith/id/9227029/joey-votto-bat-second-cincinnati-reds-mlb I also just attended a panel where Billy Beane and Theo Epstein admitted baseball lineups aren't optimized. Keep your conventional wisdom, please.